The rise of renewable energy sources poses life-changing questions for Montana’s coal country. The town of Colstrip has a century’s dependence on coal production. The Crow and Northern Cheyenne Indian reservations also share the region’s Powder River Basin coal deposits. But those three communities face different directions as the energy economy reacts to billions of dollars in new federal investments for wind and solar generating projects, mine and pollution cleanup, job training and economic development. Around the world, coal ranks worst among energy sources for producing greenhouse gases that lead to disrupted rain and snow patterns, longer wildfire seasons and other impacts from global warming. Part II of this four-part series catalogs the unprecedented flood of tax dollars flowing into Montana’s coal country, and the reactions of residents presented with these opportunities in an election year. Billions of dollars in tax incentives, loan guarantees and direct aid to families await takers, but many in southeast Montana feel leery of the complicated processes.Like a squadron of benevolent B-52s loaded with money, federal opportunities are circling above Montana’s coal country looking for places to land.“It absolutely is bewildering,” said Clair Scribner of the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. “Tribes are being inundated with opportunities.”Scribner toured Montana this summer with K.C. Becker of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to publicize Solar For All, which plans to spend $44 million in Montana to help tribal and rural communities get rooftop solar panels to lower their electricity bills.“This is part of the biggest investment ever in renewable energy,” Becker added. “All together, there’s $7 billion focused on low-income and disadvantaged communities.”That’s an understatement. Solar For All is one of the more human-scaled of the initiatives tumbling out of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and related congressional legislation. The $7 billion Becker mentioned is just an EPA slice of the renewable energy pie. The Tribal Energy Loan Guarantee Program through the Department of Energy has $20 billion on hand to fund solar and wind generation, as well as mining and fossil energy production. In between lie billions more for mine waste cleanup, job training, loan financing, tax credits, climate resilience and education programs. Put together, more than a trillion tax dollars are flying around the nation’s energy sector.FADING AWAYThe money comes just as Montana’s coal mining base around Colstrip dreads the loss of a fossil-fuel energy industry that’s underpinned its way of life for half a century. As recently as 2001, coal supplied more than half of the nation’s electricity.The International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook 2024 released in October shows forecasts for United States coal demand nearly evaporating by 2035. Credit: International Energy AgencyNationwide, coal-sourced energy reached its peak capacity of 318 gigawatts in 2011. It’s since been on an unbroken downward trend, losing half that in 15 years. In 2023, coal was producing about 80 gigawatts for the Lower 48 states.About 600 people work at Colstrip’s mines and generating station. The Rosebud mines west of town dug 6 million tons of subbituminous coal in 2023. They once produced more than 12 million tons a year. Colstrip Units 3 and 4 consumed around 222 railroad carloads of coal a day to generate 1.4 gigawatts of electricity.Rectangular coal cars and cylindrical oil tankers rumble through Billings, carrying the state’s energy resources to utility clients on the West Coast. A coal railcar carries an average $14,000 worth of fuel, in trains more than 115 cars long. Credit: Ben Allan Smith / MissoulianColstrip Units 1 and 2 used to contribute another 614 megawatts. They went dark in 2020, two years ahead of schedule, after their owners concluded they couldn’t operate cost-effectively due to aging equipment and pollution control upgrade costs.What didn’t get burned there got put on railroad trains to Oregon and Washington. Each car carried on average $14,000 worth of fuel, in trains more than 115 cars long.Twenty miles west, the Absaloka coal mine used to dig 6 million tons of coal a year from deposits owned by the Crow Indian Tribe just outside its 2.2-million-acre reservation. When it stopped production last April, owner Westmoreland Resources was only digging 1 million tons annually as its primary customer switched its generating plant to methane gas.Sandwiched in the middle lies the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. It has no operating coal mines or generating stations on its 440,000 acres. But one in five of its residents work in the mines and power plant at Colstrip. And all of