Minnesota sets out for zero-carbon electricity by 2040

A newly signed state law sets Minnesota on course to use 100
percent carbon-free electricity by 2040. In this episode,
Minnesota House Majority Leader Jamie Long describes the decisive
legislating that took an ambitious climate bill from introduction
to the governor’s desk in the space of one month.


(PDF
transcript)


(Active
transcript)


Text transcript:


David Roberts


Back in 2019, I wrote for Vox that there is one weird trick
states can use to ensure good climate and energy policy. That
trick is: giving Democrats full control of the government. It has
worked in California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Illinois, New
Mexico, Massachusetts, New York, Hawaii — the list goes on.


As I covered in a pod a few months ago, the 2022 midterm
elections brought Democrats full control — with trifectas of both
houses of the legislature and the governor's office — in four new
M states: Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Minnesota.


Does the one weird trick still work? Well, you’ll never guess
what happened in Minnesota last week.


Gov. Tim Walz signed into law a historic piece of legislation
that would set the state on a course to carbon-free electricity:
80 percent by 2030, 90 percent by 2035, and 100 percent by 2040.


My guest today is the bill’s primary author and sponsor,
Minnesota House Majority Leader Jamie Long. Long, formerly
legislative director for then–U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.),
was elected to the Minnesota legislature in 2018 and became
majority leader this year. He worked closely with Senate sponsor
Nick Frentz to shepherd the bill quickly through the legislature,
with no extended conference committee.


It was an adept and decisive bit of legislating — not necessarily
the norm for Democrats. I was excited to talk to Long about some
of the ins and outs of the bill, the forces that supported and
opposed it, and what's next for Minnesota energy policy.


All right, then. Representative Jamie Long of Minnesota, welcome
to Volts. Thanks so much for coming. And I guess the first thing
I should say is congratulations.


Jamie Long


Thank you. It's a big month out here in Minnesota.


David Roberts


Yeah, big news. I want to get into the actual bill and the actual
targets and everything, but just let's do a brief bit of history
to start with. You arrived in the Minnesota legislature in 2018.
I'm curious when this bill was born, basically, how long has this
been cooking?


Jamie Long


Sure. Well, this was my top-priority bill from my very first day
I ran for office wanting to work on climate change and clean
energy, and knew that 100% clean energy was the big bill that I
wanted to focus my efforts on. So, we introduced this pretty
early in my very first year in office. So actually, when we had
the bill signing, I was looking back, and it was about four years
to the week from when we had a bill signing that I'd introduced
it. So, that was the first time we'd had 100% clean energy
proposal in Minnesota, but we certainly had a lot of other
renewable energy standards that had been tried and had failed
over the years. The last time we'd updated our renewable energy
standard was 2007 in the state.


David Roberts


2007. And that was, I'm guessing, the last time you had
Democratic control over both Houses?


Jamie Long


No, in fact, it was broadly bipartisan. It was signed by Governor
Tim Pawlenty, Republican governor, who later it became a
political issue when he ran for President because the Republican
primary voters were not that happy that he was a clean energy
leader who took climate change seriously. But it got such broad
bipartisan support, it was almost unanimous in the House and
Senate at the time.


David Roberts


Wild.


Jamie Long


And that was 25% renewable energy standard by 2025 was what was
passed at that time. That seemed really ambitious, but we
actually met that in 2017, so we met it eight years early.


So, at the time it seemed like it was going to be a big deal.


David Roberts


If only we would ever learn from experience.


Jamie Long


I know, right?


David Roberts


That's the same story with every single one of these that's ever
passed anywhere.


Jamie Long


That's right. But we do have only the second trifecta in the last
30 years in the state. We did have one in 2013, 2014. We didn't
update the renewable energy standard then, but we did do some
other good climate policy. But yes, unfortunately, since 2007,
climate and clean energy has taken a turn for partisanship in the
state. And so it has taken until we got this trifecta, and we
have it barely in the Senate. This will sound familiar to the
congressional story, but we have a one vote margin in the Senate,
and we have a two vote margin in the House.


David Roberts


Crazy. And this was pretty rapid and decisive. Like, you guys
have not been in office for that for that long.


Jamie Long


You got it. Signed within a month.


David Roberts


That's unusual to see the Democratic Party acting with such
alacrity and clarity of purpose. I don't know what's going on
here.


Jamie Long


Well, we felt like we heard loud and clear from Minnesota voters
that this is what they wanted. There was a poll in our local
paper right before the election asking voters what were their top
issues for deciding on the candidates that they wanted to
support. And climate was a top five issue.


David Roberts


No kidding.


Jamie Long


Our governor, Tim Walz, has been a strong supporter of 100% clean
energy since day one. He was at our very first press conference
with us four years ago, and he ran on this this past election
cycle for his re-election, it was in his first ad. He was one of
those Democrats back in the Waxman-Markey days who voted for
Waxman-Markey and thought it might have cost him his seat, and it
didn't. But he's always been very proud of his climate leadership
and has been a really strong leader in our state.


David Roberts


So, I want to talk about some of the issues of contention, let's
say in a minute, but let's just start by talking about what's in
the bill. So, there's two targets for the state utilities.
There's a renewable energy target and then there's a zero carbon
target. So, tell us just briefly, like why are there two and what
are they?


Jamie Long


Well, we wanted to have a renewable energy baseline. That was
important for a lot of our partners and constituency groups that
we were working with. We do have nuclear energy in the state,
there are three nuclear plants, all owned by Xcel Energy. So,
this wasn't really relevant for most utilities, but we wanted to
have a baseline for renewable energy. So, there's a 55% renewable
energy standard by 2035. But the big numbers are the clean energy
standards or carbon-free energy standards and those are 80% by
2030, 90% by 2035 and 100% by 2040.


