North Dakota’s bountiful resources – from fertile soils to diverse sources of energy – have defined our state’s history and our economic success. But for affordable energy producing industries like coal and the many jobs they support to also be part of our future, we need to make technological innovations that allow them to thrive as cleaner sources of energy become a necessity in a carbon constrained world. 

That’s why it was such an important victory for our state that the FUTURE Act – bipartisan legislation I wrote with strong support from North Dakota coal companies, electric utilities, and environmental groups – was recently signed by the president and passed in to law. It expands and improves tax credits to develop Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) technology, which is necessary to forge a viable path forward for North Dakota’s lignite coal. Like any new technology, cost is a huge roadblock as researchers in North Dakota and around the country work toward solutions.

In North Dakota, I worked closely with some of our rural electric cooperatives like Basic Electric, Minnkota, and Great River Energy, as well as the Lignite Energy Council, EERC at UND, and many others– to write a bill that ensures coal can continue to provide jobs and reliable electricity to North Dakotans for generations to come. The development of CCUS technologies will also spur the adoption of low-carbon technologies to transform carbon pollution into useable products – a win-win for our energy sector and the jobs it supports. And this bill is about more than just fossil fuels. Red Trail Energy, for example, plans to use the FUTURE Act tax credit to help it remove and sequester carbon produced at its ethanol plant near Richardton, a project that will boost agriculture and lead to an even cleaner source of home-grown energy.  

The coalition of unlikely allies that rallied behind this bill – conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats, environmentalists and energy producers – all had different motivations. But we were able to come together around a common vision to provide a secure future for home-grown energy and the technologies that will make North Dakota’s resources a vital part of our nation’s future energy mix. 

Particularly in these partisan times, it’s not often you see a bipartisan victory as big as the passage of the FUTURE Act. But it proves what can be accomplished when people put our differences aside and come to the table to get results. That’s what I aim to do every day in the U.S. Senate, and the FUTURE Act builds on other successes I’ve had to promote North Dakota resources.

Oil, for example, is a critical industry in our state, but the decades-long ban on exporting U.S. oil stood in the way of long-term growth and innovation in the Bakken. Despite strong opposition to lifting the oil export ban among Democrats in Congress, I set out to craft a bipartisan compromise that both Republicans and Democrats couldn’t refuse. I brought a bipartisan group to the table, and in 2015 we successfully lifted the ban on exporting oil – and expanded investment in job-creating wind and solar sectors at the same time.

Since my deal passed, oil production and wind energy development have soared. In a recent article, CNN said, “The resurgence of the oil industry can be traced back to what happened in Congress one day in December 2015. That's when lawmakers ended the 40-year ban on U.S. oil exports. Crude pumped in Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota could suddenly be shipped overseas.”

And as wind production in North Dakota has soared over the past several years, many companies have credited our compromise – which extended the wind tax credit for several years – as the spark.

With 70 percent of North Dakota’s electricity derived from coal and entire communities supported by the coal industry, we couldn’t ignore the challenge of supporting the industry as our nation’s energy needs evolve. The FUTURE Act is a big win for North Dakota communities and our nation by supporting a true all-of-the-above U.S. energy strategy – and proving that it’s possible to achieve results when people put partisan differences aside and work together in the best interest of our nation.