Laurel Gas Plant

NorthWestern Tries to Make the Climate Crisis Worse

by Anne Hedges

This summer, as NorthWestern Energy pursues a $300 million gas plant — the Laurel Generating Station — a parched Montana burned, roasted, and suffered. When the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released an updated report on the climate crisis, warning that it was ‘code red for humanity,’ the thought that NorthWestern was trying to increase its reliance on fossil fuels was nearly unbearable. Unfortunately, NorthWestern and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) seem intentionally oblivious to the realities of climate change. Despite nearly 300 messages from MEIC members in opposition to increased air pollution from the plant, DEQ approved an air pollution permit for the 175-megawatt plant in late August. The permit not only lacks enforceable conditions to protect public health, it also lacks any consideration of the climate impacts of NorthWestern’s proposal. Extracting and burning gas is a real and serious danger to the climate and public health. NorthWestern’s proposal will negatively impact both. A recent analysis by an MEIC member found that NorthWestern’s Laurel plant could emit 329,356 tons of carbon dioxide each year even if it only generates electricity 50% of the time. That’s equivalent to 33 million gallons of gasoline being burned each year. MEIC is currently weighing its legal options regarding the plant.

Meanwhile, MEIC is continuing to challenge NorthWestern’s request to the Montana Public Service Commission (PSC) to increase customers’ electricity bills to pay for the gas plant (and a small battery storage project that is likely to be charged by fossil fuels and not clean energy resources). MEIC and Sierra Club are fortunate to have Earthjustice representing them in this proceeding. NorthWestern’s application to the PSC is not only incomplete, it is shrouded in secrecy. NorthWestern’s customers, who pay the bills for all of NorthWestern’s activities, cannot review the most important parts of the application such as what alternative projects NorthWestern rejected and what their costs or their savings to customers might have been. MEIC’s attorneys and experts also cannot see much of NorthWestern’s analysis but they are working to gain access to some of the most critical information NorthWestern omitted from its application. Unfortunately, MEIC’s staff, its members, the media, and decision-makers will remain in the dark about the details. We will have to await our experts’ reports to the PSC that are due on October 1. Some of their information and analysis will be hidden from the public because it is derived from NorthWestern’s confidential information. But these reports will help all of us better understand the economics and shortcomings of NorthWestern’s plan to burn more fossil fuels and make our summers even more insufferable.