David Roberts


Got it. So, the renewable energy target is just an extension of
the previous law? Yes, it's just sort of an updating of the
previous renewable energy law or does it change anything
substantially from that law?


Jamie Long


Well, it updates the previous law. So as I'd mentioned, our
current law has 25% by 2025 and everybody's gotten there, so
there's no real story there. So we have 55% now by 2035. We did
update it some. The renewable energy definition at that time had
a couple of things that we tweaked. One was that it constrained
hydro to only small hydro. And the thought had been at that time
that there was some concern that if we did large hydro we would
basically push out all of the wind and solar. We would just go
towards large hydro or we have access to Manitoba Hydro here and
some other large hydro projects.


And so the concern was that you wouldn't get the solar and wind
development that we would want. That's less of a concern now. We
aren't seeing a lot more large hydro projects being built. And
particularly on the timeline that we're talking about, between
now and 2035, you're not really going to get a new large dam
sided and constructed. So, the question was just really, were we
going to let that count for utilities that are already purchasing
large hydro? And we thought that would be fair. And then the
other discussion was around waste energy. And so we have a
facility in my city of Minneapolis that is located next to the
neighborhood that has the highest black population in the city,
and also happens to have the highest asthma rates in the state,
there's a lot of cumulative impacts with different industrial
uses in that particular neighborhood. And so we excluded that
particular facility from the definition of renewable energy.


David Roberts


That's Hennepin?


Jamie Long


Yeah, the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center is what it's known as.
So we excluded that as a gesture to the community and to the
county that we understand this is a facility that we don't want
to see be the long term solution to our waste problems in that
particular location.


David Roberts


I'd like to pick up both of those a little bit. On the hydro, my
understanding is that this was a subject of some contention, I
mean, one is what if we just get more hydro and don't do any wind
or solar, as you say, that's probably not as much of a concern.
Now, although, I'm curious, you're accessing this Manitoba Hydro,
could you theoretically just buy more of existing Manitoba Hydro?
I'm curious, have you topped out how much you can get from there?


Jamie Long


Yeah, it's pretty well topped out. It's all spoken for between
Manitoba and Minnesota. So last year there were lower water
levels in Manitoba and they wound up being able to ship a little
less power to Minnesota because they had to use it all from
Manitoba. So both with the existing transmission and the existing
need, there's no real extra capacity.


David Roberts


Bringing on any substantial new big hydro from Minnesota would
mean building new dams.


Jamie Long


Yeah, and it would take longer than the time allotted.


David Roberts


I know there are sort of concerns about the pipeline from those
Manitoba, the electricity lines from those Manitoba dams down to
Minnesota. How did that play out? Because my understanding is
that environmental groups, the reason they didn't want big hydro
counted is partially because they don't want more of that. How
did that sort of controversy play out?


Jamie Long


Yeah, there were some concerns from some indigenous environmental
groups around large hydro. And so that was one of the reasons why
we made clear it was only existing hydro. So we didn't allow for
new hydro to count towards that renewable energy standard, so
that we would foreclose the possibility that new construction
would be eligible. So in the law, it says only as of the
effective date of the act, those facilities would count.


David Roberts


I see. So even if they did build new dams.


Jamie Long


It doesn't count towards renewable energy standard. It would
count towards carbon-free because we don't have technology
limitations there. It's anything that's carbon-free. But for the
renewable energy standard, it wouldn't count.


David Roberts


Give us a sense of where non hydro renewable energy is in
Minnesota. Are the big Minnesota utilities in shouting distance
of that 55% target?


Jamie Long


They are. So last year in Minnesota, we were at 52% carbon-free
for the entirety of Minnesota's power generation. Now 24% of that
was nuclear. So about a quarter of our power in the state's
nuclear, but 28% was renewable energy. So that's pretty good. And
then if you look at it based on, by utility, there is a bit of a
differentiation. Minnesota Power, for example, which is the
utility that services the northern part of the state, they're
pretty unique because they serve some really large customers.
Mines, timber. They were at 90% or so coal in the 1990s, and then
as of even 2015, we're at about 75% coal. And now they're over
50% renewable.


David Roberts


Oh, wow. So they've been moving pretty quick already.


Jamie Long


They've been moving very quick already. And so we've had some
good leadership from utilities in the state. Xcel Energy, our
largest utility, was the first in the nation to say that they
wanted to move towards 100% carbon-free electricity. And then
both Minnesota Power and Great River Energy, which is our
generation and transmission cooperative for most of our rural
electric co-ops in the state, have also committed to carbon-free.
Now, all three of those had 2050 as their target dates, so we're
pushing them considerably faster than they had wanted to go, but
they had set the direction that they were going to move towards
carbon-free electricity, and all three of them, in the end, were
supportive or neutral on the final bill. So I do give them credit
for setting a direction and being willing to come along even as
they were being pushed.


David Roberts


Just to clarify sort of the goals that they had set for
themselves, that was all internally driven, that wasn't in
response to any sort of mandates or government product.


Jamie Long


Those were public announcements. And so even before the law had
passed, something like 80% of Minnesota customers were already
being served by a utility that had themselves, on their own,
committed to decarbonizing their electric service.


David Roberts


So this is mostly accelerating what your big state utilities are
in the midst of doing already.


Jamie Long


Accelerating and mandating, which is an important distinction.
But they had made these targets on their own and they weren't
binding. You know, Xcel Energy at different points in time had
described it as an ambition or a goal or, you know, there was a
lot of flexibility in terms of how they described it and now
there is not.


