Central ND News

During remarks delivered on the floor of the U.S. Senate this week, Senator John Hoeven criticized the Biden administration's regulatory measures, which he claims are undermining the reliability of the electric grid and increasing costs for businesses and consumers.

"In April, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized four new regulations specifically targeting North Dakota’s coal-fired power plants," said Hoeven. "The Biden administration’s regulatory blizzard comes at a time when the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC, continues to raise concerns about elevated risks of blackouts and brownouts."

Hoeven emphasized the importance of dispatchable resources such as coal, gas, and nuclear power plants in meeting energy demand due to their ability to operate regardless of weather conditions. He highlighted North Dakota's efforts over more than a decade to develop carbon capture technologies, allowing continued use of extensive coal supplies with improved environmental stewardship.

"North Dakota has proven that we can lead the way in reducing SOx, NOx and mercury emissions, and now we’re working to lead the way forward on CO2," Hoeven stated. "However, the Biden administration’s regulations are adding costly regulatory burdens at the very time we’re working to deploy these new technologies to produce more baseload electricity more reliably while reducing emissions."

Hoeven concluded by criticizing blackouts and brownouts as unacceptable in an energy-rich nation like the United States. He argued against overregulation and Green New Deal-style mandates in favor of empowering energy producers through reduced regulatory constraints.

"Instead of overregulation and Green New Deal-style mandates," Hoeven said, "we need to take the handcuffs off our energy producers and allow American ingenuity to produce more energy more cost-effectively, more dependably and with the best environmental standards. That’s the right approach."