Now that the US Department of Energy has selected Project Tundra to receive federal funding through its Carbon Capture Demonstration Projects Program, Minnkota Power Cooperative and its partners will be negotiating with DOE for the actual grant amount.
The project will capture CO2 from the Milton R. Young power plant, near Center, and store it underground.
The DOE says the project is eligible for up to $350 million.
Minnkota President and CEO Mac McLennan said the partners are now working to determine the actual final price for the project.
"We have an assumption of what that looks like," McLennan said in an interview. "But obviously, in the last 6 to 12 months, we've seen inflation to continue to move forward, we've seen supply chain issues continue to be a challenge. The cost of money, obviously, has an impact."
And MacLennan said there’s also the issue of labor.
"People seem to forget we have about 3.7% unemployment," MacLennen said. "And a lot of industrial activity going on."
MacLennan said insuring you can get labor to come to North Dakota, to build a large project, takes some work. But he said time is of the essence, to preserve baseload power.
"Our industry is going to transition," MacLennan said. "The question is — are we going to transition in a measured, timely, affordable and reliable way, over time," MacLennan said. "It's going to be a much longer transition because, from a technology perspective, we don't have a great solution yet, to replace the baseload resources that we have."
The partners are expected to make a decision on moving forward with the project in mid-2024.
