An Otter Tail Company

Climate change

Otter Tail Power Company's carbon reduction efforts

Otter Tail Power Company remains committed to responsibly addressing the issue of climate change. As outlined below, we have taken—and will continue to take—measures that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

  • Supply efficiency and reliability
    • Between 1990 and 2005, we decreased our CO2 intensity (lbs. of CO2/mwh generated) nearly 11 percent. We plan to more than double that reduction by 2025.
    • The Big Stone II project is designed to incorporate supercritical pulverized coal technology that will increase plant efficiency by 20 percent and produce flyash that can replace cement in making concrete. In addition, we included transmission capacity above that which was needed for the plant in order to encourage wind energy development in the area.
    • Our most recent integrated resource plan calls for the retirement of older coal units that generate up to 122 megawatts of electricity by 2017. This would be replaced with newer technology, which would be more efficient and potentially would include carbon capture and sequestration technologies.
  • Conservation
    • Since 1992 we have helped our customers conserve more than 1 million megawatt-hours of electricity. That’s roughly equivalent to the amount of electricity that 90,000 average homes would have used in a year.
    • We continue to educate customers about energy efficiency and demand-side management and to work with regulators to develop new programs and measurements.
    • Our integrated resource plan calls for an additional 67 mw of winter conservation.
  • Renewable energy
    • Since 2002 our customers have been able to purchase 100 percent of their electricity from wind generation through our TailWinds program.
    • Our most recent resource plan calls for up to 160 megawatts of new wind generation. Of that, we hope to build or purchase at least 60 megawatts as early as 2007. We have purchased 22 megawatts of wind energy since 2004.
    • Our integrated resource plan also calls for 50 megawatts of hydro purchases.
    • We support Minnesota’s new law requiring 25 percent renewable energy by 2025, especially with its customer protection provisions. This new law was based on the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission’s Wind Integration Study (pdf), which assumed in its baseline the construction of the Big Stone II power plant and associated transmission.
    • We support North Dakota’s 10 percent renewable energy objective.
  • Other
    • We will continue to participate as a member of EPA’s SF6 (sulfur hexafluoride) Emission Reduction Partnership for Electric Power Systems program. The partnership proactively is targeting a reduction in emissions of SF6, a potent greenhouse gas. SF6 has a global-warming potential 23,900 times that of CO2.
    • We are involved in a pilot project to use methane from a municipal waste water treatment plant to generate electricity. We also are studying the potential for other methane-related projects. Methane has a global-warming potential 20 times that of CO2.
    • We participate in carbon sequestration research through the Plains CO2 Reduction Partnership through the University of North Dakota’s Energy and Environment Research Center. The PCOR Partnership is a collaborative effort of more than 50 public and private sector stakeholders working toward a better understanding of the technical and economic feasibility of capturing and storing anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions from stationary sources in the central interior of North America.