Last week, Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy CEO Dick Kelly asked Congress to raise his taxes - specifically, his carbon taxes. In a statement that may sound the Paul Revere-like alarm for climate and energy policy, Kelly thinks the U.S. Senate chickened out of a climate bill. They backed off and "started calling it ‘cap and tax,'" Kelly told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Kelly is head of a multistate utility that has increasingly moved away from coal power and spent millions to retrofit some of its plants to cleaner-burning natural gas.  Kelly is joined in his attitude by Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers. Rogers has also stated that the "growing consensus in the electric utility industry" is to "act now." Rogers points to private capital that's waiting for a predictable regulatory landscape to set the stage for investment into clean energy.

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A free public forum on tar sands will be held at 7:00PM on Wednesday, September 22 at the University of St. Thomas O'Shaughnessy Auditorium in St. Paul. A public reception with a photo display and information tables will take place prior to the forum at 6:30 pm.

Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute in Calgary, Clayton Thomas-Muller of the Indigenous Environmental Network, and Michael Noble of Fresh Energy will discuss the catastrophic impacts of tar sands excavations on Canadian boreal forests, environment and Indigenous communities alike. The speakers will also address Minnesota's direct role in dirty tar sands oil consumption, and what we can do reduce our dependence on oil.

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Great Lakes states are predominantly served by coal generation, the impacts of which are well-documented. Mercury advisories are in place across much of the Great Lakes, and global warming may cause other serious problems, including increasing water temperature in the lakes and decreasing water levels, impacting wildlife, fisheries, water quality and the associate tourism and shipping activities that rely on these attributes.

Wind generation on the Great Lakes could be part of the solution. Indeed, the Great Lakes is estimated to have 250 gigawatts (GW) of wind potential, enough to power 75 million homes. About 160 GW of that power is located in areas 30 meters in depth or less, where current technologies could most easily be implemented.

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Thirty years working on energy policy and I had never thought much about fluid hydraulics. But today I had lunch with Professor Kim Stelson,  Director of the Center for Compact and Efficient Fluid Power, and his colleague Michael Gust, Industrial Liaison Director. It turns out that the Center has been headquartered at the University of Minnesota for the past four years, and it may be the University's best kept secret.

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Over the last two decades, Minnesota has experienced a dramatic change in our energy use and energy policies. We are closer than ever to achieving a new energy economy using homegrown resources that create jobs, protect our air and water, and strengthen our state's economy and communities. However, there is still much that needs to be accomplished to reach our state, regional, and national clean energy and global warming pollution reduction goals. Looking back, what are some of the biggest energy changes and successes for Minnesota over the past 25 years, and more importantly, what steps need to be taken to continue to improve the way we use energy and our energy policies?

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In the continued absence of comprehensive national climate change policy, we need to evaluate the potential of existing regulatory authority to get reductions in global warming pollution. A recent analysis called Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the United States Using Existing Authorities and State Action completed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) reports on three scenarios for federal agency and state government action to reduce emissions. WRI labeled these scenarios "Lackluster" "Middle of the Road" and "Go-Getter" scenarios, respectively. For each scenario, WRI evaluated the opportunities to reduce emissions and the real-world limits on those prospective actions.

WRI calculated the potential for greenhouse gas emissions reductions with aggressive action at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and at the federal departments of Energy and Transportation using existing authorities. The study found that these actions could put the U.S. on a trajectory to meet the Obama Administration's 2020 target of achieving U.S. emissions reduction of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with a mission to understand and predict changes in the earth's environment, has released its comprehensive appraisal of Earth's climate, 2009 State of the Climate. The report examines comprehensive data from multiple sources, based on observations spanning the globe from the poles to the equator, and confirms that the past decade was the warmest on record.

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