MCEA's Climate Program Director on the PUC

By Amelia Vohs, MCEA Climate Program Director

When I was in elementary school, I had a science teacher who was Crabby. I remember her as irritated. Edgy. She didn’t mind yelling . . . loudly. For a long time, I thought she was in the wrong profession. But looking back, maybe she was yelling because she was teaching about an existential threat to humanity, and no one was listening. She wasn’t my favorite teacher by a long shot, but she did change my life. She scared me—and not just by yelling. She taught me our planet was warming, that if it continued to warm it would threaten our very survival. Even worse, adults weren’t doing much about it.

From that moment, I cared about climate change in my bones. Every time I was allowed to pick a topic for a school assignment, I picked climate change. I wanted my peers to know this was happening, and to care. Thirty years later, I’m still talking to my peers about climate change. But now I get to do so as the director of an entire program aimed at addressing climate change at MCEA. To have a career working on climate change is the realization of a childhood dream. 

However, I’m not sure my friends understand what I actually do. I work in front of a governing body where some of the most important climate work in the State gets done. There’s a lot of acronyms. It’s in the weeds. But I love it. So, in the spirit of childhood nostalgia, here is a decoder ring to explain where and how MCEA is doing big climate work in Minnesota.

Greenhouse gas emissions come from the following broad categories: (1) electricity generation, (2) transportation, (3) agriculture, (4) industrial, (5) residential, and (6) waste.  

Reducing emissions from the first category—electricity generation—has been a long-time focus of MCEA’s advocacy. This is because emissions from electricity generation have historically been the largest source of emissions (although this is starting to change thanks to advocacy efforts).Additionally, climate solutions for all the other categories will only work if the electricity used by those categories is from clean energy sources.  For example, switching from gasoline powered vehicles to electric vehicles will only have a meaningful climate impact if the electricity used to charge electric vehicles comes from wind and solar, not coal.

So, how do we decarbonize electricity generation in Minnesota? Through the legislature?  Through the courts? Advocacy before both of those bodies is a piece of the puzzle. But where most of the work happens is at the PUC (in this instance, not a hockey term). The PUC (aka the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission) is a 5-member board that governs the electric utilities in Minnesota. In other words, they get to make key decisions about where our electricity comes from. 

They decide when a coal plant should stop operating (this is called “retiring” a coal plant). They decide how many new wind, solar, and battery projects will be built, and by when. When a utility wants to build a new gas plant, they decide if the gas plant is truly necessary, or if clean energy could work instead. They also track whether Minnesota utilities are complying with the new 100% Law that requires utilities to serve their customers with 100% carbon-free electricity by the year 2040.

The PUC also influences what emerging technologies will be considered climate solutions. For example, they will decide where to allow a new underground pipeline in Minnesota that will capture carbon dioxide emissions from certain ethanol plants and transport it to North Dakota where it could be stored or used to extract more oil. They will decide whether using hydrogen, carbon capture technology, or burning trash for electricity are considered climate solutions in Minnesota, even though some actually release more carbon dioxide emissions per kilowatt hour than coal.

With this many key decisions on their plate, the PUC will unquestionably shape the trajectory of climate change in Minnesota. That is why MCEA shows up before the PUC regularly. On Thursdays at 10:00 AM, MCEA lawyers (myself included) as well as our climate policy expert can often be found downtown St. Paul at the PUC’s meetings. There, we answer the PUC’s questions and ask them to make decisions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions swiftly and urgently.

Recently, our work led the PUC to order a utility to stop serving Minnesota customers with electricity from one of the dirtiest coal plants in the country. The utility insisted it needed to use the coal plant through 2040. But that coal plant was not only terrible for climate change, it was also a bad deal financially and contributed to hundreds of premature deaths and health issues due to its air pollution. Our case was so strong that PUC told the coal plant to stop serving Minnesotans nearly a decade earlier than the utility proposed.

Winning the fight against a coal plant, especially alongside one of the toughest coal fighting attorneys in Minnesota (MCEA attorney Barb Freese) was pretty darn exciting. Especially for the kid inside me that has wanted to stop climate pollution since she was ten years old.

And there is always more to come. It will be at the PUC where we’ll continue to fight for the most effective implementation of Minnesota’s new 100 percent law. It’s where we will advocate for faster timelines for decarbonization in the fossil gas sector. It’s where we’ll push for approval of the transmission lines urgently needed to move clean energy across our state. 

If you’re as passionate about climate change as I am, the public is always allowed to comment on issues in front of the PUC. The more people urging bold action on climate, especially amid efforts by industry and utilities to slow it down, the more likely commissioners will be to mandate it. 

Thanks, as always, for supporting our work, and stay tuned for invitations from us about ways you can join our efforts at the PUC.