coal

North Dakota’s coal mines were dangerous places a century ago, when blasts and equipment accidents could be fatal. The industry had swelled in North Dakota in the 1910s. In 1920, the state had 116 mines, most of them underground. They produced nearly 879,000 tons of coal, worth more than $2.1 million. That would be more than $33 million in today’s dollars.

Coal was an important commodity in early North Dakota, a resource that could promote the state. This worked out well for General W. D. Washburn, a former US Senator and a surveyor-General from Minnesota. In 1898, Washburn had purchased a chunk of land to promote settlement and develop any resources. It turned out that the land had huge coal deposits, and Washburn would come to own several coal mines in central North Dakota.

The state Senate has approved a bill calling for a five year tax holiday for coal fired power plants.The coal conversion facilities taxes would be…

The $800 million Republican bonding bill focuses on water projects.One specific project is the F-M Diversion. The measure allocates $435.5 million for the…

The University of North Dakota’s Energy and Environmental Research Center has been doing the study of what are called “rare earth” elements in lignite…

The state’s Industrial Commission recently approved an additional $5 million to help fund a front-end engineering and design study for additional work on…

Members of the Lignite Research Council have again expressed support for a research project on carbon capture and storage to benefit the Blue Flint…

Minnesota-based Great River Energy will be shutting down its Coal Creek Station power plant near Underwood in the second half of 2022.Coal Creek went into…

It’s being billed as the world’s largest carbon capture facility.“Project Tundra” is designed to capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions from…

On this date in 1913, hundreds of thousands of tons of North Dakota coal was being eaten up by fires in undeveloped mines. Coal is not usually the first…