Federal officials say North Dakota is poised to be an energy giant. This story in the Houston Chronicle quotes John Mizroch, the principal assistant secretary in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, as the keynote speaker Monday at a renewable fuels conference at Bismarck State College:
“This state, it seems to me in particular _ which does have rich resources in energy and underused resources, particularly in wind _ I think could be an energy giant,” he said.
Mizroch said the state’s potential for wind energy is huge.
“It’s more than 300,000 megawatts of good wind power. The problem is, as with certain things in life, the wind energy is not where the populations are,” he said.
And of course, the farming state has plenty to contribute to ethanol and biodiesel production. North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan was a co-sponsor of Monday’s conference. He said his home state could turn out a million gallons of renewable fuels each year by the year 2012. Dorgan wants Congress to require refineries to produce and use at least 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022.