Major midwestern victory in fight to combat global warming
by Fresh EnergyBy J. Drake Hamilton, science policy director, Fresh Energy
On May 9, 2008, two administrative law judges recommended that Minnesota regulators deny permission to construct and operate power lines across west-central Minnesota from the proposed Big Stone II coal plant on the South Dakota-Minnesota border. The judges found that the power companies proposing the new coal plant failed to show that demand for electricity could not be better and more cost-effectively met through renewable energy and energy efficiency. The judges also found that the power companies had not adequately considered the costs of global warming pollution. Without the power lines, the proposed coal plant cannot be built.
The judges agreed with testimony by experts provided by five environmental and clean energy groups. The experts testified that the power plant’s electricity was unneeded, would add millions of tons of global warming pollution each year, and that clean energy sources, such as efficiency and wind, were lower cost alternatives. The experts testified on behalf of Fresh Energy, the Izaak Walton League of America-Midwest Office, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Wind on the Wires. The judges reported their findings to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC), which will make the final decision on whether to grant permission to the utilities proposing to build the power lines. The PUC’s decision is expected in June.
The United States is poised to begin work toward meaningful climate legislation that will create clean energy solutions at the scale of the global warming problem. A core element of climate protection is that we must transform our energy priorities, ending development of new coal plants that emit global warming pollution. Choosing to make the climate crisis worse by approving plans to transmit polluting power from coal-fired power plants confounds our shared work to stabilize our climate. Stability that could also deliver economic opportunity and energy security. The legacy of each proposed coal plant—millions of tons of global warming pollution released every year to our shared atmosphere—is incompatible with the need to prevent irreversible damages from global warming.
Energy regulators in states across the country—Florida, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Oregon—have all voted down coal plants in the past year. Other utilities in Minnesota, including Xcel Energy and Minnesota Power, have said they won’t build new coal-fired plants in Minnesota in the next 20 years because of the state’s recently passed laws requiring more use of energy efficiency and renewable energy.
The judges’ findings include the following on costs of carbon regulation:
“Regulations imposing a financial cost on carbon dioxide emissions are very likely to be adopted within the next few years. Future CO2 restrictions are likely to add substantially to the cost of energy from all fossil fuel sources, including the Applicants’ existing coal plants and the new Big Stone II coal plant. A federal policy response to global warming now appears very likely. Bills are under consideration by the U.S. Congress that would place new costs on carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants. Increasingly, prudent utilities are factoring estimates of the costs they may face under federal carbon constraints into their resource planning. Regulators and lenders are beginning to require them to do so.”
Finding 49, page 14. Read the full findings here.
If the Minnesota PUC grants permission to build transmission lines across Minnesota from the Big Stone II coal plant, the four million tons of new global warming pollution released every year from that single plant would be the equivalent of adding the same amount of carbon dioxide produced by all the cars, trucks, and trains in South Dakota.
