Opinion: Montana’s Bumpy Road to Clean Power Plan Compliance

What would it take for Montana to produce electricity in a way that reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 47 percent?

It’s not a hypothetical question. It’s the mandate set for the state in the Environmental Protection Agency’s final version of its Clean Power Plan, released in August 2015.

And compliance with that mandate – which requires a larger percentage of CO2 reductions in Montana than any other state – is more than a technological or engineering challenge. It could involve walking away from assets that have provided low-cost power and supported thousands of jobs for years, as well as spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build the capacity to replace them in a short period of time. In short, it could be the biggest economic event to occur in our state in decades.

By Patrick M. Barkey

Full Story: http://news.umt.edu/2015/11/111915plan.php