them live about 14 miles from Colstrip’s 800-acre coal ash waste ponds.Those ponds have been leaking into the underground water table, losing as much as 368 gallons a minute contaminated with sulfates, boron, selenium and other heavy metals known to cause cancer and other health issues, according to Montana Department of Environmental Quality estimates.Colstrip’s 800-acre coal ash waste ponds have been leaking into the underground water table, losing as much as 43,000 gallons a day contaminated with sulfates, boron, selenium and other heavy metals known to cause cancer and other health issues, according to Montana Department of Environmental Quality estimates. Credit: Ben Allan Smith / MissoulianColstrip residents don’t drink from their underground aquifer — municipal water is piped in from the Yellowstone River. But most residents of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation depend on groundwater wells.This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to block new Biden administration rules requiring tougher pollution standards on coal smokestacks. The rules are anticipated to push the United States’ 200-odd remaining coal-fired power plants out of economic feasibility.Much of that slide is driven by economic headwinds: Methane gas, wind and solar generators cost less and provide as much power as coal plants. On top of that, burning coal contributes the largest share of greenhouse gas pollution to the atmosphere, resulting in climactic problems ranging from extended droughts and wildfire seasons to intensified hurricanes.Both the economics and climate concerns have hit Montana coal country like locusts on a wheat field. Yet despite the boom-and-bust history of coal jobs, residents atop the Powder River Basin coal deposits aren’t sprinting toward a renewable energy future. That could be because no one knows what that would look like.MINING FOR VOTESCompetition for the Indian vote brought both Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Tester and Republican challenger Tim Sheehy to the annual Crow Fair gathering near Crow Agency this summer. Tester touted his efforts negotiating the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which have made so much money available to the region. Sheehy pledged support for Indian Country, but undermined his claims when audio surfaced of him telling a fundraising gathering that roping calves on the Crow Reservation was “a great way to bond with Indians when they’re drunk at 8 a.m.”That drew a rebuke from Crow Tribal Chairman Frank White Clay, who issued a public letter stating, “Tim Sheehy’s racial remarks about the Crow Tribe and Indian Country are deeply troubling and unacceptable.”Nevertheless, White Clay and the Crow Tribe have worked closely with Republican Sen. Steve Daines on a deal to expand accessible coal fields to a mine outside the reservation. Daines has spent years developing relations with the Crow with campaign slogans such as “a war on coal is a war on Indian families.”Sen. Jon Tester supporters campaign in the 105th Annual Crow Fair Parade. Native Americans make up about 7% of Montana’s population, the only statistically significant minority demographic bloc in a predominantly White state. Credit: Larry Mayer / Billings GazetteKnown as the “Crow Revenue Act,” Daines’ S.4444 bill in Congress would swap the mineral rights to 4,660 acres inside the Crow Reservation owned by the Hope family (who are not tribal members) for 4,530 acres of federal mineral rights near the Signal Peak coal mine, 80 miles to the northwest.Signal Peak has struggled to get access to new federal coal leases. The Daines mineral swap would turn accessible federal coal private, allowing Signal Peak to avoid federal oversight of its acquisition. It would pay royalties to the Hope family, which would share some of the revenue with the Crow Tribe if the coal is developed.Daines spokesperson Rachel Dumke said the revenue-sharing agreement is not public, but does require the Crow Tribe and Hope family to agree on a formula for sharing the royalties.Opponents of the deal on the Crow Reservation called that arrangement “outrageous.” The Apsåalooké Allottees Alliance wrote, “There is no justification for gratuitously enriching the Hope Family Trust at the expense of the United States, in return for the Tribe receiving mineral rights of little value.”Signal Peak has been further encumbered by criminal investigations about its environmental management, including a legal complaint filed last October alleging its underground mine is creating subsidence cracks in the pastures of adjacent ranches. The New York Times further reported on the company’s legacy of “embezzlement, a fake kidnapping, bribery, cocaine trafficking, firearms violations, past links to Vladimir Putin, and worker safety and environmental