NSS Weekly: Powering Minnesota’s Solar Energy Future

Transcript

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INTRO: You are listening to North Star Stories: Voices from Where We Live, a newscast about what it means to live in Minnesota, produced by AMPERS, with support from the State of Minnesota.

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HOST: This is North Star Stories: Voices from Where We Live. I'm Chantel SinGs.

This week, we look at efforts to reach Minnesota's renewable energy goals. Then, we examine how tuition increases at state schools may affect younger Minnesotans. And, we have ideas for how to enjoy the outdoors during the holiday weekend. But first, here are some of the stories that made headlines this week.

DEPUTY CHIEF BEN CALHOUN: There could be 300 people in a group, and all it takes is two people to kind of change the direction of that large group.

HOST: "Teen takeovers" are becoming popular on social media. Teenagers and young adults quickly organize online in-person meet-up groups. A post about a local hang-out spot can bring hundreds of young people to one place in minutes and can become a public-safety problem. The Carver County Sheriff's Office recently made a Facebook post about teens gathering in local parking lots. While not using the label teen takeover, the sheriff's office says juveniles are fighting, harassing others, and disrupting businesses. Bloomington police deputy chief Ben Calhoun says this issue is growing and often people organize the gatherings with criminal motives.

DEPUTY CHIEF BEN CALHOUN: What a lot of times happens is people take advantage of this and use this opportunity to — if the gathering is at a mall — to commit crimes: overwhelming stores where they can't keep an eye on everybody and then shoplifting begins to occur.

HOST: Deputy Chief Calhoun encourages parents to talk to teens about meeting groups organized on social media.

Improvements to the aging power infrastructure in northern Minnesota are back on after the Trump administration reinstated federal grant money. Last fall, the administration cancelled a federal grant to Duluth-based Minnesota Power for a transmission line project. But now, Minnesota Power says it will get $50 million for a transmission line project to modernize a line running from Hermantown to Center, North Dakota. The utility says the upgrades will help keep costs down.

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Minnesota has the goal of providing 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. And solar power advocates say that new technologies give renters and homeowners an option to tap into the renewable energy goal. Reporter Jules Yaeger asked how easy it is to implement solar power and how much of a dent it would make in electric bills.

JIM BERNARD: I don't know if you can see down here, there's a power box, and then it comes up here, and then there's these three ones up here, which are the ones that talk to the solar panels.

JULES YAEGER: Jim Bernard is a homeowner in the Western suburbs of Twin Cities. He installed a large solar array on his roof in 2022.

JIM BERNARD: I don't have any gas. My lawnmower is electric, my car is electric, my heater is electric. We don't have any other power. So essentially we're carbon free.

JULES YAEGER: But that's because Jim's solar power setup is quite effective. Over the course of a year, he generates all his own power, even with an electric car and all electric heating. The electric company even buys Jim's excess power from him at retail rates.

JIM BERNARD: Over the course of a year, the power company writes me a check for around 1000 bucks.

JULES YAEGER: And the reason why solar isn't accessible to Minnesotans who don't own their homes, and installations can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Jim relied on federal and local grants, which cover nearly 30% of the cost. Grants that have since been canceled by the Trump administration's Environmental Protection Agency. And even though he worked with a company that specializes in residential solar, the process wasn't easy.

JIM BERNARD: Forever. It fell like a jump ball in between three people who want to touch the ball.

JULES YAEGER: Jim's experience is par for the course for residential solar, but legislators are trying to bring a new type of technology to Minnesota, one they say would make solar power cheaper and more accessible than ever. Despite Minnesota's chilly reputation, the state is well on its way to harnessing the power of the sun. There's a law on the books that mandates all electricity sold to consumers in the state be carbon free within the next 14 years.

REP LARRY KRAFT: By the way, like Xcel has said, they're ahead of schedule. Before our committee in '25 they talked about being able to hit it maybe by 2035.

JULES YAEGER: That's State Representative Larry Kraft, vice chair of the Minnesota House Energy Committee. Even Xcel Energy's accelerated timeline puts a carbon-free Minnesota 10 years away. Plus, the building of data centers are raising new concerns about rising energy prices across the state. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute found this year that states with a high concentration of data centers have seen electricity prices increase up to 270% over the past five years. There are organizations already working to make solar more accessible to Minnesota households.

