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New Hampshire — long an outlier among New England states on climate action — is on its way to creating a new climate plan for the first time in 14 years.
The state budget adopted last week includes a $3 million federal grant from a program intended to support the development of climate action plans across the country.
“We’re definitely very excited about this — we think it’s a great opportunity for the state,” said Chris Skoglund, director of energy transition at the nonprofit Clean Energy New Hampshire.
Among residents there is a widespread sense of pride in New Hampshire’s tendency to follow its own path and buck conventional wisdom, an attitude that extends firmly into energy and climate policies, advocates have said. The state is not necessarily against climate action, but is determined to make its own policies, its own way, rather than just repeating the choices of other states, said Meredith Hatfield, associate director for policy and government relations for the Nature Conservancy in New Hampshire.
Today, while the other New England states all have, to various degrees, ambitious state-mandated climate goals and updated climate plans, New Hampshire has no binding targets for lowering emissions or reducing fossil fuel use.
“There’s a sentiment among some people in New Hampshire that we aren’t going to follow the traditional recipe — we like to figure things out on our own,” Hatfield said. “We are making progress, but it’s just not fast enough.”
In 2009, the state developed a broad-based climate action plan that incorporated the work of dozens of stakeholders across diverse fields. Though that document had some influence on legislation in subsequent years, it was never codified into law or updated after its initial release.
The federal Inflation Reduction Act, which became law in August 2022, created an opportunity for New Hampshire to dive back into climate planning.
The law includes $5 billion for the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program. Of this total, $250 million has been designated to help states, local governments, tribes, and territories develop or update plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Another $4.6 billion will then be available to help implement these plans.
When applications for the first phase of the program opened in late February, the state’s Department of Environmental Services jumped at the chance and applied. At the end of June, the state adopted a two-year, $15.2 billion budget that included this grant money in the department funding, an essential step in pushing the climate plan project forward.
The state is now in final discussions with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency about minor revisions to how much of the grant money will be spent on what elements of the planning process, said Michael Fitzgerald, assistant director of the state environmental services department. Though early plans are still tentative, the money will likely pay for new positions to manage the process, as well as a broad outreach strategy intended to gather feedback from a range of stakeholders, Fitzgerald said.
“We’re planning on doing focused work in disadvantaged areas,” he said. “There are requirements that there be consideration of ensuring benefits go to environmental justice areas.”
Grants are likely to be awarded in July and August, according to information from the EPA. States and territories that receive the grants will have until March 1, 2024, to deliver their completed plans. The EPA anticipates announcing the final details for the implementation grants in September 2023, with applications likely being due the following April.
Four states — Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, and South Dakota — declined to apply for the planning grant money. The remaining 46, as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, all submitted applications.
Advocates are optimistic that the new plan, when completed, could gain more traction than its predecessor.
There was a lot to like about the 2009 plan, Skoglund said. By convening so many people with such a wide range of expertise, he said, the plan was able to build widespread knowledge of, and support for, climate action.
And advocates said it did have some impact on state climate and energy policy. New Hampshire’s energy efficiency goals and energy performance targets for new buildings were influenced by the plan, Skoglund said. The plan also bolstered the state’s continued participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and helped spark an investigation into grid modernization in the state.
Implementation, however, never gained momentum and there were no efforts made to keep the plan up-to-date.
“There was no follow-up to keep that conversation going at high levels,” Skoglund said. “But we didn’t continue that, so we are now a decade behind.”
This time around, advocates would like to see the state replicate the strengths of the 2009 process, particularly the inclusion of a wide range of voices, while making more impact on policy changes. They expect — and hope for — the ultimate plan to have a strong focus on the economic development, cost savings, and job creation that a shift to clean energy can offer, backed up by rigorous analysis.
“People are aware of what is happening and they are concerned about it,” Hatfield said. “We need to do a better job of connecting the solutions with what people are worried about.”
Though the national conversation about climate action has become more polarized in recent years, New Hampshire’s unique character might make the state a place where a broad consensus can be reached, advocates said. The deep national divide between the parties isn’t as evident in pragmatic New Hampshire, where opportunities to save money could carry more weight than the chance to score partisan points, said Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy New Hampshire.
“There still is a surprising amount of bipartisanship,” he said. “I think money-saving clean energy technologies can be popular here on a bipartisan basis.”
A two-year-old economic development partnership is helping to draw attention — and investment dollars — to sustainability projects in the Great Lakes region.
The Great Lakes Impact Investment Platform was launched by the Conference of Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers. The alliance of U.S. and Canadian officials from Québec to Minnesota is focused on growing the region’s economy and protecting its fresh water.
The investment platform is helping to do both, promoting investment opportunities that benefit the environment, including renewable energy, clean water, and ecological restoration. The platform features 40 projects representing nearly $4.5 billion in investments, including household energy efficiency retrofits, coal mine reclamation, and utility-scale solar development.
“Global capital markets are hungry” for chances to invest in green projects, said Dave Naftzger, the conference’s executive director. But financial institutions, philanthropic entities and others have long looked to the coasts for such opportunities.
Great Lakes states offer untapped potential that can pay off for investors as well as regular citizens and the environment, Naftzger said. And even with increasing federal action, including incentives and programs under the new U.S. infrastructure law, a swift and equitable clean energy transition will still depend on private investment and public-private collaborations.
“Especially for investors who care about water, they should look to the Great Lakes as a matter of course,” Naftzger said. Meanwhile, clean energy-related investments are also a robust and growing sector, including projects tapping green bonds, property assessed clean energy programs, and other financial tools to leverage public and private funds.
The platform is something of a matchmaking service, publicizing green investment opportunities and projects and helping to connect funders and lenders with these initiatives, while also allowing projects to learn from each other.
Among the energy-related projects showcased by the platform:
Such green investing helps developers, governments and even individual households access capital that they might not have been able to otherwise. And it allows financial institutions and other funders to meet environmental and sustainability goals and serve clients who want their money to go into green efforts.
“There’s a lot of place-based investors — people who are specifically looking for opportunities here” in the Great Lakes, Naftzger said. “That could include pension funds, high-net-worth individuals, family offices, community foundations, philanthropic organizations. And these deals can provide market returns or better. … We’re helping people understand the opportunity — it’s a relatively new one, but people are becoming aware of it.”
Michigan Saves is essentially an independent, nonprofit green bank that lends to individuals, businesses, and municipalities for solar, energy efficiency and geothermal projects, with loans ranging from $1,000 up to $100,000 and into the millions for commercial projects. It was started to help Michigan meet ambitious energy efficiency targets in 2008 legislation, and has done $325 million worth of financing since the first loan in 2010, President and CEO Mary Templeton said.
