Minnesota's climate law rollout sparks questions over what counts as 'carbon free'

CATHY WURZER: Now, I mentioned the state climate law. It was passed last year and it requires all electricity in the state to come from carbon-free sources by the year 2040. But it's up to regulators to decide what exactly counts as carbon-free. The key question here is whether burning trash and timber for energy should be part of the mix. There might not be an answer until the end of next year, after the Public Utilities Commission recently moved to delay the decision. Andrew Hazzard has been following this. He covers climate change and environmental justice for Sahan Journal, and he's on the line. Andrew, thanks for taking the time. How are you been? How've you been? Curious.

ANDREW HAZZARD: I'm doing well. Thank you so much for having me.

CATHY WURZER: Good, good. I'm glad you're taking the time to do this. So let's help folks out here. How much of the state's electricity is generated by trash incinerators and wood biomass plants?

ANDREW HAZZARD: Right now it's only about 2% of our total electricity generation. It is about 6% of what is currently considered renewable generation. But that is, of course, a different standard than being carbon-free. So as this new 2040 law approaches, it has these benchmarks in it. By 2030, about 80% of our sources are supposed to come from carbon-free sources. And so that's coming up soon.

And right now we're at about 55%. So even though it's a small amount of the overall electric grid, every point is going to count as these different utilities and the state in general tries to reach that legally mandated goal.

CATHY WURZER: Now, I'm no scientist here, but I know when trash or wood or anything else is burned, that releases carbon dioxide. So, gosh, how could that kind of energy be considered carbon-free?

ANDREW HAZZARD: Well, that is indeed the question here. As you pointed out, burning is the key word. Combustion is the key word. And definitionally, it, of course, cannot be considered carbon-free, which is where we get into this really long debate. There are utility companies, there are municipalities that have their own utilities. There is the timber industry, the waste industry, all of these competing interests that are trying to say, well, hey, if you look at the total life cycle of some of these practices, like, let's say, waste incineration, they say, well, waste incineration may be preferable to landfilling overall.

And so this is actually a way to reduce our overall emissions rate from managing this trash and we're also making energy. So shouldn't you reward us somehow? Shouldn't you let us at least get a partial credit towards being carbon-free? Let us count. Otherwise, they're going to have to add new renewable sources or hydroelectric or nuclear, or some kind of carbon-free source to count towards that law. But inherently, it really can't.

And so what we're looking at here is the potential for some of these things to maybe be backed in as considered carbon-neutral, which many people who worked on this law and who passed this law are saying carbon-neutral is not carbon-free, even if you could stretch out a definition for this to be carbon-neutral. So that's a tricky question because logically, I don't really see a scenario in which it could be considered carbon-free, but there's a lot of invested interest here that are trying to abstractly view this through the kaleidoscope and say, yeah, this could count as carbon-free. Please don't make us add any more infrastructure to meet this deadline.

CATHY WURZER: The one place that pops up in my mind when I think of-- used to call it the garbage burner. It's now called the Hennepin County Energy Recovery Center. It's an incinerator, for folks who don't know, in downtown Minneapolis. I'm wondering here, lawmakers in that same clean energy law that created this deadline, lawmakers made it so the incinerator in Minneapolis no longer counts as a renewable energy source. But the question here is, why do they single out the Hennepin County Center specifically? Just curious.

ANDREW HAZZARD: That's a great question. Because we have seven incinerators here in the state. There's incinerators in Red Wing and Mankato, and Rochester. The reason they singled out the HERC is because the Minneapolis delegation within the DFL is quite powerful. And there have been a lot of local politicians in the Twin Cities who have been opposed to the HERC for a very long time. And so they have been trying for years to chip away at the HERC and say, hey, we don't want this here, and trying to put pressure on Hennepin County to get rid of this facility, to create a timeline for it to be closed down.

And so this was a huge one here in the renewable energy law and saying, hey, this can't count as renewable energy anymore. And of course, that definition was always problematic among scientists, among environmentalists saying, that's not renewable energy in general, but that's how they're classified in the state today. They singled out the HERC to put pressure on Hennepin County. They did a similar thing in the bonding bill where they stipulated, Hennepin County, you can have $25 million for a new piece of composting organics infrastructure if you put a timeline on closing down the HERC.

And so we've seen this jurisdictional showdown, really, where other entities that don't actually own the HERC, which is owned by Hennepin County, putting pressure on them to say, hey, you should close this. And of course, that's caused quite a bit of tension.

CATHY WURZER: But I remember, gosh, has it been more than a year, I think, since Hennepin County, the commissioners, asked staff to come up with a plan to close the HERC. And I don't know, where are those plans?

ANDREW HAZZARD: Well, that's another great question. So, yes, it was last October. That's a great memory. Basically they said, staff, you need to come up with some plans to get us out of the HERC sometime between 2028 and 2040. So that's a wide window. Now what Hennepin County staff did in early part of this year was come back with, not exactly a plan. I guess I would not call it a plan to close the HERC.

They came back with a bunch of requirements or things that they believe they need to see in place to get to a point where they can close down the HERC. The HERC right now manages about 45% of all the waste generated in Hennepin County. That's the largest county in the state, the most populous county in the state. So it's an important part of managing the huge amount of trash that we all generate every year.

But all they really did was create a list of state laws that they would like to see. One of them did pass, ask you-- an important packaging law asking for cities to consider what their role in this could be, asking for potential more money to put sorting facilities in there to take out recyclable material or organic material that could be composted instead of going to a trash burner. But the short story is that they never really committed to when in that 12 years they are going to close the HERC or developed a strong plan to get there.

And recently, Hennepin County leaders came to the city of Minneapolis and said, hey, we want you to come up with your own plan for what you would do with your trash, because 75% of the trash burned in the HERC comes from Minneapolis residents and businesses, before we can commit to getting this timeline. So it's all being punted around. It's all being deflected to other jurisdictions and whatnot. And really, the momentum on that, which seemed pretty substantial last year, has waned and stagnated a bit, I think.

CATHY WURZER: Wow. Interesting. Thanks for the update, and thanks for the conversation, Andrew.

ANDREW HAZZARD: Thank you so much for having me.

CATHY WURZER: Andrew Hazzard is an environmental reporter for Sahan Journal.