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MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Minnesota’s biggest electric utilities – Xcel Energy and Minnesota Power – have pledged to go carbon-free by 2050. They’ve already made a lot of changes, and are more than halfway there.
So, where does our power come from now? And where will it come from in the future?
In the city of North Branch is a 1,000 acre farm that’s covered in solar panels. According to Chris Clark, Xcel Energy president, it’s a 100mw installation, enough to power 20,000 homes.
“We get a decent mix of sun, so it’s actually a helpful contribution to our clean energy strategy,” said Clark.
Currently 3% of Xcel’s upper-Midwest electricity comes from solar.
In the last 10 years, Minnesota’s energy mix has changed quite a bit, Clark said. The state used to be a “typical Midwest, very coal heavy utility,” he said.
But in 2020, the largest chunk of Minnesota’s electricity – 26% – came from nuclear energy. Coal provided 25%, wind supplied 21% and natural gas yielded 20%. In addition to solar’s 3%, biomass and hydro both contributed 2%.
How quickly is this mix changing?
“It’s changing very quickly. And in fact, we’re having luck changing it faster than we thought we were going to be able to,” said Clark.
“We’ve added a significant amount of wind in the last few years,” said Clark. “So when we have a nice windy day, we’ll actually lower the input from our coal units.
Great River Energy will eliminate coal from its portfolio at the end of next year. Xcel is retiring its last coal plant in 2030, and Minnesota Power plans to stop burning coal in the state in 2035.
But still, there’s the question of whether a carbon-free power grid is reliable in Minnesota.
“Let me say I think that a carbon-free grid can be made reliable,” said Gabe Chan, who studies energy technologies at the University of Minnesota. But, he added, “I think if we tried to do this tomorrow we would have a lot of challenges.”
It’s because Minnesota has an intermittency problem, like when it is not windy or sunny.
“We can get to the 80% by 2030 with today’s existing technologies,” Clark said. It’s the last 20% that’s tough.
“So during the 2020s, we really need a lot of innovation,” said Clark. “Advanced nuclear, carbon sequestration, battery storage, hydrogen perhaps and probably things we aren’t even thinking of now.”
In the future, Clark believes the state will be seeing a lot more solar farms in Minnesota.
The Iron Mining Association said they have affordability and reliability concerns about the plans. Environmental groups say that while they like the pledges, they don’t like some of the utilities’ plans to build and use natural gas plants as a bridge to get to carbon-free.
Source: CBS Minnesota
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