The state government offers public funds to secure loans made by private lenders, including small credit unions, so that they can lend with little risk — and if someone defaults, the government pays. This was especially important since the program launched in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, when lenders were skittish. So far the default rate on loans is only 2%, Templeton said.
The lending process is meant to be streamlined and fast so that, for example, if someone’s furnace breaks, they can buy a more energy-efficient furnace quickly enough to stay warm.
Templeton said such convenient and accessible loan offerings can actually convince people to invest in energy-efficient products when they hadn’t otherwise planned to.
“An electric heat pump, solar panels — those cost money — nothing is forcing you to do that,” she said. “But when we can make it more attractive, we’ve seen a large demand.”
Michigan Saves helped a Kalamazoo art gallery and jewelry store owner install efficient LED lighting that also makes her products look nicer, helped a young couple insulate their drafty first home, and helped a family save $600 a year and live more comfortably with a new furnace and retrofits, among many stories featured on their website. Energy consumption was lowered in every case.
Michigan Saves also works with lenders to establish third-party-owned solar projects, wherein the lender sets up an LLC that owns a solar installation to tap tax credits that aren’t available to nonprofits, and to relieve the customer of up-front costs. The program also partners with utilities to offer zero-interest loans to businesses for energy efficiency improvements. Those improvements help utilities meet their own energy conservation mandates.
“For small businesses in particular, like restaurants, they can implement basic [efficient] lighting in parking lots, they can get efficient HVAC,” she said.
Michigan Saves is part of the American Green Bank Consortium, which includes publicly and privately run green banks in states including New York, Delaware, Connecticut, Nevada, California, Hawaii and Louisiana, though few in the Midwest.
“We learn and share best practices — I get calls all the time from people thinking about setting up green banks,” Templeton said. Among other things, callers ask about “the way we structured loan loss reserve, and credit enhancement that leverages $30 of private investment for every $1 of public investment. That’s a pretty amazing ratio.”
Michigan Saves works with a network of providers for insulation, air sealing, solar and energy storage, electric heat pumps, lighting, and other sectors. The website allows customers to read reviews and connect with contractors.
“It really helps to support local jobs,” Templeton said. “These are jobs that can’t be anywhere but in our backyard.”
Like many utilities, DTE is quickly expanding its renewable holdings with utility-scale solar and wind farms. In 2021 alone, it added 535 megawatts of renewables, enough to power nearly 700,000 homes.
And DTE is helping to lower the costs and raise awareness of those investments through green bonds, wherein financial institutions buy bonds that pay for the renewables and earn a set rate of return as the utility pays off the bonds.
The bonds can be issued for projects that have already been constructed, noted DTE corporate financial specialist Kathleen Hier, eliminating the uncertainty that might exist for a planned project.
DTE manager of corporate finance Scott Bennett explained that the bonds are typically purchased by insurance companies that specialize in green debt and likely hold green bonds from other utilities as well. Those companies may also sell the bonds on secondary markets.
While DTE could and would have built renewables even without green bonds, they can tap more favorable rates since offering a green bond attracts investors who are seeking green financial products for their portfolio or secondary markets.
“When we issue the green bond, these [green-oriented] funds are creating more demand for that issuance because we have normal bidders, and also green funds, so hopefully we see better pricing,” he said. “There’s just more demand out there — when we do a green bond versus a regular bond, we may have six more funds bidding in.”
Swaths of once fertile or forested land across Great Lakes states and Appalachia have been turned into barren wastelands by coal mining. But efforts are underway to meaningfully reclaim and replant some of this land. The green investment-focused firm Quantified Ventures is looking to transform formerly mined land by leveraging carbon markets.
Quantified Ventures received a grant from a U.S. Department of Agriculture program to nurture the soil and then plant trees on previously mined land in Pennsylvania and possibly also Ohio, West Virginia or Kentucky.
The company used the Great Lakes Impact Investment Platform to help spread the word to investors about a pilot project they had originally planned, which will now be greatly expanded thanks to the federal funding. The company will use its own financing to augment the federal funds, and recoup costs through selling carbon credits from planting trees, including through a mechanism that allows up-front payment.
Quantified Ventures managing director Todd Appel said they hope the effort can be a model for other investors, organizations and companies to use carbon credits and voluntary carbon markets to finance mine reclamation and reforestation — a linchpin to “just transition” movements across coal country including in Illinois and Indiana.
“The mining has scarred the landscape. There are limited plants and trees — it’s not a healthy habitat for birds,” Appel said. “So we’re going to rip up [and replace] the soil to enable planting of new trees and identify landowners to participate.”
The previously mined land might be owned by governments, companies or individuals who have acquired it. In such an arrangement, an entity like Quantified Ventures would likely provide financial incentives to the landowner to get an easement, and the entity paying for the reforestation would recoup their costs and earn a return through the carbon credit sales.
“We’ll seek to scale this up. There are millions of acres this could be applied to,” Appel said. “The other goal is to prove carbon markets can enable this work.”
Correction: Mary Templeton is president and CEO of Michigan Saves. An earlier version of this story misstated her title.
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The following commentary was written by Laura Sherman. Sherman is president of the Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council, a trade organization of more than 140 advanced energy companies focused on improving the policy landscape for the advanced energy industry in Michigan. See our commentary guidelines for more information.
Michigan’s recently finalized plan to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 is an ambitious strategy that would remake the state’s economy. Under the plan, transportation would become electrified, and our energy would increasingly come from renewable sources backed by storage, among other bold policies.
While it can be daunting, big change is often good. The shift envisioned by the plan will pay dividends to Michiganders from all walks of life by increasing job growth, boosting income and raising the state’s overall economic output.
The advanced energy sector is one of the fastest-growing parts of Michigan’s economy, as the members of the Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council (Michigan EIBC) have seen firsthand. Michigan EIBC represents approximately 140 companies that work in Michigan in renewable energy project development, advanced mobility, energy storage, energy efficiency, manufacturing of batteries and other components used in clean energy, and more.
The MI Healthy Climate Plan, as unveiled by Governor Whitmer, will build upon this progress. Not only will prioritizing clean energy and transportation lead to savings for consumers, but also, the state’s economy can leverage several elements of the plan to attract businesses and private investment.
Clean energy and transportation are a foundational part of the state’s economy. According to E2’s 2021 Clean Jobs America Report, Michigan’s clean energy employment share of the statewide workforce is higher than the national average and the state ranks 6th in the nation in total clean energy jobs. Michigan also has the second highest number of clean energy jobs when compared to other states in the Midwest. Michigan ranks second in the nation, behind only California, for the number of jobs in the “clean vehicle” sector, including electric, hybrid, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Furthermore, despite an unstable economy for much of the pandemic, the clean energy sector grew at a higher rate than the state’s overall economy.
