MinnPost: Will Minnesota Democrats pass ‘most significant climate legislation in history’ next year?

Walker Orenstein of MinnPost wrote an article detailing the energy and climate agenda of key Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota now that the DFL has total control of the House of Representatives, the State Senate, and the Governor’s mansion.

The key players in the legislature include Senator Nick Frentz of Mankato, who will chair the Senate Energy, Utilities, and Environment Committee, and Patty Acomb, who will chair the House Climate and Energy Finance and Policy Committee. Newly-appointed House Majority Leader Jamie Long, who chaired the Climate and Energy committee in previous legislative sessions, will also probably be involved.

The article, which is worth a read, lays out the landscape for energy policy for the upcoming session. It is clear that DFL leaders want to pass legislation on this topic, but they are also trying to temper expectations for what they hope to achieve.

For example, Frentz and Acomb stated they would not push Walz to join California in banning the sale of nearly all new gas-powered vehicles by 2035. Orenstein’s piece indicated that the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which is a policy that will increase gasoline prices by 20 to 54 cents per gallon, did not appear to be a top priority, even though it is part of the Walz Administration’s Climate Action Framework.

It appears Governor Walz and Acomb are seeking to enact a 100 percent carbon-free electricity mandate by 2040, with Frentz sounding less bullish on the idea.

American Experiment’s research found that enacting this policy would cost Minnesota an additional $313 billion through 2050 and lead to a 55-hour blackout in winter if we experience similar wind and solar conditions as in 2020. Read the report by clicking here.

Some of these expensive mandates may fail to gain enough traction to become law, but liberal lawmakers will almost certainly shower cash from the state surplus on their preferred climate pet projects. According to the article, the spending could reach $1 billion, which equates to about $455 for each Minnesota household.

Earlier this year, Gov. Tim Walz’s administration released a “climate action framework” that lawmakers might draw from. And in January, a group of House DFLers focused on climate change rolled out a plan to shrink carbon emissions across Minnesota with a rather hefty $1 billion price tag.

It had 31 spending proposals with big ticket items like $45 million for a renewable energy development fund for Greater Minnesota, $150 million for weatherization work to make houses more energy efficient and $100 million to help schools be more energy efficient. The most expensive item was $200 million to build four bus rapid transit lines. And the work spanned everything from cash to develop new agricultural products to $30 million to plant millions of trees.

The infatuation with wind and solar, which only worked 30 percent and 20 percent of the time in Minnesota according to the latest federal data, and public transit, which has failed to recover from the pandemic due to changing workforce habits and rising crime, illustrate that liberals are pot committed to technologies and ideas about the future that simply do not work well enough to run our modern lives.

As Doomberg says, when political platitudes meet physics, physics is undefeated. These policies will continue to make our electricity more expensive and reduce the grid’s reliability. Many Minnesotans will see rising electric bills next year due to Xcel’s 20 percent rate increase, and the National Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) warns extreme weather could bring blackouts to the Midwest, including Minnesota, this winter.

Unfortunately, these results are the inevitable consequences of the energy policies being put forward by liberal lawmakers in Minnesota. It appears Minnesotans will need to feel these negative consequences first-hand before they are willing to reconsider their preexisting energy beliefs.