David Roberts


Now there's locked in. Let's talk a little bit about garbage
incineration because this sort of like only comes up in some
states and not in others, and I've had questions about it over
the years and I've never really bothered to poke around and learn
a lot about it. But my understanding is two things: one is that
the main reason municipalities are doing this is not for energy.
It's that they don't know what else to do with their trash. They
don't have anything else to do with their trash. And my
understanding is that environmental groups are largely opposed to
it and would have preferred to exclude it from the zero carbon
energy standard entirely.


So tell us a little bit about, just sort of like, what are the
dynamics or how did that play out?


Jamie Long


So it's this interesting interplay between waste policy and
energy policy, right?


David Roberts


Right.


Jamie Long


So I think most folks agree that landfilling isn't a good outcome
for our waste management system. And there's disagreement though,
on how much we can do in recycling and composting, and other
forms of waste diversion. Environmentalists like me tend to think
that we can do a lot more than we're doing. Pushing hard at the
state level to do more in the recycling and organics management
side. But a lot of counties in our state have moved forward with
waste burning as what they view as better than landfilling. So
not the outcome that they want, but better than landfilling.


You still do have to landfill though. You're landfilling all the
ash that's coming out, and the ash is toxic, and you're producing
localized air pollution when you're burning it. So it's certainly
not an environmentally friendly solution, but nor are landfills.
And so there aren't easy choices here. But when it comes to the
energy space, when we're thinking about moving towards a
decarbonized electric sector, when you're burning trash, it
produces carbon. So right now the waste energy, at least for our
100% target, doesn't count as a fully decarbonized source. We
have a few pathways that counties could pursue which I can get
into if you're interested in terms of how they could continue to
operate.


But they are, under our bill, either going to have to change or
pay a little bit more money in a renewable energy credit to be
able to continue to operate. And so it will make waste to energy
harder, as a long term solution.


David Roberts


I don't want to get too deep into incineration here, but when you
say improvements that they could make, does that mean there are
safer and better ways to incinerate trash, or do you mean
alternatives?


Jamie Long


Well, so under the bill, if you are not at 100% carbon-free
electricity, one option you have is to purchase renewable energy
credits.


David Roberts


Right.


Jamie Long


And this is a pretty common way to account for that sort of last
couple of percent in different standards, and it was also in our
previous renewable energy standards that we've had.


David Roberts


Yeah, I want to get into that later.


Jamie Long


Yeah, so that would be one option that they could pursue. They
could shut down the facilities, they could not sell the power to
a utility. Because we're regulating the sales to utility
customers in the bill. So there are a few options, but I do hope
that this will prompt some conversation in our counties about how
they want to manage waste 16 years from now. I feel like there's
a lot of time to figure out better alternatives than burning.


David Roberts


It's not super clear to me what the ideal state of the art is
here. But yeah, like you say, there's time to figure that out.
What about within the bill? Is there anything specifically for
distributed solar or distributed energy? That's one of the things
I heard back from some sort of state advocates is that the big
utilities are fine going renewable, but they're more resistant to
losing control over assets and having customer owned assets. So I
wonder, is there anything, is that mentioned in the bill at all?


Jamie Long


No, we don't have a specific carve out for distributed energy. We
wanted to keep our technology neutral approach intact. As you
might imagine, there were lots of different requests for specific
technologies.


David Roberts


Interesting.


Jamie Long


Most of those didn't go in the direction that I would call
climate friendly. So we tried to keep the overall integrity of
allowing for utilities to have some flexibility in how they are
getting to 100% carbon-free in the bill. Now, that said, I do
believe that there's going to be an awful lot more distributed
energy built because of this bill. The utilities are going to
need to find as much solar and wind as they can, and it's not all
going to be able to be utility scale.


So I think a lot of it will be distribution grid, interconnected.
But I think that a lot of that conversation is probably going to
take place in other contexts later this session. So we are one
month in to our legislative session, and we've been talking for a
long time about our community solar program. We have the largest,
I guess now second largest New York just passed us, but for a
long time we have the largest community solar program in the
nation. There's a lot of conversation on what to do in the
distributed energy space with interconnection. I think that's
going to be a hot topic in session and there's going to be a lot
of interest on policy fixes in that space.


But for the purposes of the 100% clean energy bill, we felt it
was important to keep flexibility for utilities and how to meet
their targets.


David Roberts


Interesting. One other question about sources. I know anytime I
mention energy policy on the internet, which is frequently, I get
the question, well, what about nuclear? Is it nuclear just
better? Why don't we just do nuclear, blah, blah, blah. You knew
this was coming. So in Minnesota, you've got three nuclear
plants, yes? Who are providing 25% of your power and a good chunk
of existing low or no carbon, carbon-free energy. And that counts
toward the standard, that energy counts toward the, the
carbon-free standard for 2040. But there is also alongside that,
a prohibition on new nuclear in Minnesota.


And I know there was some argument on some quarters that the
prohibition should be lifted, that small modular nukes should be
allowed under this technology neutral standard. The bill didn't
get into that. What's the status there?


Jamie Long


Yeah, so nuclear politics is obviously complicated, not just in
Minnesota. But you're right, we have three nuclear plants in the
state and we have a moratorium on new nuclear plant construction.


David Roberts


And that was a bill that was legislative from previous.


Jamie Long


The 90s. It dates way back. It's not a recent choice. And the
reason is that we have the closest community living near a
nuclear plant anywhere in the United States, and that's the
Prairie Island Indian Community, which lives like a stone throw
from the Prairie Island Nuclear Plant. And so it's in their
backyard, right behind their houses. And so the Prairie Indian
Community has had long standing concerns about the onsite nuclear
waste storage, because we don't have any long term storage
solution yet for nuclear waste. And so that waste happens to be
stored right on site at the Prairie Island Nuclear Plant.