State and local governments have helped make these jobs possible through policy. One of these policies is the renewable portfolio standard (RPS), passed in 2008, that required that 10% of the state’s energy come from renewable sources by 2015. As of early 2022, the Michigan Public Service Commission’s study on the effects of the RPS found that it had led to a total of 2,828 megawatts of renewable energy deployment in Michigan and over $5.1 billion worth of investment.
The MI Healthy Climate Plan recommends taking the RPS to the next level, increasing it to 50% by 2030.
Another important existing policy is the economic development package (Public Acts 134, 136, and 137 of 2021) and funding for the Michigan Strategic Fund that have invigorated the electric vehicle market in Michigan. The bipartisan deal secured transformational investments from multiple global companies, including Michigan EIBC member company General Motors and LG Energy Solutions, who chose Michigan over other competing locations.
To support additional electric vehicle deployment in Michigan, the MI Healthy Climate Plan recommends deploying infrastructure to support 2 million electric vehicles on Michigan roads by 2030.
We need to implement the policies proposed by the plan so Michigan can fully realize the potential benefits of advanced energy. An October 2021 report published by Greenlinks Analytics analyzed the shifts in employment, income, and Michigan’s economic output related to investments in energy efficiency, solar, demand response, and other renewable energy technologies associated with state climate goals. Using an integrated modeling platform, the report found that investment in clean and renewable energy over the next several decades would lead to the creation of 96,000 jobs, a $2 billion increase in residential household income and an additional $3.9 billion to the state’s GDP.
The recommendations in the MI Healthy Climate Plan can help Michigan capture these economic benefits, but we should not forget that it is just a plan. Michigan lawmakers and officials will need to do the hard work of enacting the planks of the plan. Decarbonizing Michigan’s economy over the next 30 years will be a challenge, but the state’s history of growth and strength in the advanced energy industry shows it is a challenge worth undertaking.
The following commentary was written by Deana Dennis, senior manager for Midwest state policy at Ceres. See our commentary guidelines for more information.
Michigan has been a manufacturing powerhouse for the Midwest and the U.S. for generations, so it’s no surprise to see it riding the massive wave of investment into clean energy manufacturing that is sweeping the nation. Since last fall, the state has seen major corporations announce more than $8 billion worth of projects and thousands of jobs to build batteries, electric vehicles, and other clean transportation solutions that honor Michigan’s history as an industrial base while seizing this opportunity to super-charge the state’s economic future.
Similar projects are popping up across the country, thanks in large part to the federal incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. Passed last year, the nation’s largest-ever climate law is designed to cut carbon pollution while establishing the U.S. as the global leader in clean energy manufacturing, supply chains, and deployment. Already, states from all regions and governed by both parties are welcoming the huge influx of clean energy and advanced manufacturing projects.
But the activity is especially resonant in Michigan — and not only because the scale of investment is so enormous. It also represents a quick return on the state’s efforts to establish itself as a clean energy leader. It was just last year that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer unveiled the MI Healthy Climate Plan, the state’s first-ever roadmap toward tackling the climate crisis by achieving a net zero economy by 2050.
While the Healthy Climate Plan is already sending a strong signal to industry, it has not yet been implemented. The plan features many important goals, such as preventing the worst impacts of climate change and addressing environmental injustices, such as air and water pollution, that unfairly harm marginalized communities. But at its unveiling, officials also emphasized that it was an economic plan. By positioning Michigan as a climate leader, they argued, the state stood to capture economic development and create legions of good jobs as companies seek out forward-looking business environments forged by strong clean energy policies.
That proved prescient: today, Michigan is a clear beneficiary of the clean energy boom in the U.S., and the state has both the federal Inflation Reduction Act and the promise of the MI Healthy Climate Plan to thank for it.
The powerful mix of public policy and private investment shows why leading companies and investors have been strong champions for ambitious federal and state climate policy. Thousands of companies across the U.S. — including more than two dozen S&P 100 companies — supported the climate measures in the Inflation Reduction Act. And the MI Healthy Climate Plan was celebrated by 15 major companies operating in Michigan, including General Motors, Ford, and Siemens. Business leaders recognize that clean energy investment comes with the promise of jobs, lower utility costs, energy security, and a more sustainable and less risky economic future.
It’s exciting to think we’re only beginning to see these many economic benefits surface in Michigan. But as other states move to pass climate and clean energy policies to prove they are open for business, Michigan policymakers can and should bolster this momentum by taking action to implement the Healthy Climate Plan.
Michigan lawmakers seem to recognize the unprecedented opportunity before them. They recently introduced the MI Clean Energy Future Plan, an ambitious suite of clean energy legislation that supports the Healthy Climate Plan. It’s highlighted by a new target of 100% clean electricity by 2035 — a policy that is both bold and feasible, and essential to meeting the state’s climate goals and fully capitalizing on this moment.
With the right policies in place, analysts believe Michigan can attract $26 billion in clean energy investment while dramatically improving public health in the coming years. It’s no wonder why. History has shown that this is a state with the industrial workforce and know-how to be a key engine of innovation not just for the U.S., but across the world. Let’s pass a 100% clean electricity standard this session to take full advantage of the opportunities of the clean energy economy and make Michigan the place where companies choose to build it.
Minnesota utilities will soon use existing fossil fuel plant infrastructure to transport clean energy to Midwest’s regional electricity grid.
The workaround avoids the Midwest’s bottlenecked transmission grid managed by the Midwest Independent System Operator, Inc. (MISO), the regional transmission organization currently hamstrung by a lengthy project queue and a capacity shortage.
The process of connecting new generation to the grid in MISO’s 15-state territory takes an average of three years, according to an Americans for a Clean Energy Grid study. Meanwhile, interconnection costs have more than quadrupled in the last few years and now represent almost a quarter of a typical wind farm’s budget.
As a result, projects have been canceled or trimmed back, with 5 gigawatts of clean projects pulled in the last two years despite having signed power purchase agreements, the study reported.
The situation has sent Minnesota utilities on a search for existing, underutilized transmission capacity, often connected to aging or retired fossil fuel power plants, or “peaker” plants that only run sporadically during high-demand times for electricity.
“I think it’s a great idea because we’re in a situation where we don’t have enough transmission capacity for our evolving system to add wind and solar quickly,” said Allen Gleckner, lead director of clean electricity at Fresh Energy, which also publishes the Energy News Network. “It’s good to see utilities leveraging all the ways they can to add renewables without having to deal with difficulty through the regular interconnection process right now.”
