St. Paul Public Housing Agency joins Community Solar on behalf of Economic Justice

Community Solar has value far beyond that which is reducible strictly to finance because it provides is a powerful tool for an overall democratization of energy. Community solar allows individuals and organizations to mutually benefit from the advantages of solar energy — no fuel cost, no moving parts, no emissions — without having the solar built on their own property. The power from CSG’s go onto goes onto Xcel’s distribution grid, and CSG subscribers are credited at a solar-friendly rate that results in savings of 5 percent or more on their utility bills. When community solar uses innovative and flexible financial tools such as on-bill repayment, pay-as-you-go, and revolving loan funding, solar energy dramatically more affordable and accessible to a greater number of people.

With Community Solar, we finally have an opportunity to put an end to this alienating perception of solar energy as a niche market for a few. Having a successful example of a community solar garden will tell a new story of renewable energy as a pathway out of energy poverty and prosperity circulating through the local economy. 

The Saint Paul Public Housing Agency has signed on to become an anchor tenant of nearby community solar gardens to provide cost stability for their tenants. 

At the June 23^rd hearing on community solar, Louise Seeba told the PUC the message that low-income individuals should not be left out of clean energy."This program is literally the only way that public housing can go solar. Our tenants should not be shut out of being part of green energy." 

The power from CSG’s that goes onto Xcel’s distribution grid, is credited to CSG subscribers at a solar-friendly rate that results in savings of 5 percent or more on their utility bills. 

The Saint Paul Public Housing Agency has 2500 residents in 16 high-rise housing units. So far, it is the only public housing to go solar. Seeba explained how they had to jump through lots of hoops and then the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development approved their community solar involvement.

Solar energy is attractive because it has no fuel costs and is a hedge against fuel price spikes. When natural gas or fuel prices inevitably spike again, utilities pass through the costs directly onto their customer base. This will leave the low-income very vulnerable once the fracking boom goes bust unless there is an alternative source of power such as CSGs ready to snap over to. 

Jon Gutzmann, executive director of Saint Paul Public Housing Agency stated “With two-to-four percent increases every other year, our utility costs have been increasing at a faster rate than our revenue. Community solar provides us with cost stability and certainty for 25 years — without having to find space or capital for on-site solar.” 

How the MN PUC ruled on the Community Solar Size limits

On the night before the June 23rd PUC hearing, Xcel and several (but not all of the solar developers) struck an eleventh-hour partial settlement agreeing to what is basically a 5 MW CSG size limit. Xcel would have liked the cap to have gone lower than 5 MW but considered 5 MW a settlement. It was only a partial settlement because Xcel pleaded to commission to make the size limits retroactive while the CSG developer community were in agreement that imposing a size cap retroactively would be horrible policy. On June 25th, the PUC ruled in agreement to the terms within the partial settlement while giving Xcel what they wanted by retroactively clarifying the rules. As a result, developers who had proposed co-located CSG projects of over 5 MW had to scale down their plans to fit under the size limit. 

At first impression, allowing developers to do clusters of 5-single megawatt CSGs sounds big enough to allow CSG’s to make a major market impact. However, the PUC ruling gave Community Solar Developers only until September 25 to propose co-located CSG projects that may be as large as the 5 megawatt limit. Beginning on September 26th, Xcel had its wish in limiting CSG projects to 1 megawatt at a single interconnection point. The cap has dropped to 1 MW for a period of one year in order to allow time for the commission to once again study and revisit the issue of putting limits to CSG co-location. 

The rules could be revised more favorably at that point in the future. However there is a real danger CSG development could be effectively snuffed out by Xcel getting the regulatory/ bureaucratic red tape they asked for. Changing the rules of the game sends a damaging signal to the solar market and hurts the perception on MN as an unreliable place to do solar business. From that standpoint of that risk, merely having a decision from the PUC removes a major barrier of regulatory certainty for CSG developers. But now, we can't even count regulatory certainty as a benefit because Xcel has actually not been holding up their end of the bargain. 

