Legislative Victory: Wind Energy Giveaway Pulled from Omnibus Bill

Good news!

The Minnesota House Ways and Means Committee has scrapped the giveaway to wind developers that was initially included as part of the House Omnibus bill, and American Experiment played a part in rolling back this terrible policy.

The giveaway, H.F. 4289 Section 13, from the Job Growth and Energy Affordability omnibus would have made it so wind projects larger than 5 megawatts would no longer have to go through the normal regulatory process.

I wrote a piece last week about why this is an exceedingly bad idea. You can read the whole piece hereHere are a few of the main takeaways:

  • The omnibus bill would have exempted wind developers from having to demonstrate the electricity is needed through the Certificate of Need process at the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).
  • This is important because Minnesota doesn’t need more electricity to meet consumer demands.
  • Minnesota families and businesses have no alternative to purchasing their electricity from the utility companies, so they rely on the PUC to prevent electric generators from building more turbines when there is no need for the additional electricity.
  • Removing certificate of need is simply a way for wind developers to more-easily help themselves to subsidies before the federal tax credits expire.

The post garnered more than 6,800 views on Facebook with 38 shares. I also talked about why this was a bad policy on the Up and At ‘Em Podcast which aired Friday, April 27, 2018.

Our work on this issue helped people understand why this would have delivered a blank check to wind developers signed by you and your family.

Thankfully, this terrible policy has been removed from the Omnibus bill, for now…

American Experiment is monitoring the situation very carefully and we will keep our readers updated on any developments on this front.