Lignite

Crazy but true. Here's how it went down. Back in 1995, Minnesota passed a law assigning a cost to carbon for purposes of utility planning (go Minnesota!). North Dakota, which sells a lot of coal-fired power to Minnesota, got worried that this law would hurt its in-state lignite coal industry. The western half of North Dakota sits on a giant bed of lignite, a very low-grade coal also referred to as North Dakota mud because when they strip mine it the product looks a lot more like dirt than coal. You have to burn a lot of it to get the same energy value as richer coal, which in turn releases a lot of carbon dioxide.

The lignite industry - which receives major subsidies from the State of North Dakota - argued to the legislature that attaching a cost to carbon would put lignite at an economic disadvantage to wind power. They produced charts comparing lignite to wind, with and without carbon regulation. Now you might think that the Minnesota law presented a fabulous opportunity to North Dakota to build up its wind industry, because North Dakota has some of the best wind in the country and could produce mass quantities of cheap, carbon-free electricity for the power-hungry Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

But no. Instead, the visionary North Dakota legislature passed a law (NDCC 49-02-23 if you're interested) banning the state Public Service Commission from considering any environmental externalities, including the anticipated cost of any future environmental laws or regulations, in making planning decisions about new electrical generation. Our humble challenge now is to drag North Dakota kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.