In exchange for giving Xcel what they wanted in the co-location size limits, the PUC ruling required Xcel to more rapidly complete the interconnection engineering studies for connecting solar gardens to the grid and to provide for “greater transparency and expediency” in allowing developers to move forward with construction of their proposed projects. In other words, they PUC tried to tell Xcel they will not be able to use a foot-dragging tactic as a way to run out the clock on the federal tax credit. But in the following months, Xcel was still slow-walking their processing of CSG applications. Xcel not holding up their end of the deal, basically confirming allegations they have an agenda to chill the market for solar.


What have we seen when Xcel does Community Solar voluntarily without any state mandate as they have in Wisconsin? it ended up being a maximum of 3 megawatts of solar power through three or four arrays in their Wisconsin Service territory.

The Basic Background of Xcel's filing for size capping MN Community Solar

 On Tuesday, April 28^th Xcel Energy announced they would take unilateral action to disallow co-located Community Solar Garden (CSG) projects over 1 megawatt (MW) in size. Regardless of whether their specific arguments had merit or were justified, this move served as a particularly big flashpoint in Xcel's delay of their Community Solar Garden program.

Xcel’s complaint is that they did not expect 80% plus of solar garden proposals from 15 developers to be co-located clusters of up to 40 adjacent 1 MW solar gardens on single sites given that the State Legislature set a 1 MW limit on the size CSGs could be. Although the 2013 state statute does set a size limit of 1 megawatt or less onto individual community solar gardens, the PUC issued an order in 2014 that allowed the co-location of multiple 1 MW CSGs on a single site. The PUC ruling specifically states: “multiple community solar garden sites may be situated in close proximity to one another in order to share in distribution infrastructure.” Overall, in their April 28^th announcement, Xcel acted in defiance of many CSG developer’s interpretation of that PUC ruling as allowing for unlimited co-location. 

It is clear Xcel intended to have a more gradual phase-in of community solar than the 420 megawatts in CSG applications they received in just the first week of their program. Xcel said in their April 28 filing: “If all current gardens in the queue were developed, the company would add nearly all of its planned distributed solar resources, not over 15 years, but in a single year.” 

The size of solar projects that Xcel does not own or control are arguably a far bigger concern to them than the issue of co-location itself. Co-locating CSG’s gives the overall CSG projects the same shared infrastructure benefits, cost efficiencies and economies of scale aspects that Xcel frequently uses to justify their preference of doing utility scale solar projects over residential solar projects. Why would Xcel be against co-location when it takes advantage of shared infrastructure and drive down prices for customers? When it comes to community solar which Xcel can’t own, control or sell, then they are willing to forfeit those economies of scale they say they value in order to prevent community solar from infringing upon their market share. 

Imposing this aggregate size limit of 1 MW as Xcel had originally asked would have put in jeopardy 80% of the MW from solar gardens planned for this year. Perhaps Xcel intended this particular filing as a delay move to block most solar developers from being able to capture the benefit of the 30% federal tax credit before it expires at the end of the year. Perhaps Xcel figured that if they just find creative ways of running out the clock through 2016, a great number of these CSG projects might never be built unless Congress renews the important solar investment tax credit that has helped grow the industry. 

A few days after Xcel issued the regulatory filing to the PUC, four developers submitted a letter sent to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission asking the PUC to affirm Xcel’s move to be in violation of the pre-existing PUC order. The letter warned that Xcel's move would cost the solar developers “tens of millions of dollars in damages” even though Xcel vows to refund deposits and fees for multiple garden applications. On Friday May 1^st, the PUC ordered all parties a May 18^th deadline to submit comments on the Xcel’s aggregate size limit proposal. On June 23^rd, the PUC held a hearing for stakeholders to give commentary on this matter. 

