Basin Electric Power Cooperative is a generation and transmission co-op that provides power to 140 rural electric cooperatives. Through them, Basin Electric serves about 3 million consumers in an area that covers nearly 500,000 square miles in nine states: Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. Basin Electric's member co-ops provide electric service to 75% of the persistent poverty counties in those nine states.

Basin Electric would be severely affected by the Environmental Protection Agency's power plant rule. Basin Electric operates the largest generation and transmission cooperative fleet of affected power plants in the nation, relies on that fleet to produce the largest amount of megawatts and distributes that energy across the largest generation and transmission footprint in the nation. By forcing power plants that Basin Electric owns or receives power from to retire early, the power plant rule seriously threatens Basin Electric's ability to provide the power its member co-ops need to keep the lights on at a cost their consumers can afford.

Basin Electric has already invested and plans to invest approximately $7 billion in developing new renewable energy resources. Coal-fired power plants provide slightly more than 35% of the electricity it produces.

Under the power plant rule, Basin Electric is required to capture 90% of carbon dioxide at its Dry Fork plant by the end of 2031. Basin Electric is not aware of any manufacturer selling equipment that will achieve those levels of carbon capture under large-scale and high-demand baseload conditions.

If it were even possible to achieve 90% capture at Dry Fork plant, it would cost approximately $2 billion—more than 150% of what it cost to build the plant barely more than a decade ago. Basin Electric projects that the cost of complying with the EPA's power plant rule through 2035 is nearly $10 billion. The cost to comply through 2045 is more than $14 billion. Complying with the rule will also increase operating and maintenance expenditures. These additional expenses will fall on Basin Electric's members, who would see their electric rates increase nearly 60% by 2035.