New coal power for Minnesota?

In this morning's Federal Register, there is a notice about a proposed new coal-fired power plant and proposed new transmission line in South Dakota. Basin Electric Power Cooperative says it wants to send the resulting dirty power to southern Minnesota and other states.

From the notice:
The purpose of the Project is to help serve increased base load demand for electric power in the eastern portion of Basin Electric's service area. Basin Electric's eastern service area is comprised of western Nebraska, northwestern and central Iowa, portions of southern Minnesota, all of South Dakota, portions of eastern Montana, and western and central North Dakota.

So what the heck is creating alleged base load growth in these rural areas? New ethanol plants?

It will be important to find out whether this alleged base load growth is really there. It's a lot easier for a company to say a new power plant has to be coal and not wind power if the company says the alleged need is for base load growth.

Another big question is how the coal-fired electricity would make its way out of the Dakotas. Which transmission lines or proposed transmission lines would it go through? Many people here in the midwest are concerned that new transmission lines promoted to the public as being for clean, renewable energy will really wind up transporting coal power.

The proposed project is called the NextGen Energy Facility. You can see Basin Electric Power Cooperative's service area map at this link.

All of the public scoping meetings for the project's Environmental Impact Statement are scheduled to be held in South Dakota, not in the states that Basin says would be markets for the power.