The main legal issue Xcel brought forth to the PUC are interpretations on what the state legislators meant in their 1 MW limit within the statute. Xcel used that to make a case that the PUC's 2014 order could not and did not explicitly call for unlimited co-location in CSG projects. Xcel thus forced the PUC to revisit what it meant in their earlier ruling. They argued that no developer at the time of the earlier 2014 ruling had asked the PUC to do unlimited co-location. A side issue for Xcel is that the PUC set a solar-friendly rate for community solar during the same time no party was expecting unlimited co-location. Xcel’s lawyer's closing argument at the June 23rd hearing was that no solar stakeholder speaking gave a good reason to disregard the 1 MW limit. Yes, the statute is silent on co-location. But the mere fact there was a 1 MW limit implies there had to be a policy reason for setting the 1 MW limit and the way the developers were doing co-location had thus rendered the 1 MW cap set by the legislature as meaningless. 

In 2013 the MN state legislature passed the community solar program (CSG) with the intention of providing a solar option for renters, for property owners whose building isn’t suitable for its own solar array or for the average income who lack the up-front capital to own an entire solar installation. While all investor-owned utilities are required to get 1.5 percent of their electricity from the sun by 2020, Xcel is the only utility that is required to offer the CSG program under the same 2013 state law.

Low Income Workers and Climate Activists have found a Common Enemy

One of my friends posted on social media that someone told her “I don’t care about the environment I care about people?” while she was tabling for Earth Day. First of all, there is no need for any environment versus the people divisiveness because "The People" and "The Environment" have a common enemy in the corporate elite and their compliant political puppets!

This Earth Day, I was with a group of climate activists who were making our voices heard at the State Capitol vocalizing against an Energy Omnibus House bill primarily on behalf of environmental concerns. But then the headline about that same bill which came out of the Star Tribune the next day was on behalf of people “Minnesota House passes lower minimum wage for tip workers.” 

So in honor of “caring about people more than environment”, the MN State House Celebrated Earth Day by passing a bill 73-56 that would lower the minimum wage for employees who receive tips of at least $4 per hour. This sends a “you are making too much money” message to workers who make $14 or $15 an hour with tips.  

The bills twin poison pill is prohibiting cities or the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport from enacting a higher minimum wage than the state minimum. It is basically big government telling local government there is no choice. Mark Dayton’s call for a $10 minimum wage for airport workers and the Minneapolis City Council looking into a $15 minimum wage plus Seattle winning $15 per hour must have struck a nerve with those waging war on what people make.

Rep. Ryan Winkler had an amendment to stop these poison pills, but it was voted down on the same 56-73 lines.

While I am not making any claims about the optimal level the minimum wage should be, I’d like to offer this logic that I heard a legislator make: 

1: If fundamental opposition to a higher minimum wage was their issue they had against the Winkler Amendment 

and 

2: if they were actually genuine in their confidence that higher minimum wage would lead to disaster with restaurants and taverns being forced out of business…

…Then the anti-wage hike folks ought to be in favor of giving local control a chance here.

If a city does do a $12 or $15 per hour minimum wage and if it leads to disaster according to their fear-mongering script, then that would be good for their political agenda against minimum wage jumps. But so far, unemployment has only gone down since MN passed the $9.50 minimum wage last year. If there is an example of a city that gets $15 per hour minimum wage and it causes and upward spiral of attracting workers rather than a downward spiral of detracting employers, then it would be very dangerous to their agenda and would provide an inspirational example for more cities and towns to replicate.

The retort I heard from the anti-wage hike legislators was to trust local and private enterprise and contracts between private people is the purest level of local control there can be. Rep. Steve Drazkowski decried "efforts by government to socialize wages” as a move by those who think they can direct people’s lives better than their own personal contracts. But I heard pro-wage hike legislators make a case that the practical consequences of refusal to raise the wage on people who can’t make ends meet only creates demand for more government subsidies and the child care does not magically appear. Reducing everything down to personal contracts fails to recognize that it is not a level playing field for everyone. The American Dream is never achieved in isolation and the tables have tilted too far.

Many in the DFL caucus accused the GOP of double-talking so much about being for local control and against central government overreach but then not actually trusting local control in this one case of minimum wage. To these accusations, Rep. Pat Garofalo retorted “What if localities want to set their minimum wages below the state level” It was later clarified that state statute as it exists sets a floor for minimum wage while cities can legally go beneath.

