Business Impact
Minnesota's business and residential customers' electricity needs are steadily growing. Even taking into consideration new laws increasing conservation targets and mandating major investments in renewable energy, and assuming these efforts are successful, the need for additional “base-load” electricity - generated by plants that run 24 hours a day, seven days a week - is likely to occur within the next decade. Until a statewide carbon emissions plan is enacted, new fossil-fuel based resources face an uncertain future to help meet that need.
Minnesota is among a minority of states in the country that has adopted a state policy banning new nuclear energy. This policy, in concert with other state policies, effectively limits new base-load resource options to natural gas-based generation and exposing customers to an expensive, volatile regional market. Eliminating Minnesota's outdated nuclear ban would give customers a clean, safe, reliable option to fill the eventual need for new power with a technology that doesn't contribute to global climate change.
Any serious attempt by the Legislature to address Minnesota's contribution to climate change must include the possibility of new nuclear generation into our base-load energy profile. Without this option, meeting the state's greenhouse gas reduction goals will be much more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.