And so when they were seeking permitting to store that waste on
site, the compromise that was passed included a moratorium on new
nuclear construction. So that's the history. The tribe remains
concerned to this day about living that close to a nuclear energy
plant in their community. So removing the nuclear moratorium is
fraught. And there's also, I didn't have a single large utility
come to me and say, "Hey, I'm ready to build a small nuclear
modular reactor and I want this repealed so I can get this
going".


David Roberts


Yes, this discussion is extremely theoretical at all levels.


Jamie Long


Yeah, exactly. That may be a topic of conversation that comes to
the state in the future, but it didn't need to be solved in this
bill because there is no real live proposal before us. All three
of the nuclear reactors in the state are going through
relicensing applications with the NRC. They're all at the end of
their licenses or nearing them. And so that's the kind of active
conversation.


David Roberts


Yeah, are you talking about several states have taken action
recently to extend the life of existing nuclear plants, is that
on the table or in the discussion somewhere?


Jamie Long


No, we don't really need to subsidize our nuclear plants in the
state. They've been operating within competitive rates and we're
regulated state, we're not deregulated. I think some of the
states that have had to support their nuclear plants because
they're deregulated.


David Roberts


Right.


Jamie Long


But I think there is broad support for relicensing for those
three facilities. The tribe that I mentioned is in active
negotiations with the utility about waste storage next to them in
a relicensing application. So there may be discussions there, but
I think that there is general support for extending the life of
those three plants and nothing more. We really need to do with
the legislature on that. But in terms of new small modular
nuclear reactors, there's no real active proposals or need to
solve those problems this month.


David Roberts


Let's talk a little bit about utilities and their sort of
disposition towards all this. Let's start a little bit, I think
with munis and co-ops, municipal and cooperative utilities. I
think, probably, most folks listeners live in cities and are
served by big utilities and so might not be familiar with what
these things are and why they tend to be resistant to the net
zero push. This is not just in your state but in many states. So
maybe you could just explain sort of like, what are these little
utilities and why across the country do they tend to be centers
of resistance to the push to clean power?


Jamie Long


Great question. So municipal utilities are pretty
straightforward. It's a utility that's run by municipality or at
the municipal level to supply power. And they tend to be more of
a distribution utility. They're often purchasing their power from
somebody else.


David Roberts


They're just not big enough to own assets on their own.


Jamie Long


Most of them don't. Yeah, there are a couple of municipal
utilities in the state that do own some of their own generation,
but most of the time they're purchasing the power that they sell.
And then cooperative utilities are managed by local boards that
are elected and they tend to be in rural communities. That's the
history. It was part of the ability to get electrification to
rural America, right? And the big utilities serve the cities and
there needed to be a model that helped serve rural communities
and so cooperatives was a model that took off. But in Minnesota
it's 40% of customers or cooperative utilities or municipal
utilities.


So it's a big chunk. And if we're only focusing on our three
investor owned utilities in the state, we're leaving out a lot of
folks who have power delivery. So the cooperative utilities are
very diverse in terms of their customer size, their location in
the state. So we have some that now, once were rural, but now
serve kind of a suburban membership, and then we have some that
serve very small rural memberships. A lot of them tend to
purchase power from these generation and transmission
cooperatives. And so there's a handful of those that make the
bulk of the decisions that then trickle down to the co-op.


So I mentioned Great River Energy, in our state is the largest,
and so it's complex. And in terms of why they resist, well,
there's a couple of reasons. One is that they have tended to not
have necessarily the same pressures to move as quickly as some of
the investor owned, I think Xcel Energy, Minnesota Power, those
are publicly traded companies. They've got a lot of folks who are
looking at their future and what might be their risks. And for
Xcel, I think part of the reason they went first on saying they
wanted to be the first utility to get to 100% was to get noticed,
right, to make a mark on the national stage that they were a
leading utility.


The boards of a lot of these local co-ops don't tend to be
electricity experts. They're community members, right? They're
folks who live in their communities and care about.


David Roberts


And we should say, I'll say it if you won't, rural and therefore
likely quite conservative.


Jamie Long


Yes, that's right. And so their understanding of the most up to
date energy policy is sometimes a little dated. So I've met often
with rural cooperative boards in our state and I even have
brought graphs of the cost of solar and wind over time and showed
them,"Look, it's cheaper! It's cheaper". And the feedback I'll
sometimes get is, "Well, it's not reliable", right? There's
always kind of something else. So there has been traditionally a
lot of resistance at that level. But I'll give credit to some of
the large G&Ts that work with the co-ops. They've understood
that moving towards renewable energy is going to save their
members money.


So Great River Energy had a very large coal plant that it sold,
that wasn't located in North Dakota, and it lost $170 million at
that coal plant in 2019. They tried to sell that coal plant for a
dollar and couldn't find anybody who would take it. So they wound
up having to sell it with a very valuable high voltage
transmission line, which probably down the road is going to carry
mostly wind power from North Dakota to Minnesota. And by selling
it, they projected that they would cut rates for their member
co-ops by over 10%.


David Roberts


Wow.


Jamie Long


So, the economics are really driving a lot of the transition now
for some of these rural co-ops, too. But they tend to be
resistant to mandates and requirements.


David Roberts


So, I was going to ask how you brought them around, but it occurs
to me that maybe you just didn't and didn't have to. Did they
come around?


