Matt Doll, Minnesota Environmental Partnership
On Thursday, MEP, members of the CLEAR Energy Coalition, and groups including environmentalists and solar supporters held a press conference on SF 2393, the Minnesota Senate Energy Omnibus bill. This bill, which passed out of the Senate Energy Committee after several amendments, has several bad provisions that would take Minnesota backward on clean energy progress.
Over the last few years, the Legislature, including almost all of the Senators serving today, was responsible for tremendous steps forward on building a clean energy economy in our state. They passed the 100% Clean Electricity law, created the Minnesota Climate Innovation Finance Authority, and made historic investments in energy efficiency and infrastructure.
SF 2393, which passed out of the Energy Committee on a bipartisan vote, includes the following bad provisions that our coalition called out at the press conference:
- It would poke holes in the 100% carbon-free electricity law, labeling power sources like B100 biodiesel peaker plants and loosely defined woody biomass as “zero carbon,” when they are demonstrably not carbon-free. Minnesota doesn’t need distractions or gimmicks on our way to 100%, especially given how affordable wind and solar power have become relative to all other power sources.
- It would repeal Minnesota’s Community Solar Garden program, a powerful tool for spurring solar growth in the state. Most of our current solar generation comes from community solar gardens, and shutting down the program could slow solar’s continued strong growth.
- It would reduce net metering compensation for solar customers. Currently, ratepayers who install solar panels can be reimbursed at the retail price of electricity for a limited amount of power their panels provide to the grid, providing a powerful incentive to build out solar infrastructure. This has the added benefit of making the grid more resilient. While some stakeholders have complaints with the specifics of net metering, the Legislature risks dampening solar use with this dramatic misguided policy change.
- It would end the Renewable Development Account, which supports renewable energy projects using money from the fees Xcel Energy pays for its nuclear waste storage. That storage was only supposed to be temporary, and supporting the growth of clean energy was part of the deal. It makes no sense to undo that deal now.
- It includes giveaways to Big Tech company’s large data center projects. The bill would exempt backup diesel generators like the one recently proposed by Amazon from the Certificate of Need requirement. It would also allow them to use the alternative AUAR process for permitting to avoid more stringent environmental review. Given the vast quantities of energy and water used by these data centers, and the impacts on the communities where they are sited, it is against Minnesota’s interest to let these data centers escape oversight.
We’re deeply concerned that these provisions could make it into the final energy budget bill. These rollbacks have not passed the House, which seems to be mostly steering away from policy due to its 67-67 partisan split, but MEP and our allies will do everything we can to stop them from passing into law.
We encourage our subscribers to use our action form to contact your Senators and ask them to oppose these steps backward. Minnesota is a leading state on the energy transition – we can’t afford to jeopardize that progress in these critical times.