Though transmission is critical to a clean energy transition, the sector remains mired in challenges ranging from underinvestment to siting and permitting barriers. Recent projects in the region, such as the $2 billion CapX2020, added 800 miles of transmission lines that quickly filled with new wind and solar developments. President Joe Biden’s administration plans to ramp up spending on transmission to relieve the backlog, but it will likely take years to see the impact.
“The grid is going to be the vehicle that allows Minnesota to reach its clean energy goals,” said Beth Soholt, executive director of the Clean Grid Alliance. “An enhanced grid is going to be required for getting to a higher level of electric vehicles, for electrifying buildings and for continuing to reduce carbon from the electricity sector. It’s all going to be built with the grid as the backbone.”
NextEra Energy is building two wind farms that will use Great River Energy’s peaker plants to transmit electricity. The first project is a new 259 megawatt wind farm that will be linked to the grid at Great River Energy’s Pleasant Valley Station peaker plant southwest of Rochester, Minnesota. A 300 MW wind project will interconnect at Great River Energy’s Lakefield Junction Station in south-central Minnesota. The roughly two-decade-old plants are around 30 to 40 miles from the wind farms.
Otter Tail Power plans to build a 49.9 MW solar facility at Hoot Lake, a 100-year-old western Minnesota coal plant that closed in May. The utility will use about one-third of the existing transmission capacity at the site to connect the solar to the MISO grid in 2023. Minnesota Power is also preparing three new solar installations next year, two of which will be built near existing power facilities.
On a much larger scale, Xcel Energy’s integrated resource plan calls for using interconnection rights at its Sherburne County Generating Plant (Sherco) and Allen S. King Generating Plant, both just outside the Twin Cities. The utility has rights for 2,600 megawatts and is considering ways to tap wind resources from southwest Minnesota using a new transmission line that would connect to the Sherco plant.
Last week, clean energy advocates raised concerns about two additional natural gas peaking plants in Xcel’s resource plan, Soholt said, but they applauded the approach of using Sherco and King to transport clean energy.
Zac Ruzycki, resource planning director for Great River Energy, said the utility plans to match all of its remaining peaker plants with wind farms, allowing as much as 1,400 MW of clean energy to enter the grid. The advantage of using peaker plant interconnection rights goes beyond just avoiding the MISO queue, he said.
Typically, new wind projects are studied together and assessed the cost of any required grid upgrades. By using existing interconnection rights, the wind farms avoid grid improvement costs, delays, and unexpected changes that might be required for a new grid interconnection through MISO.
Peaking plants generate power less than 5% of the year, he said, with utilities mainly initiating their use when weather or other issues threaten reliability, or when market prices surge. Great River Energy also sees peakers as a backstop to help balance variable power sources such as wind and solar.
“We think it’s a great complement because we’re utilizing the interconnection to create a more efficient and more effective solution for our members,” Ruzycki said.
Mark Lennox, project director for NextEra Energy’s Dodge County Wind, said the company will use what MISO calls a “surplus interconnection” to connect to the Pleasant Valley Station peaker plant. It allows new energy sources to join the grid at existing plants not using their full transmission capacity. NextEra pulled the project from the traditional MISO process in 2020 “because of exceedingly uneconomic costs.”
Otter Tail’s manager of renewable development, Randy Synstelien, said solar made the most sense at the utility’s Hoot Lake site, because the site had plenty of space available on site.
“We’re reusing the interconnection and reusing the land on that site,” he said.
Otter Tail sees the possibility of using other sites, potentially peaker plants, to incorporate clean energy transmission into other existing interconnections. The advantages of the Hoot Lake include an “expedited process” and lower interconnection costs, especially since in rural areas, even shared system upgrade costs for a clean energy project “can be very substantial and impact project viability,” Synstelien said.
Great River Energy’s initial attempt to build wind farms and connect them to a power plant failed. After finding no buyers, Great River Energy announced the closure of the 1,100 MW Coal Creek Station in McLean County, North Dakota, in 2020. McLean County officials passed a moratorium on wind farms after learning Great River Energy had plans to develop wind and use the plant’s grid connection to transport clean energy.
Having been rebuffed by the county, Great River Energy switched the investment it planned to make in North Dakota to Minnesota. Four Next Era Energy wind farms in Minnesota will now sell power to Great River Energy.
“The original plan was to site wind in North Dakota, and when that didn’t work out, we pivoted to alternative plans that we had in Minnesota,” Ruzycki said. “Once the Coal Creek Station interconnection was no longer in our power supply plan, we were able to leverage the interconnection of our other generators to our advantage.”
The third powerline was the last straw for Marla Britton.
Her and her husband’s 40-acre farm near Brainerd, Minnesota, is already framed by electrical wires on the east and south. When she learned of plans for a new project running along the north end of her property, she took action.
Britton wrote to state utility regulators and contacted the companies behind the planned Northland Reliability Project. The 180-mile line will eventually make it easier to move clean electricity between central and northern Minnesota.
Soon, a utility representative was at her doorstep to discuss her concerns and ideas for rerouting the line where it would have less impact on her and her neighbors.
“They listened to me and wrote down what I said,” Britton said. “They agreed it was way too much for my property.”
It’s yet to be seen how Britton’s feedback will be reflected in the final route, but the interaction illustrates the type of engagement that project backers say they are aiming for with the project. Taking the time today to listen to property owners and adjust plans in response to their concerns, they hope, will lessen the likelihood of drawn-out legal or political battles delaying the project later.
The utilities building the project, Minnesota Power and Great River Energy, are using a playbook informed by an infamous rural revolt against a transmission line project through central Minnesota in the 1970s. In addition to lawsuits to try to block that project in court, opponents held large rallies, blocked construction workers, and vandalized utility equipment.
Great River Energy’s vice president and chief transmission officer, Priti Patel, still recalls a senior executive years ago giving her a copy of “Powerline: The First Battle of America’s Energy War,” a book about the battle co-authored by the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, who was then a professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.
The book describes what utilities should not do when developing large power lines, such as overusing eminent domain for land acquisition and dismissing the fears and concerns of rural citizens.
“I still have that [book] on my desk, because it’s a reminder … of the importance of active inclusion of voices of impacted landowners, particularly in rural Minnesota,” Patel said.
With the Northland Reliability Project, landowner engagement so far has included in-person and virtual open houses, phone calls, one-on-one meetings, handouts, emails, and an inclusive website. With a price tag of $970 million, the double-circuit, 345-kilovolt line is one of two Minnesota projects that has been fast-tracked by the regional transmission grid operator MISO for completion by the decade’s end.
The project largely follows the same path as existing smaller capacity transmission lines the utilities own, which could also help make it less controversial, said Beth Soholt, executive director of the Clean Grid Alliance, which advocates for transmission and clean energy.
