Governor Pawlenty announces Next Generation Energy Initiative

In an address to the Midwest Ag Energy Network Summit on December 12, 2006, Governor Tim Pawlenty announced a series of proposals for the future of clean energy policy in Minnesota. The governor’s remarks focused on three areas: more renewable energy, more energy efficiency, and lower global warming emissions.

Renewable energy
The governor promised a strategic objective of “25 by 25”—25 percent of all types of energy coming from renewable sources by 2025. To accomplish this, he proposed actions in three areas:

• Calling the current Renewable Energy Objective “too modest,” he proposed that the state’s utilities be required to generate 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025, with financial penalties for utilities that fail to meet the targets.
• The number of E85 (a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline) outlets in the state will increase by 500 percent by 2010—from the current number of 300 to 1,800.
• The state will invest in new technology biofuels—including the production of fuel from grasses, woody crops, and waste as well as gasification of biomass technologies—to offset natural gas use.

Energy efficiency
A more aggressive set of energy conservation initiatives was proposed, including:

• Reducing actual fossil fuel consumption per capita 15 percent by 2015.
• Enacting a requirement in law that utilities “reduce the amount of energy they sell to consumers every year by 1.5 percent, as a numerical, actual goal.”
• Changing the Conservation Improvement Program (CIP) from one merely requiring utilities to document amounts spent on conservation to one that requires documentation of actual energy savings.
• Setting a goal of 1,000 Energy Star-rated buildings in the state (Minnesota currently has 87 such buildings).

Reducing global warming pollution 
The governor recognized that “our global climate is warming, at least in part due to the energy sources we use.”  He called for development of strategies to reduce these emissions, including:

• Requesting that the Center for Climate Strategies conduct a stakeholder process “to develop a plan to aggressively reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Minnesota in the near and intermediate term.”
• Requiring utilities to offset increases in the carbon dioxide produced by new fossil fuel generation sources.
• Taking part in a regional carbon-credits exchange and joining an existing carbon registry to begin reducing carbon dioxide emissions from operations in the state.

See the full transcript of the Governor’s remarks and the press release from the Governor’s office.

Minnesota scientists report mixed prairie grasses a better source for biofuels

A team of University of Minnesota scientists, headed by Regents’ Professor of Ecology David Tilman, has announced the findings of a 10-year research project at the University’s Cedar Creek Natural History Area. The report, the cover story of the December 8 issue of the journal Science, finds that “mixtures of native perennial grasses and other flowering plants require little energy or fertilizer to turn into fuel, yield up to 238 percent more usable energy per acre than any single species and can even lower atmospheric carbon dioxide by storing it in their roots or in soil.” 

These “carbon negative” fuel sources are better sources for ethanol and other biofuels, which are “carbon positive” in that they add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. In addition, prairie grasses can be grown on land not suitable for agriculture and require little in the way of water or fertilizers.

Tilman and his team members estimate that “biofuels from mixed prairie grasses could replace about 13 percent of global petroleum consumption for transportation and 19 percent of global electricity consumption” and could reduce worldwide carbon dioxide emissions by 15 percent.

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