violations by the mine and its owners.”CHICKENS AND EGGSThe swarm of opportunities may tangle its own progress. For example, the Solar For All program offers to install photovoltaic panels on the roofs of anyone in the target area who requests a set. The goal is to lower each homeowner’s power bill by at least 20%.Individual solar arrays are great in isolated places where utility-scale power is either hard to get or expensive. But even though their price has fallen greatly in the past decade, the small-scale set-ups cost more per kilowatt than a larger-scale solar farm serving a whole community. A 2023 study in the United Kingdom found large-scale photovoltaic farms produced electricity at about one-third the cost of domestic systems.That results in confusion when communities face dueling proposals. Why would a private power developer invest in a community-scale solar farm if all the potential customers already had photovoltaic cells on their rooftops? Conversely, why would homeowners take on the hassle and structural upgrades needed to add those cells to their roofs if they could get the same power with just a wire connection to the big farm?Basin Electric Power Cooperative in Montana has already been selected to receive a grant to develop more than 1,400 megawatts of new electric production in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. That’s part of a $7.3 billion fund called Empowering Rural America. It would replicate the nameplate generating capacity of Colstrip’s coal-fired plant, if it doesn’t get derailed by the small-ball Solar for All.The MTSUN solar farm north of Billings produces 80 megawatts of electricity on its nearly 500 acres of former farmland. Regionally, the solar and wind farms in the four-state network surrounding Colstrip produce the same amount of electricity as the coal-fired plant does. Credit: Ben Allan Smith / MissoulianWind power faces different challenges. Numerous wind farm proposals in Montana have failed because NorthWestern Energy has resisted allowing them to use its electricity transmission lines. But the Biden administration has targeted electrical grid modernization as a core part of its initiative. And that could push wind to an entirely new position in the nation’s energy portfolio.“The biggest obstacle we have in this state is transmission capacity,” said Anne Hedges of the Montana Environmental Information Center. “We haven’t upgraded the transmission system for decades.”The $3.2 billion North Plains Connector project would allow electricity generated in the western states  to reach the energy markets of the Midwest. But it would also connect a link in wind power that’s been missing.“North Dakota has a different wind profile than Montana wind or the Columbia Gorge winds of Washington,” Hedges said. “If you line up all those areas, you get power all day. That’s why Portland General Electric is investing in this line. It could access a whole new market for clean energy.”STAY OR GOThen there’s the debate over holding to the past or reaching for the future.NorthWestern Energy CEO Brian Bird has proposed letting Montana’s monopoly public utility acquire most of Colstrip’s generating capacity now owned by out-of-state utilities. It would fold that back into the portfolio of electrical energy it sells to its 400,000 Montana customers — and keep Colstrip a viable generating facility for years.ABOUT THIS SERIES Part I of this four-part series takes readers across the landscape shared by the Northern Cheyenne, Crow and Colstrip residents who live above the United States’ largest coal reserve, and lays out the challenges and uncertainties entangled in envisioning a new energy economy. Part II catalogs the unprecedented flood of tax dollars flowing into Montana’s coal country, and the reactions of residents presented with these opportunities in an election year. Billions of dollars in tax incentives, loan guarantees and direct aid to families await takers, but many in southeast Montana feel leery of the complicated processes. Part III, publishing Oct. 23, explores the distinctive cultures and aspirations of the Crow, Colstrip and Northern Cheyenne communities as waves of change buffet traditional coal jobs and introduce new but untested opportunities to join a renewable energy transition. Part IV, publishing Oct. 24, presents a visual tour of Montana’s coal country and the people and places that have grown up around it. Opponents questioned that plan before the Montana Public Service Commission. In his testimony, Grid Strategies Vice President Michael Goggin reported that NorthWestern has enough new generating resources applying to connect with its power system “to meet any capacity need created by Colstrip’s retirement 22 times over, indicating NorthWestern could replace Colstrip if it agrees to purchase the