“It’s just easier to site and probably construct. We’re hoping these early lines take less time to build,” Soholt said.
The two utilities combined have held 27 workshops in six months. They will continue throughout the year, reaching out to every township and municipality along the way, in addition to landowners, tribes, agencies, snowmobile groups and ATV clubs, and other organizations, according to Patel. So far, no organized opposition has emerged.
A few landowners and agencies have had concerns, said Jim Atkinson, Minnesota Power’s environmental and real estate manager, but planners have been proposing workarounds that could satisfy them. The input from stakeholder meetings “has informed the design of our route quite a bit,” he said.
Christina Hayes, executive director of Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, said the two Minnesota utilities are following the best practice of early stakeholder engagement to avoid later potential litigation. Hayes said the gatherings allow power companies to meet opposition and change routes before presenting to public utility commissions.
“The Midwest is a model for the rest of the country,” Hayes said. Utilities have “fostered the sense of ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’ and ‘we’re all in this together,’ and that has done a lot to keep the lights on in the Midwest as these emergency electricity situations have arisen around extreme weather.”
Morrison County Commissioner Greg Blaine, a Stearns Electric Association and Great River Energy board member, has been representing the project at community meetings. He said the constituents and customers asked about rolling blackouts and polar vortexes that have affected the grid over the last few years. The outreach meetings “help answer some of the questions out there,” Blaine said.
He tells them the transmission project could be an economic engine for the county that will make development in this area easier. “This addresses a need,” he said.
That’s not to say the utilities and landowners have a harmonious relationship. St. Cloud attorney Nicholas Delaney said after landowners agree to easements for transmission lines, utilities sometimes play hardball during negotiations on issues such as severance damage. Landowners want utilities to help cover damage on areas outside of easements that may suffer from heavy machinery used to install pools and lines, Delaney said.
Minnesota law requires utilities to buy all or part of the properties of landowners who don’t agree to easements. Delaney said utilities move routes and try to establish good relationships to avoid the law because of the expense, and “because they’re not in the business of buying and selling land.” Under the federal Uniform Relocation Act, utilities could also have to pay moving fees, replacement housing differential costs and other charges of farmers who can prove they are being displaced by power lines.
The utilities will soon file a certificate of need and route permit with the Public Utilities Commission. If all goes according to plan, construction will start in 2027.
Correction: Minnesota Power and Great River Energy had not yet filed for a certificate of need and route permit as of the time of publication but were expected to do so soon. An earlier version of this story misstated the application’s status.
The following commentary was written by David Wooley, director of the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California-Berkeley. See our commentary guidelines for more information.
The Gulf Coast’s power grid and economy share a common need: diversity. Diverse electric generation supplies increase power system reliability and resilience in the face of rising demand and extreme weather. Diverse economic activity supports employment, expands the tax base and boost overall prosperity. Offshore wind could help achieve both goals for the Gulf Coast region — if state governments act.
Offshore wind is surging, with over 700 gigawatts in the global development pipeline. European nations plan to install at least 120 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030 and 300 gigawatts by 2050. China added nearly 20 gigawatts of offshore wind in the last two years alone.
Those rising tides are also lifting American boats. On Aug. 29, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) will hold an offshore wind energy lease sale for three areas on the Outer Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico. In July, the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind plant began construction off the northeast coast. Twenty-nine U.S. ports are being refurbished to support offshore wind turbine construction and maintenance. Factories are going up across the U.S. to produce offshore wind energy components.
A new report — 2035 and Beyond: Abundant, Affordable Offshore Wind Can Accelerate Our Clean Electricity Future — shows our coastlines have the world’s highest-quality offshore wind resource. The new report details a pathway for offshore wind to provide up to 25% of total U.S. electricity generation by 2050, while producing large economic benefits and without increasing electricity costs. It could help meet rising electricity demand from electrification of transportation, industry, and buildings — which will triple U.S. electricity demand by 2050.
The U.S. is currently targeting 30 gigawatts of installed offshore wind generation by 2030. Our new research shows that offshore wind technology can be 10 to 15 times larger than that by 2050. Offshore wind along the Eastern seaboard, Gulf of Mexico, Great Lakes, and Pacific Coast can supply more than 1,000 gigawatts of generating capacity with operational characteristics comparable and complementary to existing power plant production (i.e., more than 50% capacity factor). This would create hundreds of thousands of new jobs nationwide and attract billions in investment to revitalize port and manufacturing communities.
The Gulf of Mexico is particularly well-suited for offshore wind deployment. The region could host more than 100 gigawatts of new offshore wind by 2050. With its existing manufacturing, port, and logistics infrastructure, and skilled workforce, the region could become a hub for new offshore wind generation. Many of the requisite offshore wind labor skills, ships, and port facilities can be adapted from existing Gulf offshore oil and gas industries. The Gulf of Mexico hosts most of the U.S. shipyards able to build wind turbine installation vessels. The region is already producing ships, turbine foundations, and steel components for offshore wind farms on the east coast.
New research by Cambridge Econometrics finds that offshore wind could employ 20,000 workers in the Gulf region by 2040 and 60,000 in 2050. Billions of grant and tax-credit dollars are available to repurpose existing infrastructure for jobs and clean energy production. The areas appropriate for offshore wind development in the Gulf are so vast that large amounts of offshore wind generation can be developed without interfering with fisheries, existing offshore infrastructure and sensitive marine ecosystems.
But offshore wind has far wider benefits than just jobs. Wind energy produced offshore can add large amounts of new electric power generation to bolster electric grid reliability — particularly important given Texas’ recent blackouts and near misses. Offshore wind in Gulf waters tends to kick up when solar production drops at sundown, and offshore wind turbines are less affected by extreme cold and heat events than land-based renewable and gas generation.
Several policy changes can achieve this potential. In the near term, the federal government must accelerate the identification and assessment of offshore wind sites, and leasing and permitting in federal waters. But state leadership is also needed to tap the Gulf Coast’s offshore wind potential.
Louisiana has shown its neighbors how to get started. Its 2022 Climate Action plan set a target of 5 gigawatts of installed offshore wind capacity by 2035, prioritized planning for transmission and workforce needs, established an interagency working group to address permitting, and enacted legislation to secure state tax revenues from offshore wind developed in state waters. Ports there have responded to the policy signals by making changes to accommodate offshore wind development and ships are being built in the state’s shipyards. Plans are in place to establish an offshore wind technology research, training, and technology demonstration center, but even all this isn’t enough to establish the state as an offshore wind hub.
