GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. – The Center of the American Experiment has launched a campaign highlighting the high cost of green energy in Minnesota.
Billboards are popping up along major highways and radio ads are playing all around the state calling attention to Minnesota’s failed investment in wind energy. The public information campaign was launched by CAE as a follow up to their report titled “Energy Policy in Minnesota: The High Cost of Failure.”
In recent years, Minnesota has rolled out various renewable energy policies, primarily focusing on wind energy. CAE’s report finds the policies have cost consumers billions of dollars and have failed to meet the lofty environmental goals. Instead, the only notable change in energy in Minnesota to come as a result of the policy changes has been rising electricity rates.
According to CAE’s Wind Energy Fact Sheet, electricity in Minnesota historically has been 18-20 percent lower than the rest of the nation. However, with the state investing about $15 billion in wind farms and transmission lines, the state lost its competitive advantage, and 2017 was the first year Minnesotans paid more than the national average for electricity.
“Minnesota’s aspirational energy policy is a grand exercise in virtue signaling that does little to reduce either conventional pollution or greenhouse gas emissions,” CAE’s report reads.
Despite the billions of dollars in wind energy investments, Minnesota’s CO2 emissions have remained virtually the same. While wind energy struggles to offer Minnesota any environmental benefit, there are also high environmental costs associated with the change including the need for larger areas of land than conventional power plants, inconvenient location requiring miles of transmission lines, and the threat they pose for birds and bats.
CAE is also taking their research to the Minnesota Legislature, informing lawmakers of the failed green energy policies. Last week, CAE leadership including President John Hinderaker, Economist John Phelan, and Policy Fellow Isaac Orr testified before the Minnesota House of Representatives’ Job Growth and Energy Affordability Committee, presenting a PowerPoint based on CAE’s research.
“Let’s hope Minnesota’s legislature learns an expensive lesson from its effort to mandate “green” electricity,” Hinderaker wrote in a post regarding the presentation.
Read CAE’s Wind Energy Fact Sheet here.