output of less than 5% of these projects.”The plant also faces what operator Talen Energy estimates are between $320 million and $600 million in upgrade costs to meet new federal Mercury and Air Toxics Standards — the EPA rules the Supreme Court upheld in September.Yet while Colstrip’s traditional energy partners move toward greener energy sources, the burgeoning rise of electricity-hungry data centers has roiled the coal industry. Companies including Google and Meta have revived failing or dormant coal generating plants in Georgia, Utah, Wisconsin and Nebraska. Data centers are predicted to consume up to 17% of all electricity production in the United States by 2030, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.Were coal to fade away, Colstrip’s coal ash ponds and mine fields could become a part of Montana’s restoration economy, with an estimated 10 years of cleanup work waiting to be done. Erasing a coal mine requires most of the same skills and equipment as building one, meaning the workers who’ve built their lives around the Powder River Basin could find their talents still in demand. The mine owners have cleanup bonds in place to fund the work, and the federal incentives include millions more for mine reclamation.Power lines running from Colstrip deliver electricity west to utility customers. Nationwide, coal-sourced energy reached its peak capacity of 318 gigawatts in 2011. It’s since been on an unbroken downward trend, and lost half that in the last 15 years while renewable sources have surged. Credit: Ben Allan Smith / MissoulianFor decades, Montana has developed its infrastructure, schools and other public works with coal money. The Coal Tax Trust Fund still has nearly $1 billion in the bank, and interest on that money gets deployed throughout the state by the Legislature.However, that resource is itself finite and fallible. As Mark Haggerty of the Center for American Progress put it, the state drove its coal ambitions by looking in the rear-view mirror.“After the copper barons and Anaconda Company collapsed, the state was left with big holes in the ground and no wealth,” Haggerty said. “We were going to do coal differently, so we imposed a high severance tax. The narrative is we’ve done quite well.“But that money is sent to deal with the impacts of development, not transition or re-investment. It was set up to deal with the impact of opening a mine. Closure costs are really different. You have to invest in things that don’t have anything to do with coal, and change the economy to something else.”The range of taxpayer-funded opportunities aimed at Montana’s coal country includes: The EPA’s  Environmental & Climate Justice Community Change Program provides $2 billion in community-based grants for projects that reduce pollution, increase community climate resilience, and build community capacity to respond to environmental and climate justice challenges.  The Department of Energy’s Energy Community Tax Credit Bonus applies to every census tract of Powder River and Bighorn counties, which encompass the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations, as well as Colstrip in Rosebud County and Treasure and Musselshell counties surrounding the Signal Peak coal mine. It provides a 10% tax credit for any new project or technology development in a region where a fossil-fueled industry has recently closed or been retired.  Abandoned mine lands will receive $725 million to clean up legacy pollution. Montana has been allocated $4.6 million of that, with tribal projects getting priority. Brownfield sites of abandoned pollution deposits can apply for a share of $232 million. The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement has an additional $130 million for its Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization program, for economic and community development. The Crow Tribe has already received $3.67 million from the fund.  Coal seam fire prevention, aimed at Rosebud, Powder River, Custer, Treasure and Bighorn counties, including the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations and Colstrip, has a $10 million dedicated fund. The Northern Cheyenne Reservation had 74 coal seam fires in recent history, including one that triggered a 170,000-acre wildfire. Eighty active coal seams on the reservation have caused an average of five wildfires a year there. This three-month investigation was supported by a Kozik Environmental Justice Reporting grant funded by the National Press Foundation and the National Press Club Journalism Institute. The series was produced by reporter Rob Chaney and Missoulian photographer Ben Allan Smith in collaboration with Montana Free Press. Tom Lutey contributed research. The post The future of coal country: Money, power, politics, and tradition appeared first on Montana Free Press.