Jamie Long


So, the municipal utilities did not. They were the last holdouts.
Every other utility association or utility in the state wound up
being neutral or supportive. But the municipal utilities.


Interesting.


Were not, and in part they have local politicians who are
involved in those discussions, and those tend to be from rural
communities, and so you can connect the dots. For the rural
cooperatives, to their credit, they came to the table. They have
a very diverse membership, as I said, and there were a lot of
pressure on that group. But they had one reasonable ask, which
was, a lot of our co-ops are starting behind where these large
utilities are. They don't have nuclear power, they don't have
access necessarily to the same level of hydro as say, Minnesota
Power in the north. So, they're behind. And so they asked for a
longer on ramp to get to the same place. And so that seemed
reasonable to me. So, we have the same standard for them in 2035
and 2040. They've got to get to 90% 2035 and 100% 2040. But for
2030, which, you know, in utility terms is very fast for planning
purposes, we said, "Okay, we're going to give you 60% target for
cooperative and municipal utilities in 2030". So that they had a
little bit more lead time to do planning and to get on board.


And that got them to neutral. So that was a big deal that they
were willing to make that agreement.


David Roberts


A couple of other, you know, sort of what are being framed as
concessions to utilities because, you know, utilities, of course,
if you mandate something, they immediately come back and say,
well, you know, they spin this scenario where 2040 is looming,
and we don't have enough, and we're spending kajillions of
dollars, and we're having blackouts.


Jamie Long


Right.


David Roberts


So you have to formalize some sort of, well, you have in the bill
an "off-ramp", quote unquote "off-ramp", which just amounts to,
as I understand it, if the dates are approaching and the utility
doesn't think they can meet the target without compromising
reliability, it can go to the PUC and say, "Hey, we can't do this
without compromising reliability". And the PUC will say, "Okay,
here's a little extra time". Is that the long and short of it?


Jamie Long


Pretty much, so a little more to it. But this has been in our
renewable energy standard laws since the beginning, because there
was always sort of a concern that when you got close you might
not be able to get to meet it, and then you don't want the lights
to go off. Right, is the argument.


David Roberts


I always just think it's funny, like find me a state, find me a
PUC in the country that's going to be like.


Jamie Long


Exactly.


David Roberts


You can't meet the target without compromising utility
reliability. Sorry, we're locked in by the law, we're all just
going to have to have blackouts.


Jamie Long


Yeah, too bad. the Republicans in the legislature called this the
"Blackout Bill". And my last name is Long, so they called it the
"Long Blackout Bill", which I thought was good. It was like maybe
if my last name had been Short, then it wouldn't have been as
scary. We can deal with a "Short Blackout", but that was "Long
Blackout". So the 2007 standard, 25% by 2025, no one ever used
the "off-ramp", right? No one needed to. They met at eight years.


David Roberts


I don't know of a utility in a state, anywhere in the country
that has had to use one of these "off-ramps". Like they always
meet the targets. It's always easier than they think. It's like
can we learn from but.


Jamie Long


I think it is important to have this in the bill because I don't
want to assume that we're going to come back and change this bill
a bunch of times between now and 2040. If passed us any lesson,
we haven't done this since 2007, it might be another 20 years
until we get back to this. Who knows? And so right now I'm pretty
confident that we can get to 100% clean energy by 2040. But maybe
I'm wrong. Maybe we can only get to 98% and then do we really
want to force that last 2%? So it does feel like it is worth
having that mechanism in here.


But what we did do is we made sure that there were real factors
that the Public Utilities Commission would have to weigh. So yes,
they have to relay weigh reliability and affordability, but they
also have to weigh impact on environmental justice communities.
They also have to weigh the social cost of carbon. And so what is
this going to mean for the overall impact on our society? So
you're right. At the end of the day, if it's going to affect
reliability, and importantly now the utilities will have to
establish that on the record in a public hearing through the
Public Utilities Commission.


So it's not just the utilities saying, "Hey, sorry, I know I'd
said 100% by 2050, but Tesla couldn't do it". No, now they will
have to actually put together a record and demonstrate to the
Public Utilities Commission, "Hey, here is why I can't do this
thing".


David Roberts


We tried.


Jamie Long


Yeah, exactly.


David Roberts


So it's not an easy thing. It's not something they could just
screw around for 20 years and then invoke this.


Jamie Long


No, and they have to do it before the public. So does the utility
want to go and say, "Hey, I'm going to have to be burning more
dirty energy"? I mean, they're not going to want to do that
unless they feel like they really have to. So I do think it's
important to have that tool in there but, I would not be
surprised if it's used very infrequently, if ever.


David Roberts


Yeah. So the "off-ramp" did not bug me at all, but something else
that's in there has kind of bugged me, and I read a bunch of
articles about this and I just didn't see anybody else pick it
out or examine it at all. But it also, in the bill says that
utilities can buy RECs for compliance, renewable energy
certificates, which basically just means someone else somewhere
else generated more renewable energy than they need for their
compliance and they're selling the leftovers, and you can buy the
leftovers counted towards your total for compliance. To me,
that's more of a red flag than the "off-ramp" thing because, as
anyone who's been listening to Volts for a long time knows, these
RECs are fairly cheap.


Like if you just want to buy bulk solar and wind, like wind power
from the Midwest RECs, they're pretty cheap. And in many, many
cases they're going to be cheaper than actually reforming your
own operations or acquiring new assets of your own. So why
shouldn't I be worrying about that more? It seems like if there's
something I'm going to worry about utilities doing, it's not just
putting things off, it's just buying a bunch of cheap RECs to
cover their obligations. So how do you think about that?


