As WA’s coal ban looms, Montana wind fills only some of the energy gap

STILLWATER COUNTY, Mont. — Near a dusty road over rolling hills, clouds hung low above the jagged peaks of the Beartooth Mountains just outside Yellowstone National Park.

On the plains of this windswept landscape, wind turbines whistled as they spun, each thin, white scythe scraping the sky.

This was the Beaver Creek wind farm, one of Puget Sound Energy’s newest renewable energy facilities, during an August visit. The 248-megawatt wind farm had only been pushing electricity to the grid for a week. But PSE’s four full-time employees and dozens of contractors had spent the past few months readying for the debut.

PSE, Washington’s largest utility serving more than 1.2 million customers, spent $530 million on Beaver Creek, representing a massive investment in the state’s dream of a decarbon