BISMARCK – A diverse group of North Dakota public, private, community and nonprofit leaders and citizens are taking part in a Legacy Fund project aimed at developing a consensus vision and recommendations for future use of the state’s growing Legacy Fund.
Convened by the Great Plains Institute, the 25-‐member group will meet over the next several months to form their recommendations in advance of the 2015 legislative session. Community forums will be held around the state to gather input on the group’s ideas.
“The principal of the Legacy Fund could reach tens of billions of dollars by 2030 and we have the opportunity now to have a serious policy dialogue about how best to position the Legacy Fund to create the framework for leaving a lasting legacy for generations to come,” said GPI policy director Brad Crabtree.
Established in 2010 by North Dakota voters through a legislatively-‐referred constitutional initiated measure, North Dakota’s Legacy Fund currently stands at $1.5 billion and has been projected to reach $6 billion by 2017, when Fund returns first become available for expenditure. Thirty-‐percent of oil and gas tax revenue is deposited into the Fund.
“Through this project, North Dakota citizens will have both the opportunity and the means to chart a compelling vision for their future,” said GPI consultant and project co-‐director Patrice Lahlum.
The group will produce a consensus white paper as a work product prior to the next legislative session that will encompass principles, strategies and priorities for the Legacy Fund.
The Northwest Area Foundation provided grant funding to support the project. A full listing of project participants can be found on the Great Plains Institute website at www.betterenergy.org.
The U.S. biogas sector has done an outstanding job developing projects using livestock manure, landfill gas and municipal biosolids to generate clean energy. Although there is still a large amount of untapped potential to use these three feedstock sources, the use of crop residues and energy crops are completely underutilized in the U.S. biogas market. International biogas project development experience has demonstrated that the use of crop residues and energy crops are valuable feedstocks to produce increased levels of biogas and project stability.
Acting on a directive from the President, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is currently developing draft federal regulations to guide states in reducing carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants under the Clean Air Act. States will use the federal guidelines to devise plans that take into consideration state-specific and regional concerns. 
America’s Power Plan
This week I traveled to Houston Texas to take part in the 2012 Transatlantic Science Week – Energy Technology Workshop. I gave a presentation titled – Technical and Social Challenges when North Dakota becomes the second largest oil producing state in the USA. The Great Plains Institute is working to help build continued collaboration between the energy-rich Norway and North Dakota.
In previous columns, I have focused on the use of biogas as a transportation fuel, which holds enormous, untapped potential. However, my introduction to biogas energy systems was through projects that use biogas to produce electricity and then capture thermal energy from the generator for a useful purpose. This process is better known as combined heat and power (CHP) or cogeneration. 
The heading for this blog post was the key take-away message from a meeting co-hosted by GPI and the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (
This appendix contains links to the data sources and references used for the state-level CHP fact sheets.
