A bill has been introduced in the North Dakota Legislature to create a “state energy research center” within UND’s Energy and Environmental Research Center.
"We need a focus on more exploratory research," said the bill's sponsor, Sen. Ray Holmberg (R-Grand Forks).
Holmberg said that kind of research money used to come to the EERC through Congressional earmarks.
"When that went away, the amount of people willing to give money for exploratory research is really pretty small," Holmberg said.
The bill would use $6 million per biennium for that research. EERC director Tom Erickson said it would go toward “early stage” research.
"It eventually will be transferred to industry funding and other funding sources, the federal government, to actually take it to application and the commercial marketplace," Erickson said.
Industry likes the concept.
"This will allow us to have the EERC doing fundamental research before us companies get involved and do the heavier research at the tail end," said North American Coal Government and Public Affairs Director David Straley. "This provides us a mechanism so that this research is done up-front, and that the state gets a win out of it, too."
Straley said the amount of dollars that will flow into the economy from the lignite industry is very important, both to North American and to the state of North Dakota.
The $6 million would come from oil taxes.