Setting MN's climate standards using the best science

Minnesota is one of the fastest-warming states in America. Climate change is threatening our farmers, causing flooding, and costing every Minnesotan. It is also vying with the pandemic as the top public health crisis of the 21st century. Minnesotans are seeing the health impacts right now, including Lyme disease, poor air quality, worsening allergies, extreme heat and mental health impacts. These impacts are particularly significant for people of color and poor communities. Our children and grandchildren deserve a livable climate but we will fail to give them one unless we set science-based climate standards and then meet them. 

Setting science-based climate targets and measuring our progress is the first step toward taking the bold climate action we need. Unless science-based standards guide our actions, we will fail in our efforts to address the climate crisis.  We led the nation when Minnesota set bipartisan climate standards fourteen years ago in the Next Generation Energy Act of 2007. At the time, those standards were consistent with climate science, but we have learned a lot since then. We must now update our standards to reflect the targets that scientists tell us are needed to avoid the worst climate impacts.

Representative Patty Acomb (DFL-Minnetonka) sought to address this issue during the 2021 state legislative session by introducing the Next Generation Climate Act. This bill would update Minnesota’s climate targets according to the best available science - including a target to achieve net zero greenhouse gas pollution by 2050. It would require that our government’s actions are consistent with these targets, and require annual reporting on progress toward meeting these goals. 

Minnesota democrats supported the Next Generation Climate Act, and included it as part of a set of transformational climate policy provisions in the House energy and commerce policy omnibus bill. In addition to setting science-based emissions reduction standards, that bill would set goals related to building electrification, establish a program to install solar energy on school buildings, and reduce barriers to siting solar farms. In April, the Minnesota House of Representatives passed the omnibus bill along party lines.

Unfortunately, although the Democratic House and Republican Senate agreed on a few smaller policy proposals, the Next Generation Climate Act and other policies that would meet the scale of the climate challenge were not even considered in the Senate. 

In 2023, with a new legislature, a version of the Next Generation Climate Act was included in the state budget bill. It strengthened Minnesota's climate targets to match the science-based international targets that intend to limit global climate warming to 1.5 degrees C. This version did not include the requirement that state decisions be consistent with the targets, however.