A recent roundtable event organized by C2ES recommended, among other things, that the state take three steps. First, map out the unique roles each of Louisiana’s ports could play in the offshore wind industry. Second, open public utility commission dockets to consider how to interconnect and provide transmission support for new offshore wind projects. Third, undertake initiatives to prepare its workforce for offshore wind development.
Meanwhile, Texas stands in stark contrast, turning a blind eye to offshore wind energy, despite being desperately short of electricity during extreme winter and summer weather. The ultimate result may be that Louisiana’s ports and industries become the region’s offshore wind port and manufacturing hub for project development in waters off the Texas coast.
Texas’ policymakers could take a better approach by actively coordinating infrastructure and supply chain development with Louisiana, and pushing together for federal dollars to de-risk port and vessel construction through revenue guarantees for port and ship owners.
Punishing heat waves gripped the Gulf this summer, straining the electric grid to its limits. It’s a harbinger of things to come. Offshore wind can supply large new power supplies and help make electric power systems more reliable. The Gulf Coast states could be global leaders in this new industry, building a stronger economy and more resilient grid along the way.
The following commentary was written by Olivia Ashmoore, a policy analyst at Energy Innovation, and Ashna Aggarwal, an associate at RMI. See our commentary guidelines for more information.
Climate leadership in Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin could revitalize the Midwest. And the timing couldn’t be better.
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is the biggest clean energy investment in American history, generating tremendous opportunity for pro-climate state officials to pass bolder policy and take advantage of billions of dollars in new federal investments in clean energy technologies.
Recent Energy Innovation Policy & Technology LLC and RMI modeling using the new state Energy Policy Simulators finds just five policies can effectively cut emissions in any state—even those with quite different greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions sources. The analysis also shows adopting strong climate policies would boost local economies, create jobs, and protect public health. The most impactful policies are: clean electricity standards, zero-emission vehicle standards, clean building equipment standards, industrial efficiency and emissions standards, and standards for methane detection, capture, and destruction.
In Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin, adopting these five policies would help achieve climate targets and boost GDP, though the most impactful policies vary by state. By 2050, Minnesota’s GHG emissions could drop by 50% below 2005 levels, Michigan’s by 85%, and Wisconsin’s by 80%.
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In Minnesota, policymakers committed to climate action took office this January, resulting in passage of a new law requiring 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. Thanks to recent coal power plant retirements, Minnesota was already on track to meet its GHG reduction goals for 2025. Now, a faster clean energy pace will help the state reach its goals of slashing emissions 80% below 2005 levels by 2050. However, the modeling shows the state will also need to tackle transportation, industry, and agriculture emissions.
Using the new Minnesota Energy Policy Simulator, Energy Innovation and RMI find adopting the top five policies would cut emissions in these sectors to achieve economy-wide reductions of 50% below 2005 levels by 2050 — major progress toward the state’s goal. These five policies would also stimulate Minnesota’s economy, adding more than 30,000 new jobs in 2030, 100,000 new jobs in 2050, and growing GDP 2.4% in 2050.
In 2020, transportation was the largest source of in-state emissions and industrial emissions are projected to rise through 2050. The modeling shows joining other states in following the new Advanced Clean Cars II standard (ACC II), requiring 100% of car and small truck sales to be zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) by 2035, and 100% of heavy-duty truck sales to be zero-emission by 2045, can eliminate the majority of transportation sector emissions by 2050.
Industrial emissions standards or an industrial carbon cap program would require industrial facilities to switch from fossil fuels to electricity, renewable biofuels, and hydrogen. Minnesota is already advancing projects to integrate cleaner fuels — Gov. Tim Walz proposed new funding for biofuel infrastructure in the state’s budget and a Minnesota utility is piloting a new program to use hydrogen fuel. Industrial emissions standards that shift 100% of fossil fuel use to a mix of electricity and hydrogen for low-temperature and medium- to high-temperature heat by 2050 could reduce industry emissions 75% in 2050, accounting for a quarter of the potential reductions of five policy package.
Our modeling did not address the large agricultural sector in the state, which contributes 19% of Minnesota’s emissions. But the state is exploring policies that can offset agricultural emissions. Well-designed land use policies, like wetland restoration or grassland management, can close the gap between the five-policy scenario and the 80% reduction goal.
Minnesota has made major progress. Capitalizing on the IRA by adopting additional policies can cement its leadership, create new clean energy jobs, and ensure the state reaches its 2050 goal.
Michigan is laying the foundation for bolder climate action. In her 2023 State of State address, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer pledged to make Michigan “a hub of clean energy production.” It’s already happening — Ford just announced plans to set up an electric vehicle (EV) battery manufacturing facility 100 miles west of Detroit.
Last year, the state released a new climate plan, outlining policies to reduce emissions 52% below 2005 levels by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Previous Michigan EPS analysis by 5Lakes Energy, the Michigan Environmental Council, NRDC, Energy Innovation, and RMI found the state’s climate plan would cut emissions 50% by 2030 — nearly reaching the state’s near-term goal.
Strong implementation of Michigan’s climate plan sets the stage for further climate progress to reach the 2050 net-zero target. The state’s plan includes key components of the five policies, but more ambition is needed. Adopting our five recommended policies would cut Michigan’s emissions 86% relative to 2005 levels by 2050. The five policies would also spur economic development as clean energy infrastructure is built out, creating more than 70,000 jobs in 2030 and 153,000 jobs in 2050, and growing GDP 2.67% by 2050.
An 80% by 2030 and 100% by 2035 clean electricity standard would cut emissions more quickly than the climate plan target of 60% renewables by 2030 — though this is a solid foundation. The clean electricity standard accounts for a whopping 67% of total emissions cuts achieved by the five-policy package in 2030. Michigan could also move to adopt ACC II and set ambitious ZEV standards. Though a strong ZEV standard would only account for 5% of total emissions cuts in 2030, it would grow to 25% in 2050 as more gas vehicles are replaced with EVs.
With new majorities in the Michigan legislature and IRA incentives for clean energy technologies across sectors, the state is well positioned to implement — and go beyond — the policies laid out in the climate plan.
In Wisconsin, Gov. Tony Evers and state offices have made plans to address climate change and move towards carbon-free electricity. In 2020, the Governor’s Task Force on Climate Change produced a detailed report on reducing statewide emissions and now is the time to execute. If adopted in Wisconsin, our top five policies would reduce emissions 80% below 2005 levels by 2050 and add 39,000 new jobs in 2030, add 82,000 jobs in 2050, and grow GDP 2.8% in 2050.
The most impactful policy for Wisconsin is a 100% clean electricity standard by 2035, which accounts for half of the five policies’ emission reductions. The clean electricity standard alone would cut emissions 40% in 2035. This one policy would also be an economic juggernaut, creating 14,000 new, in-state jobs in 2035 and saving residents money by deploying lower-cost clean electricity. A separate Energy Innovation report finds replacing Wisconsin’s aging coal plants with new regional wind energy would yield savings up to $290 million annually compared to running existing coal.
