LIFE SUPPORT NEEDED FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY

LIFE SUPPORT NEEDED FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY
BEFORE IT IS EVEN BORN

We need renewable energy in this city, a fact with which many locally agree. The state sees this priority as well by setting an ambitious “25/25 Initiative” with a goal of having 25% of our energy come from renewable sources by 2025. Even the current White House administration, albeit under a court order and four years late, has finally issued a report acknowledging that global warming is “human-induced”, and that there have been and will be impacts on US agriculture, land and water resources, and biodiversity. Producing energy from renewable sources is one of the ways to reduce global warming.

So how is it with this level of consensus coming forth on climate change that the city is backing away from a renewable energy project proposed for south Minneapolis and has become part of a systematic effort to derail it right into a pile of coal and spent nuclear rod holding ponds? It’s a tale, I believe from being an observer of this process, full of fear, misplaced anger, and misplaced agendas and priorities. In the same vein that we need to convert our sources of energy to avoid global catastrophe, we need to redirect our own personal and political energy to promoting and supporting renewable energy projects in this city. Instead, what we have corporately done is very likely destroy a viable project, and that is something for which we should all be ashamed.

This project was conceived of by a young development firm that, yes, has many connections to city insiders. However, the project as proposed met the zoning requirements for the selected site with no need for a non-conforming use permit. This area has been zoned for this use since the 1920s. When compared to other uses that could go into this site, I would pick hands down this project any day.

Enter the neighborhood, who became aware of the project after a series of neighborhood meetings and a required public notice for an air permit, which I also received as a nearby resident. They were justifiably concerned with exacerbating public health issues already present in the Phillips neighborhood. With many major street arteries going through the area and Hwy 55 alongside it, the carbon emissions for this area are close to or already exceed acceptable limits, and a higher rate of asthma and other related health issues have been documented. What we have here are two important concerns – one for local human health and the other for a city’s overall energy “health” – however destroying this project will not resolve the local health problems and it is arguable that this plant will make them any worse as it is by design carbon neutral, and in the wreckage is a proposal that will for certain help improve the city’s energy “health”. In addition, the developers have agreed publicly to do everything in their power to cap the emissions from their plant and trucks entering and leaving the plant, and hire local residents. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard of too many developers who would come that far to respond to neighborhood needs and concerns. I would propose the energy the neighborhood is putting into bringing down this plant should be redirected instead to reducing the carbon emissions from the most egregious source, which is the emissions from cars and trucks from local traffic, and they need our help to do that.

Finally, we have those on the city council and my own state representative who have decided to hide behind the neighborhood rather than be the responsible stewards of the public good they were elected to serve. Gary Schiff himself has stated that the Phillips neighborhood needs to keep the industrial area uses it has, and not reduce them. In saying this I am not at all saying that the neighborhood’s concerns should be ignored, only balanced with the needs for the greater public good. Both he and Patricia Torres Ray have failed in their roles, both demonstrating a tremendous lack of political will and leadership when frankly our earth depends on it. And as for Xcel Energy backing out of the proposal, I find it interesting to learn that in this past week when they did this, they petitioned the state to expand their Monticello plant by 70 MW.

We are poised on the brink of, I hope, entering a new era of how our country solves it’s energy and environmental problems, or at least that is my fervent prayer. We can no longer afford to engage in tactics that tear down and vilify the “other”, or conveniently hide behind someone doing it on our behalf. We need to become a people and a country that is willing to engage in the hard discussions and problem solving that will be needed to get us out of the mess we have made for ourselves when it comes to global warming. The time to start is now, with the first major local alternative energy project proposed for this wonderful “City of Lakes” I love. It may not be the perfect project, but it is worth our collective efforts to make it the best first project we can do. If we – the city’s leaders, its residents, and Xcel – can come together constructively toward this end it will be a positive step in the right direction and encourage other renewable energy project proposals to come forward, rather than discourage them.

Mary Kay Olson
City of Minneapolis Resident