Rep. Jim Davnie commented “The rousing condemnation of democracy by the GOP is stunning here.” Garofalo responded that both parties are for local control when its policy they agree with but against local control when its policy they disagree with. A certainly valid point, but in principle, local government is the level that is closest to the people.

Here is an interesting story from the April 22^nd session: I heard Rep. Pat Garofalo used Betsy Hodges’ statement opposing a $15 hour minimum wage for Minneapolis to provide ammunition for making an argument against any local minimum wage increase altogether. Garofalo was then asked if he had spoken with Betsy Hodges about this issue to find out what she really meant on the issue. Garofalo said that he did write Betsy Hodges but did not hear back. Then an hour or so later, Rep. Phyllis Kahn announced she had in hand a letter that Mayor Hodges mailed to Garofalo dated March 26th. Garofalo then stated he did not know he even received the letter.

Representative Runbeck then shared some firm positions on the issue calling a $15 per hour minimum wage extreme, ridiculous, dangerous and that small restaurants will close or replace their staff with automation. She said the word “skills” was missing from the discussion among the left and that the market pays for what skills you have. So therefore she argued, low wages should not imply anything wrong about the employer. But does that rule out any possibility that bosses can pay good employees less than their value? Runbeck then added “And if what skill you have does not warrant a higher wage then go out and get a new skill.” That may be technically true, however I heard another legislator say the Republicans are not willing to put enough into higher education programs to make that even possible for people who can’t afford the up-front costs in the first place. Runbeck then said greater productivity is the key to earning higher wages. But it is fairly common knowledge that productivity has been going up, people are working harder, and wages are stagnant because the bulk of the money is being funneled away to the super-rich. So overall this is a binocular trick of only thinking of the costs of raising wages and nothing of the benefits.

Representative Thissen brought up a deep challenge to the bill. He suspected it was a cut and paste ALEC bill which GOP house members did not actually read before automatically deciding to march in favor of it. He said,” This will be a lawyers dream bill” because it has unacceptably broad and overreaching and would require localities to retrofit ordinances retroactively. The language defines the term benefit as so broadly constrained that it can make anti-discrimination ordinances or a whole range of benefits to no longer apply. I am not exactly sure how to explain it clearer, but I hope I at least gave enough info for anyone to ask Thissen about it. What gets to the heart of the issue is the ability of the local community to express its values by its ordinances such as minimum wage among other benefits. 

A DFL legislator summing up this move of “holding workers down” as “just a giveaway for campaign contributors.”

Unpacking the State House's Willingness to Inject Uncertainty into the Solar Market

Why would a State House Committee which includes the term “job growth” in its title declare an all-out sabotage of a newly booming solar industry that now employs twice as many jobs as coal? 

If the committee's Omnibus Energy bill that passed the full State House on Earth Day were to become actual law it would halt new applications for the Made-In-Minnesota Solar and Solar Rewards incentive programs, would repeal the value of solar tariff for community solar gardens, would gut the 2013 solar standards and would change net metering programs in a way that so that people making huge private investments in solar energy can be denied adequate compensation for the electricity they provide to the grid which benefits all customers.  

Lynn Hinkle, policy director for the Minnesota Solar Energy Industries Association, stated at the April 8^th, 2015 public hearing that if even one of these solar-related policies passes, “every segment of Minnesota solar market would be damaged.” 

David Streier, company director of Silicon Energy a solar panel manufacturing plant in Mountain Iron, Minn warned at a public hearing for the Committee’s Omnibus bill., that his company would be shut down if the bill becomes law because it repeals the Minnesota-made solar subsidy. That is what protects domestic manufacturers from being undercut by Chinese solar manufacturers.  

For a political party that continually evokes a good point that "uncertainty" is “bad for business”, this omnibus bill injects a poison pill of uncertainty into tens of thousands of small-business clean energy jobs.
I heard a legislator say these proposals send a “we don’t care about, we don’t need you, or you are not welcome anymore” message from the perspective of anyone making an honest effort forming a successful businesses building and installing solar systems in MN,  But perhaps the committee chair and Bill's Sponsor Pat Garofalo has a more tactful explanation for subjecting solar to a steeper climb.  

