Coal Power Defined This Minnesota Town. Can Solar Win It Over?
By Ivan Penn, The New York Times.
Excerpt: The past and the future of electricity in America are perhaps most visible in a Minnesota town surrounded by potato farms and cornfields. Towering over Becker, a community of a little more than 5,000 people northwest of Minneapolis, is one of the nation’s largest coal power plants. It is being replaced — to the dismay of some residents — with thousands of acres of solar panels and a test of long-duration batteries. Becker is one of the first of a group of seven Minnesota municipal areas, called the Coalition of Utility Cities, making the change from a fossil-fuel-based economy to clean energy. ...When the Sherburne County Generating Station, known as Sherco, completes its renewable project on adjacent land, it will stand as the largest solar farm in the Upper Midwest — replacing three coal units in Becker with three solar sites on the town’s outskirts along the Mississippi River. ...Becker crystallizes part of the legacy of the administration of Gov. Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, and his commitment to Minnesota’s goal of 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2040. And it tests how the energy transition could unfold on a nationwide scale for jobs at decades-old fossil fuel facilities, local tax revenues and agricultural businesses. President Biden’s climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, aims to cut U.S. emissions at least 52 percent below 2005 levels by the end of this decade, and his administration is counting on solar power to play a significant role in decarbonizing electricity production....