NorthWestern’s unrealistic ‘study’

Shame on NorthWestern Energy and its band of merry men for orchestrating the largest misinformation public-relations campaign since Montanans were hoodwinked into deregulating the electric system. The most recent effort was orchestrated by some of the same characters involved in deregulation. They were wrong then and they are wrong now.

This week NorthWestern Energy released a “report” on the economic impact of the rule that requires Montana to reduce carbon pollution. NorthWestern directed the controversial Bureau of Business and Economic Research (housed at the University of Montana) and apparently some of Montana’s elected leaders to conspire to say that reducing carbon pollution would be catastrophic for Montana.

NorthWestern only allowed its study to consider the most expensive option available to Montana to reduce carbon pollution. This inevitably resulted in the scariest, most dire and unrealistic economic impact possible. Fortunately, that’s not the case.

By no means is NorthWestern’s report a credible, independent analysis. NorthWestern certainly knows how to produce realistic and credible reports. This time it chose not to. Instead NorthWestern Energy paid for a report that had to use wildly unrealistic assumptions. Why would anyone choose the most expensive way to comply with any regulation? No rational person would. But NorthWestern did just that.

Montanans cannot afford a major utility wasting money on shoddy financial analyses and overblown scare tactics. That’s not productive and does a grave disservice to what should be a very serious discussion about realistic ways to benefit Montana’s economy and reduce carbon pollution. We can have both, but apparently NorthWestern isn’t interested. Montanans fell victim to equally bad advice from its largest utility not that long ago. That self-serving guidance resulted in devastation for many and saddled Montanans with some of the highest power costs in the region.

The results of NorthWestern’s analysis aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. They certainly shouldn’t serve as the basis for any public policy. The flawed study has already been reviewed by independent economist Tom Power, former head of the University of Montana’s Economics Department, who gave it an “F” for intellectual honesty. He said the entirety of it was based solely on NorthWestern’s own unrealistic assumptions about the impacts of the Clean Power Plan on Montana.

Other utility providers own about 90 percent of the Colstrip generating plant and the transmission system. None of them are making the hysterical claims that NorthWestern Energy is, let alone actively spreading misinformation to customers.

NorthWestern’s behavior is intended to be destructive. It bears a striking resemblance to a petulant child. Montanans need to have a constructive conversation about how to best secure our energy future, grow our economy, and minimize the very real impacts of climate change on agriculture, water resources, our outdoor economy, and public health. Fortunately it’s up to the state of Montana, not Northwestern Energy, to develop a Montana plan to protect our jobs, create new ones, and clean our air.

It would be helpful if NorthWestern would abandon its scorched-earth legal and public relations strategy and commit to working to move Montana forward. The Clean Power Plan allows states the flexibility to design their own unique energy plans that can be tailored to each states’ unique circumstance. Instead of choosing the most expensive path forward, Montana has the opportunity to design a state plan that will maximize the benefits to the economy, create jobs, and minimize electric bills. I am confident Montanans are far smarter than NorthWestern gives us credit for.

Gov. Steve Bullock recently established the Montana Clean Power Plan Advisory Council to bring Montanans together to gather information and make recommendations for the state of Montana to comply with the Clean Power Plan. We have three years to come up with a carbon pollution reduction plan for Montana. We have 15 years to fully implement it.

If Montana doesn’t implement the Clean Power Plan the Montana way, then the federal government will write this for us. I think we can all agree that Montanans should write Montana’s plan to benefit Montana.

Anne Hedges is deputy director of the Montana Environmental Information Center in Helena.