In a Star Tribune interview last January, Garofalo stated concern about the “excessive” subsidies for solar energy that passed in the previous legislative session because “there are more cost-effective ways to reduce pollution than to incentivize solar, especially rooftop solar.”  But speaking of cost-effectiveness, he called nuclear power “one of the most cost-effective ways to achieve” carbon emissions goals. I’d be interested to hear how the nuclear industry could survive if put to the same rigorous standard of little to no government subsidy. If the solar subsidies are excessive, then how about ending subsidies currently given to the coal, gas and nuclear industries and using the money to advance the technologies of power storage that will actually make solar power more cost effective? How about we work together on a plan to convert dirty diesel school bus fleets to electric powered by solar (rather than natural gas) since that would provide energy storage capacity to the grid?

Toward the end of the April 22^nd session on the House Energy Omnibus bill, Garofalo admitted wind energy is the cheapest form of new generation and that therefore smart actors in the energy market don’t need government mandates get them to deploy wind. So the idea he stated is “not to put a gun to utilities heads” but to invest in energy storage and so many awesome things in technology. Then he then gave the fracking revolution as an examples of that optimism in technology. 

At the CEE Energy Policy Forum on Jan 27^th, 2015 the chair of the MN State House “Job Growth and Energy Affordability Policy and Finance” committee Pat Garofalo spoke these words in good-humored and optimism about innovative technology being part of the solution for energy: “I don’t understand how anyone can be pessimistic about energy policy right now…I can’t be anything but happy about where our energy is going now.” Yes there is a grain of truth that technological breakthroughs providing high hope. But the issue is which set of decision makers has the power to decide which technologies get deployed and which technologies gather dust sitting on the shelf?

The typical reasoning of “letting the market decide” does not apply to the energy world as it stands. First of all, there is no market price for electricity since energy utilities are monopolies within their service territories, particularly in regulated states like Minnesota. Second of all, so many utilities (including the rural co-ops) are locked into decades-long contacts for coal. Most utilities have already sunk a huge amount of capital into coal plants. The typical rule for market competition is businesses deploying the technology that is most competitive from a consumers’ standpoint. But why does that not apply in this case of energy? Unless they are required to do otherwise by the state, the energy monopolies are still going to opt to feed us dirty energy even though wind power is at a competitive price with coal, and even though solar energy is cost-competitive with nuclear. They are primarily motivated to protect these sunken costs into coal and nuclear from turning into stranded assets. That is the real source of utilities anxiety over net metering for example.

Where the market does apply is in reaction to policy. Policies that actually help the solar market grow will only serve to drive down the prices of solar energy even more. That in turn upends the “solar is less cost-effective” justification for injecting uncertainty into the solar jobs market.

 Bill Summary: http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/bs/89/HF0843.pdf

Weaselly Language in House Energy Omnibus Bill Undermines Clean Energy Goals

     The Energy omnibus bill that passed the MN State House on Earth Day is quite clear and up front about repealing the hard-won 10% by 2030 solar standard. But one of the portions the House Energy Omnibus bill’s language is far from forthright and honest about is language to allow the 1.5% by 2020 solar standard to "be met through the use of solar energy or any other more affordable eligible energy technology."  If it is possible for the solar standard to be met with wind, then it is not a solar standard anymore. The bill uses disingenuous weasel words instead of being forthright and honest about repealing the solar standard. I also heard accusations that the bill turns an Xcel renewable development fund into a multimillion dollar tax for Xcel ratepayers to potentially fund non-renewable purposes that goes against the intent of the fund when established.

If the bill nips the solar industry in the bud before it has a chance to prove itself, were Garofalo and his Omnibus bill a bit gentler on wind energy since it has gotten a chance to prove itself wide-scale?
If the bill becomes law, close to 9% less wind energy will be required, but not because of the overt repealing of Renewable Energy Standards or incentives. It is because the bill would allow utilities to include large established hydro, such as the infamous Manitoba Hydro in Canada, to count as percentage to the state’s overall  25 percent by 2025 Renewable Energy Standard. Imported large hydro accounts for approximately 9% of our electricity generation today. 