Jamie Long


Yeah, well so this has been the framework that we've had in state
law since the beginning of our renewable energy standard. So it's
a tool that's been around and widely accepted. The renewable
energy credits vary in cost and it's, you know, hard to know
exactly what a 2039 renewable energy credit will cost. But they
are real. So, you know, there's sometimes there is a concern
around offsets in general, and I think a lot of that is valid,
but renewable energy credits are a wind or solar or other
renewable energy system where there's retiring their credit for a
specific use.


So it is additional renewable capacity that is being built on the
grid and, at least for Minnesota, for the RECs that have been
used to meet some of the earlier renewable energy standards, 60%
of those are in Minnesota, and all of them are in the Midwest.


David Roberts


Is that by requirement or is that.


Jamie Long


No, that's not by requirement but that's been the way, the way
it's happened and I think the Public Utilities Commission has
worked with trying to make the RECs as local as possible. So they
so far have been all in the Midwest, and 60% have been in
Minnesota. So that is additional renewable energy that's getting
built in the state, and those credits can't be retired for
anybody else. So if the utilities building their own renewable
energy they're going to retire the RECs for themselves. So it is
real. In some ways it acts as a carbon tax on the margins.


When you're getting towards that last little bit of power that
you need to meet your targets, then you're going to have to pay a
fee. But we know that renewable energy is cheaper right now than
fossil fuels and this is only going to put even more of a finger
on the scale towards renewable energy. And if you're an investor
owned utility you're going to have to go in front of the Public
Utilities Commission and demonstrate why it is cheaper for your
ratepayers to have a fossil fuel plant where you're paying RECs
on it than wind and solar. And I just don't think that is likely
to happen.


David Roberts


So you are not worried about RECs forming any substantial chunk
of compliance?


Jamie Long


No, I'm not. I think that the most likely use for that will be
when you have a last one or 2% and you have some sort of, I don't
know, hydrogen peaker that uses some hydrogen that made from
fossil fuels or something like that, that it'll take over that
last couple of percent. Or something like waste energy, that I
was describing before, where there's some other public policy
good that you're dealing with. We have a big emerald ash borer
problem in the state right now, and are cutting down a bunch of
our ash trees, and we have a couple of facilities that are
burning that and making energy out of it so. That produces carbon
and there might be a need to have a REC for something like that.


David Roberts


And I also just sort of idly wonder when we're getting up to
2030, 2035 if compliance won't be, if more and more utilities are
under compliance standards whether there are still going to be so
many.


Jamie Long


Well that's right.


David Roberts


Excess RECs to sell, right? I wonder if that market is going to
tighten up.


Jamie Long


Market is going to tighten up. I mean these are going to be
needed for a lot of different reasons. Corporate purchasers want
RECs, utilities want RECs. We're seeing these standards become
more common. So, I don't know that we can count on cheap RECs
forever. And there does need to be I think some mechanism to
account for these hard to deal with marginal sources. And we
could say that you can't burn trash and you can't burn wood, but
I probably couldn't have passed that bill.


David Roberts


Right. A couple of things about the bill itself. I'm sure you're
aware one of the bigs from ongoing conversations in the clean
energy world these days is about permitting and sighting and the
difficulty thereof, that being kind of a bottleneck. Sort of
like, even if you have willing capital and willing utilities and
willing everything else, you have this process of permitting and
sighting that is sclerotic and slowing things down. Did you take
that on at all in the bill?


Jamie Long


We did, yeah. We know that transmission is going to be a big
challenge. It's a big challenge right now. We have a very
constrained grid in Minnesota and a lot of renewable energy
projects aren't getting built that otherwise could because the
transmission costs are too high. And our regional ISO, the
Midcontinent ISO in Minnesota, has announced recently a $10
billion new transmission investment in Minnesota and the region,
that's the largest in US History.


David Roberts


Oh yes, we did a pod on that last year.


Jamie Long


Yeah, I listened to it. It was great. So frankly, myself and the
former Republican Energy Committee chair and the Senate pushed
really hard on MISO to move as quickly as they could on this
because there were so many constraints. So we've been working at
that level, but we also are trying to help at the state level.
And we have several provisions in the bill that are designed to
help with siting. One would remove a specific certificate that
independent power purchasers are currently required to do, that
was designed for utilities with ratepayer customers, and so it
wasn't really the right fit.


Another would, for very short tie lines for solar projects, that
right now have to get county approval, would move that to the
Public Utilities Commission. A lot of the counties don't want to
deal with that anyway. So we were trying to do some of these easy
streamlining things and they all wound up being really non
controversial. But to help just make it a little easier to get
some of this renewable energy deployed.


David Roberts


And do you feel like there's more to do there? Like, is that
something that's going to come up again in the legislative
session, do you think?


Jamie Long


Well, there may be. We had four specific fixes in the bill, and
these had been around for a few years, we've been working on them
for a while. There may be other changes that are needed to help
out. The big thing we need to do is just figure out how we can
get some of these projects built in our state that MISO has
approved and we need to keep those on track. Minnesota Power has
proposed a really innovative transmission line in northern
Minnesota that's going to connect to some new wind power in North
Dakota. And so that will be an important project too.


I think they're getting some federal support for that
transmission line, it was recently announced. So we have to build
some of these projects out and I think there's going to be some
state support to do that. For example, we're going to try to pass
a pretty hefty package of state matching dollars to help out with
the Federal Inflation Reduction Act, available money for
transmission, and we're hoping that that will help deploy some of
these projects.


David Roberts


I'm curious both about the prevailing wage provisions, and sort
of beyond that, the general disposition of labor toward all this,
like the role they played in all this.


