MISSOULA — As NorthWestern Energy prepares to merge with Black Hills Corp. and collect comments on the draft of its new Integrated Resource Plan, Missoula County looks to stay engaged as both efforts move forward.
But for now, it's taking a largely observatory stance.
Svein Newman, the county's climate action program manager, said NorthWestern's current plans don't appear to interfere with the city and county's goals to create a green power program in partnership with the utility.
“We submitted data requests on a handful of items,” Newman said Monday. “Questions about service reliability, costs, local workforce, decarbonization and the green power program. The answers we got back were fine. Some were pretty clear, some a little less.”
Newman said NorthWestern said the Public Service Commission has ongoing oversite in regard to the utility's costs, rates and service reliability. Regarding the local workforce and green power program, Newman said NorthWestern said the “merger wouldn't change anything.”
“On the decarbonization goal, NorthWestern said the merger doesn't change their 2050 goal. They're largely signaling no change here on all fronts,” said Newman. “I think we're all of the opinion that we don't recommend going hard on this at this time.”
NorthWestern in August announced its plans to merge with Black Hills Corp “to create a premier regional regulated electric and natural gas utility company.”
While that process is expected to play out this year, NorthWestern last week also released the draft of its new Integrated Resource Plan (IRP). The document serves as a comprehensive outline of the utility's approach to energy management over the next 20 years.
“The model pretty much only picks fossil fuels and doesn't anticipate meaningful emissions reductions until the 2040s,” Newman said of the document. “We can work on some technical comments that can speak to some of their inputs and model assumptions that led to those conclusions.”
NorthWestern said the IRP presents an evaluation of potential energy sources that would “meet the needs of our Montana electrical customers reliably, safety and affordably over the next 20-years.”
But regulatory watchdogs have been critical thus far given NorthWestern's chosen resources, “such as the utility's decision to build the Yellowstone County Generating Station, it's pursuit to increase its ownership in the Colstrip plant, and its plan to eventually replace that plant with the most expensive form of power available – nuclear,” wrote the Montana Environmental Information Center.
Newman said the county will observe the process and consider commenting on the utility's resource plan.
“It's not proposing any additional renewables here,” Newman said. “NorthWestern's utility actions, planning and resources are pretty significant in our ability to meet our county and city goals.”
Both the city and county have plans to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2030.
