Report: Majority of Minnesota’s power is carbon free, but renewable growth has slowed

For the fifth year in a row, more than half of Minnesota’s electricity came from carbon-free sources, including wind, solar and nuclear power, according to data from the Minnesota Energy Factsheet.

The annual report, produced by Clean Energy Economy Minnesota and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, also found that greenhouse gas emissions from the state’s power sector continued to decline.

Emissions decreased four percent from 2023 to 2024 and have now dropped 52 percent since 2005. That surpasses the national average reduction of 38 percent.

Those emissions reductions have largely come from a reduction in burning coal to generate electricity. Over the past decade, coal’s share of Minnesota’s electricity market has plunged from 43 percent to just 20 percent in 2024.

“Despite the strange energy system nostalgia you might be getting out of Washington these days, the future is not beautiful clean coal,” said Pete Wyckoff, deputy commissioner in the energy division at the Minnesota Department of Commerce.

While coal’s share of Minnesota’s electric generation has continued to drop, the amount of carbon-free electricity has remained fairly flat over the past four years.

Renewable technologies like wind and solar produced about one-third of the state’s electricity, a figure that held steady in 2024.

Greenhouse gas emission reductions in recent years have been achieved largely by phasing out coal in favor of natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal but still emits carbon dioxide, as well as methane, when the gas is produced.

Gregg Mast, executive director of Clean Energy Economy Minnesota, attributed part of the slowdown in renewable growth to challenges in connecting to the electric grid.

“There is such a bottleneck in the queue, and that is not a Minnesota or a Midwest issue, that is across the country. Those interconnection queues, they are slammed full with clean energy projects,” said Mast.

Still, preliminary data shows that Minnesota added 388 megawatts of solar in 2024, a 35 percent increase over the prior year.

That included the first phase of Xcel Energy’s Sherco Solar project, which when complete will be one of the largest solar facilities in the Midwest, generating enough power annually for more than 150,000 homes.

Wind makes up about two-thirds of the state’s total renewable capacity. But no new wind projects were brought online in 2024.

Xcel plans to retire its final coal-fired unit at Sherco by 2030. All the state’s coal plants are expected to be retired by 2035, as the state moves toward 100 percent carbon-free electricity, which is required by 2040 under a state law passed two years ago.

“What stood out to me was that 99 percent of new capacity added over the last five years came from renewables. That’s not just momentum, it’s market transformation,” said Corey Orehek with Ziegler Energy Solutions.

The report also showed 66,000 electric vehicles on Minnesota’s roads last year. While total EV registrations grew, new registrations fell 44 percent from a record high in 2023.

• Health department issues new warning about eating fish from some Minnesota lakes with ‘forever chemicals’
• Tritium found in two more monitoring wells near Monticello nuclear plant
• Dog finds and rescues toddler who spent night lost and alone in Arizona desert