Jamie Long


I think that was one of the best parts of the coalition work we
did was having the broad support of our building trades and labor
partners. It's not always been an easy conversation with building
trades and clean energy transition, but I think seeing where the
economics have pushed some of the coal plants in our state, and
also recognizing that we have really good opportunities to build
clean energy. A lot of the building trades in Minnesota have been
really good partners in trying to help make sure that we are
moving towards clean energy and that we are doing so with good
union jobs. So because Minnesota was kind of an early mover in
clean energy, even though we haven't been that active in recent
years, we did get an early mover advantage in our, kind of the
90s into the 2000's, and we have two of the largest wind and
solar installers in the country, based in Minnesota. And
combined, they tell me that they've installed over 50% of all
wind turbines in the US In the last decade. So we have a lot of
opportunity that Minnesota workers have seen over the years to
build renewable energy projects.


David Roberts


And an existing workforce that's presumably helping you, lobbying
with you for all this.


Jamie Long


That's right, that knows that these are good jobs. So we put a
prevailing wage requirement for all new large energy projects in
the bill, which is a big deal. And then we also included local
worker considerations for the Public Utilities Commission, so
that they could weigh when they were approving projects if they
were in fact helping employ local workers. We also put in there
preference for projects that are going to be in energy transition
communities where coal plants, for example, will be retiring. So
that we're trying to help backfill some of the tax base in those
particular communities.


So we worked hard with our labor partners and I don't know if
there have been other states where the entire building trades,
the statewide coalition supported 100% clean energy standard, but
in Minnesota they did. And we had the bill signing at the Labor
Center in St. Paul to mark what a strong partnership this was.


David Roberts


Well, it seems to me like nothing but a good thing that this
element of the legislation, the sort of prevailing wages, local
workers, all this kind of stuff seems to be a standard part of
these state bills now. Washington, my home state of Washington,
did some great stuff on this, but it seems like now it's just
sort of like a standard piece of the puzzle, which strikes me as
all to the good.


Jamie Long


I think that's right. And I think President Biden deserves a lot
of credit on that too, to having made this labor climate
partnership a real cornerstone of his clean energy agenda.


David Roberts


So, before we wrap up with just a couple of political questions.
You've said a couple of times that Minnesota is the purplest,
let's say, state to pass one of these things.


Jamie Long


Yes.


David Roberts


Which is true, but, you squint close up, and it's party line vote
in both chambers. So, I mean, this almost feels silly to ask, but
was there anything helpful or supportive from anyone on the
Republican side throughout this process or did you just come into
this thinking, "We're Democrats, we got to figure it out among
ourselves, there's no hope"? Was that as predictable as I would
have expected?


Jamie Long


Well, unfortunately it was. It was fully party line in both the
House and Senate. We have had some bipartisan clean energy wins
in recent years. We were one of the only split legislators in the
country in the last four years, and when I chaired the Energy
Committee, we had some good wins on energy efficiency and solar
deployment. But for the big changes that we really need, we
really weren't able to find the partnership that we wanted across
the aisle. I don't think that that's true with Minnesota public,
though. When you look at the public polling, and we have some
public polling on our bill, it's broadly supported by the
Minnesota public.


There are partisan differences, though, even in the polling. So
it does show that unfortunately, we are at a place where climate
clean energy policy is more polarized than I think is healthy.
But I think that the good news is, we have broad buy-in now from
our utilities, from our labor partners. And I think if we look
back on this in ten years, you'll find that the public is going
to be very supportive and the politics on this will change. I
think that when the public sees the benefits that this will have
for job creation, for overall cost of utility bills, and of
course, for climate public health, I think that support will
grow.


But I don't want to undersell what we accomplished either, which
is that with a one vote margin in the Senate.


David Roberts


Yeah, I mean, let me just ask about that directly, because the
Inflation Reduction Act was a friggin miracle.


Jamie Long


Right.


David Roberts


Because it all came down to the whims of one vain, relatively
illinformed person and just sort of woke up on the right side of
the bed. We sort of touched on some of the elements of this
story, like, you brought the utilities around, at least to be
neutral, not against it. Labor was for it. I mean, there weren't
a lot of big organized commercial interests, seems like, against
it. It's just Republicans against it. So how did you manage to
keep every single senator on line?


Is there some magic dust?


Jamie Long


So Senator Frentz, who was a lead author in the Senate, and I
worked really closely together throughout the entire process. And
he's a rural moderate Democrat, I'm an urban progressive
Democrat. So we were a good partnership. But when the Senate
flipped to Democratic control, I was taking a look at some of the
new members and hoping that we would be able to pass a bill as
strong as the one we passed. And there was a member who won, who
was the majority maker, who won in the Trump district, bright red
district in the far northwest part of the state, around Morehead.


And then I started reading up on his background and turns out
he's a meteorologist who has been talking about climate change on
the air for 20 years in his community, and the impact that this
has on agriculture. He spoke on the floor on the Senate talking
about how if we don't act now, the agricultural impact in our
state is going to be enormous.


David Roberts


It's kind of a lucky stroke.


Jamie Long


That was a pretty good draw. We had a member who was in a
challenging part of the state in the Iron Range, as we call it,
in northeastern Minnesota, but we had all of his utilities that
were neutral or supportive and we had the strong support of
labor. And so for him, I think it was a vote that he could take
and take with confidence. So, you know, the coalition that we
built really helped. But we, we didn't we didn't take this to
conference committee. We, Senator Frentz and I negotiated
together and got to a place where we had a bill that could pass
and get the support of folks in Trump districts in greater
Minnesota and Minneapolis, districts in the Metro, with one bill
with no amendments through the House and Senate into the
governor's desk.


