The legislative assembly finds and declares that: 1. North Dakota has twenty -five billion tons of abundant, recoverable lignite coal reserves, enough to last eight hundred years at today's thirty million tons of annual production. 2. The lignite industry presently generates electricity for more than two million people in the northern great plains region and there is increased regional demand for development of North Dakota's lignite resources. 3. North Dakota has enormous wind resources, providing additional economic opportunity to broaden and diversify the state's economy and diversify the region's energy supply, and that timely development of these resources will stabilize and increase revenues to the state. 4. Transmission constraints impede the development of the state's lignite and wind resources. 5. An essential governmental function and public purpose is to assist with the removal of electric transmission export constraints and to assist with upgrading and expansion of the region's electrical transmission grid to facilitate the development of the state's abundant natural resources. 6. Developing and exporting our natural resources will promote the public interest by increasing employment, stimulating economic activity, augmenting sources of tax revenue, fostering economic stability, and improving the state's economy. 7. State ownership of electrical transmission facilities may not exceed the extent and duration necessary or useful to promote the public interest.
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