At a time when Minnesotans are facing unprecedented economic challenges, the current operations at many coal plants are costing customers more money due to significant plant operating losses.
coal
Cutting Carbon and Increasing Savings: A Win-Win for Minnesotans
Xcel Energy has announced that it will change how it operates two of their Minnesota coal plants throughout the year, which projects to result in a 60% reduction in carbon emissions and millions of dollars in savings for customers.
Fresh Energy’s 25 years of progress on retiring coal plants
When Fresh Energy was founded in 1992, Minnesota generated almost two-thirds of its electricity from coal. Looking forward to today, coal is now only 39 percent of the state’s electricity generation and 19 of the 23 large coal-burning units in Minnesota have been announced for retirement. Learn more about our progress.
Minnesota Power to retire two coal plants
Today, Minnesota Power based in Duluth announced their decision to retire two older coal-burning power plants, Boswell 1 and 2 in Cohasset, MN, near Grand Rapids, by the end of 2018. Fresh Energy and our clean energy partners advocated that these units appear to be no longer economic to run, with cleaner energy available and cheaper. Regulators at the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) on June 9, 2016 evaluated the economics of running these older units with needed additional pollution controls, compared to other cleaner, cheaper options for meeting energy needs, and the PUC agreed with us.
News Release: Conservation, clean energy, and labor advocates react to new federal carbon pollution standards to protect Minnesota, address climate change
Today, local conservation, clean energy, and labor advocates said newly announced federal carbon pollution limits for power plants would address the leading cause of climate change and protect public health.
