Changes

The '''Western Fuels Association''' states on its website that it is "a not-for profit cooperative that supplies coal and transportation services to consumer-owned electric utilities throughout the Great Plains, Rocky Mountain and Southwest regions." <ref>[http://www.westernfuels.org/index.cfm Western Fuels Association Homepage], Western Fuels Association website, accessed February 26, 2009.</ref>, including the [[Sunflower Electric Power Corporation]]. Two members of its board are Sunflower's chief executive officer, Earl Watkins, and the Sunflower's board chairman. Sunflower's partner in the Holcomb expansion, a Colorado co-op, also has members on the board. <ref>[http://www.allbusiness.com/government/elections-politics-campaigns-elections/12163685-1.html "Lots of cash behind coal plant clash,"] Karen Dillon and David Klepper, ''The Kansas City'' (MO) Star March 30, 2008.</ref> According to a March 30, 2008 article in the ''Kansas City Star'', Western Fuels and its director Fred Palmer targeted a message to farmers, small-town officials and rural legislators in the 1990s to promote the idea that considerable doubt existed about the effect of carbon dioxide on global warming. Palmer is now a senior vice president at Peabody Energy, , which partnered with Sunflower in 2007 to buy pro-coal newspaper ads featuring Chavez, Ahmadinejad and President Vladimir Putin of Russia, warning that Kansas would have to import natural gas from Venezuela, Iran and Russia if no new coal plants were built.<ref>[http://www.allbusiness.com/government/elections-politics-campaigns-elections/12163685-1.html "Lots of cash behind coal plant clash,"] Karen Dillon and David Klepper, ''The Kansas City'' (MO) Star March 30, 2008.</ref>