So that took some work, but I'm really proud that we were able to
get it done.


David Roberts


The ability to hash this out such that it didn't need to go
through a long dragged out conference committee process is really
a notable level of party discipline and purpose, which we don't
always associate with the Democratic Party. So it's really great
to see when it comes up, like, you guys did not faff about you
just went straight at this thing and passed it.


Jamie Long


That's right. We knew what we wanted to do and, yeah, we got it
done in a month. So it was an intense month, but I think we knew
our purpose and we were aligned in our goals. And I wasn't two
months ago sure that we would be able to get a bill as strong as
the one we got through done. But I think Senator Frentz deserves
a lot of credit for the work he did with the senators. And
frankly, our partners, the utilities, deserve credit for being
willing to come along, right? They understood that this is the
direction we're headed.


They knew this bill was going to pass. And so the asks that they
made were pretty reasonable on the scale of things. And now I
think we have one of the five strongest clean energy standards in
the country.


David Roberts


Two very brief questions to wrap up. One is North Dakota says
they're going to sue Minnesota over the idea being that, you not
buying their dirty power is a matter of interstate commerce. And
thus your bill, something, something, dormant commerce clause.
The illegal analysis I've read indicates that this suit has no
merit. There was a suit back in 2007 that the Republicans won,
but apparently it was on different grounds, the law was very
different, it's a whole different thing now. I don't know if
there's anything to say about this other than, it's likely to
fail, but do you have any additional thoughts on it?


Jamie Long


Well, it says a lot about energy politics in the state of North
Dakota. I think it says more about that than our legal chances.
But we're North Dakota's biggest customer for their biggest
industry. So energy is a lot of what North Dakota does and, to
date, they have tended to focus on fossil fuels. Now they are
moving, there is a lot of wind energy development happening in
the state and to Governor Burgum's credit, he has said that he
wants to move to a carbon neutral economy by 2030, or carbon
neutral energy system.


David Roberts


Yeah, they got a bunch of CCS and hydrogen fantasies to work out.


Jamie Long


That's right. Yeah. So that's where most of his hopes are pinned
on. But in terms of the legal challenge, no, there's nothing
really there. I mean, the overall framework which is that we are
regulating what Minnesota utilities sell to Minnesota customers,
has been in law for all of our renewable energy standards since
the inception, and North Dakota has never challenged those. So
they did win a lawsuit against us after the 2007 energy bill and
that was around a restriction that we had on imports of out of
state coal. So that is a harder one to hold up in court and it
was struck down.


But in terms of this particular provision, it's not the same.
And, as I mentioned, it was in law then and they didn't sue it
against it because they knew that they weren't going to be able
to win. So it is unfortunate. We'll probably have to go to court
with our neighbors, and that's not never fun, but we're going to
win this one and the law will go into effect, and hopefully North
Dakota can sell us a lot of wind power.


David Roberts


I really wonder what North Dakota thinks it is communicating to
the rest of the nation with this behavior. Like, how do they
think this looks? I know they're all conservative and so they're
all in the bubble, they're all watching Fox, so maybe they don't
know how this looks to the rest of the country, but like good
grief, suing to stop the future. Anyway, so final question this
is electricity. Done and done. Check, check. What about
transportation? And what about heat? What about natural gas heat?
Those are the two big prizes after electricity. Are you cooking
up plans to go after one or both of those?


Jamie Long


Yes, we are. So on transportation, Governor Walz has been a real
leader on vehicle electrification. He was the first state in the
Midwest to sign on to the clean car standards out of California
that are permitted for other states to sign on under The Clean
Air Act and took a lot of flak for that, but stood up to the
naysayers. And that's been a good commitment from him. But now we
have the opportunity to do good work at the legislature, too, on
electric vehicles. So I suspect there's going to be a really big
package there and a very big package on transit, which I know has
been something that we have wanted to fund at a substantial level
for many years and haven't had the political support to do that.


David Roberts


Yeah, you have some really, sort of, in those terms, kind of
progressive cities in Minnesota that could use some help, I
think, becoming more walkable and transit oriented.


Jamie Long


We sure do. And they very much want it, and haven't had the
support to get there. So we got another light rail line we're
building out right now, we want to build a fourth. We have a lot
of bus rapid transit that's being built in the region that we
want to help support, as well as new bike-ped infrastructure. My
city of Minneapolis tends to rank in the top five cities in the
country for bike infrastructure, but that doesn't come for free,
and they want more. So we need more. So that's going to be a big
area.


And then in terms of buildings, absolutely. The governor has a
proposal to move our new commercial construction to net zero by
2036, for our codes, which I think would be exciting. And so that
would be updating our codes every three years to get to that
point. So I'm hoping that we can pass that this year. And
certainly that's just the first step, we do need to make sure
we're looking at existing buildings, I had a building benchmark
bill last year that we are hoping can move this year, too. So
there's more to be done. And luckily we have a lot of session
left since we were able to get this done in month one.


David Roberts


Right. How novel, just to get something done quickly, and then I
imagine even elements of the public who are against it, just
like, everyone prefers for this just to be done, right? Nobody
enjoys these full year long dragged out, miserable. No one wants
that again.


Jamie Long


No, yeah, we avoided the Manchin "Will he? Won't he?" for a year.


David Roberts


Oh, thank God.


Jamie Long


And just got her done, so that was, I think, exciting.


David Roberts


Awesome. Well, congratulations again.


Jamie Long


Thank you.


David Roberts


Representative Jamie Long. Thank you so much for coming, and
thanks for all your great work in Minnesota.


Jamie Long


Thanks, David. Appreciate It.


David Roberts


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