Wisconsin can take advantage of Gov. Evers’ climate leadership to realize new economic opportunities. Among these three Midwestern states, Wisconsin could see the greatest GDP growth by implementing the top five policies — an estimated 2.8% growth in 2050.
As our modeling demonstrates, just five climate policies would build on the progress these states have made to date, solidify Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin’s leadership, and revitalize their economies. Now is the time to act on ambitious plans. The IRA dramatically lowers the cost of clean energy technologies and new climate momentum means these states are positioned to deliver — as demonstrated by Minnesota’s passing of 100% clean energy law.
Sharing best practices and building infrastructure across the region — such as EV charging networks and transmission lines — can amplify the actions of any one state alone. The collective action of these three states could revitalize America’s industrial heartland. It’s now up to Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin to take advantage of this opportunity.
Over the last five years, wind and solar farms have grown exponentially across Texas, transforming the state’s power grid and generating more electricity than ever this year amid the searing summer. The story has been different in El Paso, however.
Last month, solar farms across Texas produced more electricity in June than they did in all of 2018. Wind and solar farms combined last year to produce 31% of the electricity on the power grid that covers most of Texas outside of El Paso – which is operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT – and that’s grown to 35% of the state’s power through the first half of this year.
Yet in the Borderland, less than 3% of the electricity El Pasoans used last year came from renewable energy sources, a figure that pales in comparison to other utilities across both Texas and New Mexico.
A top El Paso Electric executive cautioned against comparing figures from EPE, a monopoly utility overseen by state regulators, to ERCOT, which is a deregulated, competitive market that electricity generators sell power into. Even so, El Paso Electric has initiated plans to shutter some of its aging natural gas power plant units and rely more on solar energy.
Last month, EPE began receiving power from the new Buena Vista solar farm, a 120-megawatt, 900-acre sea of solar panels outside of Chaparral, New Mexico. It’s the utility’s biggest-ever solar facility.
And El Paso Electric is planning to develop by 2025 four other big solar farms with 580 megawatts of capacity. The utility is also adding batteries at some of the solar farms to capture solar energy at midday and discharge the power onto the grid in the evening after the sun sets. One megawatt is enough to power a few hundred homes at once, depending on the time of day and temperature.
“We have a plan to get caught up,” Jessica Christianson, EPE’s vice president of sustainability and energy solutions, told El Paso Matters. “And I think that it’s a really methodical plan that takes into consideration the importance of clean energy and the environmental impact of our operations. But concurrently gives us an affordable and reliable solution.”
El Paso’s electricity today is far more likely to come from either the Palo Verde nuclear power plant west of Phoenix – the largest power plant in the country – or from EPE’s fleet of four local natural gas-fired power plants. Nuclear and gas-fired plants produced 84% of the region’s electricity in 2022, according to El Paso Electric.
“Resource mixes are variable between utilities,” said Jon Rea, a senior associate focused on carbon-free electricity with the Rocky Mountain Institute, a nonprofit energy research group based in Colorado. “But El Paso does stand out for having very little wind and solar in comparison to the rest of Texas.”
El Paso Electric in 2016 closed its only coal plant and shifted to heavier reliance on natural gas, which emits about half as much of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide as coal does. Meanwhile, across the ERCOT power grid, coal accounts for a shrinking but still significant portion of the state’s energy; last year coal-fired power plants produced almost 17% of the electricity generated in Texas.
“That was our big first step in our generation portfolio transition,” Christianson said of getting off of coal. “We really made that decision to get rid of the worst first.”
EPE today relies on the nuclear plant for about 45% of its power supply; across the rest of Texas, the state’s two major nuclear plants generated about 10% of its electricity. Nuclear power plants don’t produce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change – so including nuclear, EPE gets almost 48% of the region’s electricity from “carbon-free” sources.
Still, the amount of solar power generated by El Paso Electric remained virtually unchanged from 2016 through 2022. But over that same time, solar generation across the Texas grid multiplied several times over, from 420 gigawatt-hours in 2016 to over 24,000 gigawatt-hours last year.
El Paso Electric’s emissions “have generally been lower than the industry average,” Rea said, citing the utility’s lack of coal and its big reliance on nuclear power. “But that hasn’t changed much over time. They haven’t made a lot of progress or change in the last decade, and competing utilities that we see making a transition have been adding more wind and solar.”
While wind farms contributed a quarter of the power generated across ERCOT last year, El Paso Electric gets zero electricity from wind farms.
When EPE unveiled the Buena Vista solar farm in April, Christianson said solar farms are cheaper for the utility to receive power from than wind farms. That’s because the windiest areas of New Mexico are outside of EPE’s service territory, she said, and the utility would have to build costly transmission lines to ferry electricity from faraway wind farms into El Paso.
One mile of transmission towers and wires can cost a few million dollars to build.
“It’s not that we’re not pursuing wind, we just are doing this solar first,” Christianson told El Paso Matters in April.
“The quality of the wind that you want for generation, it’s a little bit outside of our service territory. So to make that cost-competitive is a little bit more of a challenge, because there will be necessary transmission upgrades,” she said.
By comparison, the other major investor-owned utilities in New Mexico – PNM and Xcel Energy – as of the end of 2022 maintained a collection of wind and solar farms far greater than El Paso Electric’s portfolio. PNM receives power from solar and wind farms totaling 1,040 megawatts of capacity, and Xcel Energy’s portfolio in its Texas and New Mexico service territory includes over 2,700 megawatts of mostly wind and some solar.
And CPS Energy in San Antonio gets power from a portfolio of almost 1,500 megawatts of wind and solar farms. And almost half of the electricity that city-owned Austin Energy generated last year came from solar and wind farms; its portfolio of renewables tops 2,700 megawatts. Austin Energy and CPS are city-owned utilities, but they also own their power plants and distribution systems like EPE does.
El Paso Electric’s current portfolio of solar farms, including the Buena Vista project that began operating in June, totals 239 megawatts.
EPE hasn’t “been a laggard in terms of emissions,” Rea of the Rocky Mountain Institute said. “But in terms of being climate-aligned with a low-carbon future, they are falling behind in making their transition.”
However, shifting off current power sources to renewables like wind and solar isn’t simple or cheap, said Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston.
One of the solar farms El Paso Electric is developing, a 150-megawatt solar facility in Fabens, is slated to start producing power in May 2025. EPE said the site will cost $218 million to develop and will raise the average El Paso household’s monthly electric bill by $2.68.
