Minnesota Power: Long-Term Energy Study

Link here to Yahoo News.

Minnesota Power has taken significant action to improve the environmental performance of its fleet; keeping pace with the nation’s rapidly transforming energy landscape. The company’s generation fleet was 95 percent coal-based in 2005, but by next year the ratio will drop to 74 percent coal and 26 percent non-coal, with a greater non-coal percentage projected to come. Transitioning from fossil-fuel based energy to renewable energy is a capital intensive endeavor. In recent years Minnesota Power has invested about $500 million in wind energy, biomass and hydropower improvements. 

Corporate presentation (pdf file): slide 11 -- North Dakota wind. 

Don tells me:

Minnesota Power is building, as we speak, a mega-wind farm near Center, ND. There were 6 semi's parked in a truck stop on Independence Day. Much of their non-coal energy is hydropower from Canada.

After seeing the wind farms in Indio, California, my hunch is that the wind farm fad will runs its course over ten to twenty years. For those who think the oil industry has ruined the "view" of North Dakota, wait until they see the wind farms.