Other Trojan horse revisionist language includes renaming Next Generation Energy act’s Renewable Energy Standard into the “Advanced Energy Standard” to be filled with “eligible energy technology.” Furthermore could the term "affordable eligible energy technology" could be reclassified to include "clean coal" (which does not actually exist)? Of course the bill author wants to leave room for him to deny he is repealing the 1.5% solar standard. But what would happen if both the 1.5% and 10% solar standards are repealed? On hot summer days when the load on the electric grid is peaking we will continue dependence on more natural gas peaking power plants if there is not enough solar capacity deployed.

State Representatives wore buttons that read “cleaner and cheaper” to express support for this energy omnibus bill. But being held hostage to natural gas that has great unpredictability in price and is increasingly extracted from toxic fracking puts a big question mark on “cleaner and cheaper”.

Bill Summary: http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/bs/89/HF0843.pdf

New Nuclear Projects: “Affordable” for whom?

What do we see coming from the State House committee that has the name “Affordability” in its title and from its omnibus energy bill that is marketed by its supporters as “Cleaner and cheaper?” Apparently “Cleaner”, “Cheaper” and “Affordability” includes leaving utility customers on the hook to pay the stranded costs of non-operational nuclear plants!

The overall omnibus bill that passed the State House on Earth Day and is headed to conference committee repeals the moratorium on new nuclear power plant construction in Minnesota even though the per-KWH cost of nuclear energy is more expensive than energy efficiency, wind and utility solar! 

At the end of the April 22^nd session shortly before the Energy Omnibus bill was voted on, I heard majority leader Joyce Peppin state “Nuclear energy is a clean, affordable energy source” in favor of the nuclear moratorium repeal. 

My first question I thought of was, "Do the hundreds of millions of dollars cost overruns which more than doubled the budget for Xcel’s Monticello nuclear plant upgrade somehow qualify as 'affordable' just because the money will be paid by utility customers rather than taken away from corporate profits?"

Earlier on the same evening I heard Representative Frank Hornstein say “Nuclear is bar none the most effective way to generate energy.” So according to logic, one of them has to be wrong.

The big story here is Representative Phyllis Kahn brought up an amendment that addressed a big issue related to the repeal of the state new nuclear moratorium. She pointed out some southern states that are actually constructing new nuclear Power Plants. Kahn mentioned that Duke Energy in Georgia has a non-operational nuclear plant that has added 9% to each utility bill and maybe 15% soon. Her amendment was to shift the costs of nuclear plants before they are operational onto the power utilities instead of the utility customers. She also remarked “Of course those who profit from it don’t care as long as they have access to the people’s pocket.”

First of all it is unclear of anyone who has plans for a new nuclear plant in MN. I have read into Xcel Energy’s 15 year business plan and found no plans for then building any new nuclear. However Kahn’s amendment would at least force the utilities to stop and think if they did chose to launch a nuclear renaissance.

I did not hear the bill’s author Pat Garofalo make any make any comprehensive argument whatsoever against this Kahn Amendment except for a tense-sounding and cursory remark about encouraging new technologies. 

Melissa Hortman brought up how Xcel’s “mismanagement” led to their Monticello Nuclear Plant cost overruns which in turn provoked back-to-back rate hikes from Xcel. Maybe the cost-overruns were slightly different than the Kahn Amendment at hand, but Hortman presented it as a case in point to how nuclear is actually expensive and hard on affordability and rather than cheap and easy. There were staffers who passed out printed out articles about the Monticello Cost overruns at Hortman’s request, but to no avail. Rep Anzelc from Itasca also brought up how the cost of storing the waste was not accounted for, that there is no such thing as the company paying the costs, the ratepayer pays everything and there is no place to store the nuclear waste.

From what I saw, the GOP caucus was very silent in voicing any critique of this Amendment but nevertheless voted it down 52-77.  So those who use the term “affordable energy” as a club to marginalize the young solar industry were apparently not moved by over $400 million in cost overruns at Monticello Nuclear, probably because the expense is not taken out of corporate profits but from ratepayers. 

Bill Summary: http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/bs/89/HF0843.pdf