By comparison, a new 228-megawatt natural gas power plant unit that EPE is currently building – the Newman 6 unit near Chaparral – will cost at least $193 million, and raise El Paso households’ power bills by a minimum of $3 per month on average.
Transitioning to cleaner energy sources is “a capital expense that somebody’s going to have to take on,” Hirs said.
“If El Paso Electric says, ‘Hey, we’re going to go all green – which would make some people excited – that’s going to have a very high, significant cost,” he said.
There are cost and reliability concerns with natural gas, as well. The price for the natural gas that fuels a power plant can swing dramatically – whereas wind and solar farms don’t need fuel, water or as many employees to operate.
Household electric and gas bills shot up last year after the market price for natural gas doubled last summer from a year earlier. And natural gas supply lines froze up across much of Texas during the deadly February 2021 winter storm that blanketed the state, choking off the supply of gas and sending the price skyrocketing as utilities competed to buy the scarce fuel.
The shortage of natural gas prevented power plants from running and exacerbated the power shortage, which El Paso avoided. But El Pasoans are still paying extra fees on their monthly gas bills to pay off the high-priced natural gas purchased during the winter storm.
Still, Hirs argued that EPE has made progress by ditching coal in favor of cleaner-burning natural gas and nuclear energy. And he pointed out the EPE maintains a reliable system; El Pasoans typically experience fewer power outages than customers of most other similarly-sized utilities in Texas and New Mexico.
Rea said government incentives funneled through the federal Inflation Reduction Act and low-cost loans have made renewable energy investments more economical and could accelerate EPE’s shift to relying on sources of energy that produce less pollution. For reference, after the Newman 6 unit starts operating later this year, it will emit around 790,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the El Paso region’s air each year.
“A project that previously would have happened in 2030 or 2035 now makes economic sense to do in 2025 to 2030,” Rea said. “So it just moves up the timeline of making those investments in renewables because of all the tax incentives.”
Both Hirs and Rea agreed that within a decade, wind, solar farms and battery arrays will likely dominate the power grids in Texas and New Mexico, alongside some natural gas power plants on hand to help ensure there’s always enough electricity available.
Christianson said EPE is taking “meaningful” steps to generate more clean electricity in the coming years.
“Give us the opportunity to execute on this plan,” she said, “and you’re going to be really impressed with what you see from El Paso Electric in the next couple years.”
This article first appeared on El Paso Matters and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Large cross-country transmission lines carrying clean energy from remote rural areas to population centers will be a key strategy for reducing emissions.
But as a project in Minnesota illustrates, the grid puzzle is more complicated than that.
Connecting central and northern Minnesota, the Northland Reliability Project will reinforce the state’s electric grid with new transmission lines as fossil fuel-powered plants close and utilities rely on more clean energy generation.
The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc., known as MISO, chose the Northland Reliability Project as one of 18 transmission projects in a more than $10 billion first tranche budget. The 180-mile-long project has the initial group’s second-highest budget: $970 million.
Transmission has been a challenging issue nationwide as utilities and customers transition to producing and consuming more clean energy. Rich in wind power, the Midwest is no different, with MISO having seen developers pull projects because of a lack of transmission.
Allete subsidiary Minnesota Power and generation and transmission cooperative Great River Energy will build the project from central Minnesota to the mining-intensive Iron Range. The project adds double-circuit 345-kilovolt transmission lines to a route where smaller lines will still operate.
Beth Soholt, executive director of Clean Grid Alliance, said Minnesota Power and Great River Energy wanted the project to improve reliability in their territories. The project “supports and beefs up the regional grid in this particular location,” she said. Because it crosses the borders of the utilities, they will build and own it, but MISO will pay for it.
Northland’s route runs near two retiring fossil plants and Xcel Energy’s Monticello nuclear energy plant. Owned by Minnesota Power, the Boswell Energy Center in Cohasset near the northern terminus will close in phases by 2035. The other coal plant, the Xcel-owned Sherburne County Generating Station also known as Sherco, will close by 2030.
Dan Gunderson, Minnesota Power’s vice president for transmission and distribution, said the Northland project “will be a critical element to ensure we have regional stability for our large customers in the northern part of the state,” he said.
Unlike most regional utilities primarily serving commercial and residential customers, Minnesota Power’s most significant customer base consists of mines that often draw enormous amounts of electricity for operations. Gunderson said the line would be a key element in meeting demand, especially in winter when it grows significantly.
Great River Energy’s vice president and chief transmission officer, Priti Patel, explained the challenge: “When we think of this energy transition, it’s not just about bringing in transmission to serve more renewables; it’s also about the fact that generation is retiring and retirements create the need for new transmission,” she said.
When baseload generation decreases, the geographical disparity of power sources increases and voltage stability concerns grow, Patel said.
The transmission line “is not directly connecting right now to any renewable generation specifically,” she said. “But part of this energy transition is maintaining reliability. And when you have baseload plants retiring and more renewables connecting, you need transmission to maintain the stability of the system.”
At least at the southern end of the line, Northland links to a Sherco substation. Xcel will be building a 460-megawatt solar plant at its Sherco site to generate electricity for the region and the Northland will likely carry some of it to customers. Earlier this year, Xcel proposed another solar array to bring the total output to 710 megawatts.
Soholt said MISO calls the first tranche investments “least regrets” transmission lines because studies demonstrated that the projects showed the most significant promise of adding reliability and resiliency, she said. Any new transmission will only help Minnesota meet its goal of generating electricity from carbon-free sources by 2040, Soholt said.
MISO’s long-range planning document points out that lines from south to northern Minnesota are 115 kV and 230 kV, not enough capacity for Minnesota Power to comfortably serve customers with power coming from the Twin Cities.
“This large geographical disparity in generation and weak transmission causes voltage stability concerns for a majority of the Minnesota system north of the Twin Cities,” MISO wrote.
No organized opposition has emerged, but Red Wing attorney Carol Overland has misgivings. A persistent critic of transmission line projects for decades, she contends that transmission capacity will grow as coal plants shut down. “There’s a lot of the system already existing that will have opened up capacity when coal plants shut down,” Overland said.
Utilities earn more profits from building transmission than from generating and selling electricity, she said, making them proponents of large projects. Since transmission costs fall to ratepayers, utilities benefit without taking much financial risk, Overland said.
Overland suggested that generating clean energy closer to where it will be consumed would decrease the need for transmission and offer a more stable grid. For the same amount of money that will be spent on transmission, “you could get a lot of solar [installed] where it is needed,” Overland said. “But [utilities] can’t get a rate of return on that.”
Construction is scheduled to begin in 2027 with the transmission project to be complete and carrying electricity by 2030.
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