American Experiment opposes Xcel’s costly green dreams at the Public Utilities Commission

Xcel Energy customers will soon see their electric bills go up by $222 per year to pay for more wind and solar.

Unfortunately, this massive price increase is only the tip of the iceberg because Xcel is planning on retiring their coal plants long before the end of their useful lifetimes and replacing them with an expensive combination of wind turbines, solar panels, and new natural gas plants.

This is why Center of the American Experiment argued that Xcel should keep their coal plants open for as long as possible in our 16-page comments to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC), which you can read by clicking on the link below.

In our comments, we argue that the European energy crisis should be a wake-up call to Minnesota policymakers who are prioritizing renewables over reliability and affordability. We also discuss how wind and solar are unreliable, especially during extreme cold events when electricity is needed most.

Lastly, we argue that instead of building wind turbines, solar panels and natural gas plants, Xcel should replace their aging coal plants with new nuclear power plants at the existing coal sites to maximize grid reliability and do right by the towns that have hosted coal plants for decades.