REP LARRY KRAFT: Let's say, in my house, I got too many trees, so we can't put solar on the roof. I could subscribe to a community solar garden, and I would get the credits from that, from that solar electricity.

JULES YAEGER: Kraft is a fan of community solar gardens. They're accessible to renters and homeowners alike and can help residents save some money on their electric bills. Utilities often advocate against community solar; they don't like the trouble of connecting these small installations to the power grid. State Senator Jason Rarick, who represents parts of the state just south of Duluth along the Wisconsin border, questions the efficiency of community solar. Though it can help consumers save on their electric bills, it isn't as cheap as utility scale solar, and according to Rarick, it's not fulfilling its promise of democratizing solar technology.

SEN JASON RARICK: Well, so many of the developers realized, hey, we can go to a couple of large customers, finance this whole thing, and do it that way. So the program has not been benefiting the people it was intended to benefit.

JULES YAEGER: He believes that organizations called solar co-ops do a better job with that goal. John Anderson is the Minnesota program associate for Solar United Neighbors. It's a nonprofit that has helped more than 500 households across the state join a solar co-op.

JOHN ANDERSON: A solar co-op is sort of an informal group of folks in a given geographic area or community that want to come together to go solar together. You can learn from each other and rely on each other to learn about the process and that sort of thing. We make sure these are good companies and they're going to be using good products.

JULES YAEGER: Being part of a co-op not only helps simplify setup but can also help with the startup cost.

JOHN ANDERSON: By having a group of people who decide to go in together, as it were, you can often get a better price that's lower than if you were to have solar sold on your home.

JULES YAEGER: Anderson says that reduction in price is typically around 15% but startup costs are still in the thousands of dollars. Representative Kraft is the lead author on a bill that would legalize and regulate a lower-cost option, it's called plug-in solar.

REP LARRY KRAFT: The idea of being able to go down to Home Depot or Lowe's and buy a panel or two and plug it in is really interesting, if people can save money, it's just this way of opening up solar to just about everyone, and as a great on-ramp to the clean energy economy for many folks.

JULES YAEGER: Plug-in solar, also known as balcony solar, is a cheaper, renter-friendly option. Legislators and advocates are excited about it as a way to help Minnesotans slightly shrink their energy bills, probably by 15 or 20%. But Senator Rarick isn't convinced it's as simple as Kraft makes it out to be. He's an electrician by trade and he says to install plug-in solar safely might be more complicated and more expensive.

SEN JASON RARICK: This piece of equipment has to be on a dedicated line. Well, now that could cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, just to put in that dedicated line into an existing home or apartment, and that's the only way it is safe, and it's not just simply that you're going to go out and buy the panel and be able to plug it in.

JULES YAEGER: Representative Kraft believes installation will get easier and cheaper over time once plug-in solar is legal.

REP LARRY KRAFT: I want it to be safe. I don't want people's homes to be catching on fire. What we're hoping and could very well happen over time is that as more products come and work out some of these issues that there are ways to overcome some of the safety concerns.

JULES YAEGER: Opposition from Republicans like Rarick stopped the bill from passing this year, but Kraft says he's optimistic it'll be lost soon. He says it's the single piece of energy legislation he's seen his constituents most excited about.

REP LARRY KRAFT: Me, this is a personal freedom kind of thing. Shouldn't you be able, if you can, to generate some of your own electricity? We don't have to burn things, we don't have to create air pollution. So it's fundamentally going to be a better way of living our lives. It's a way of saving some money, and it's cool.

JULES YAEGER: He's not giving up on bringing solar into Minnesota homes.

REP LARRY KRAFT: Absolutely, we'll be bringing it back.

JULES YAEGER: For North Star Stories, I'm Jules Yaeger.

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HOST: To learn more about renewable energy sources in Minnesota, we're joined now by Logan O'Grady, executive director of the Minnesota Solar Energy Industries Association, or MnSEIA, a nonprofit trade association that represents and advocates for the solar and energy storage industries in the state. Thank you so much for joining us, Logan.

LOGAN O'GRADY: Well, thank you for having me.

HOST: Where is Minnesota getting most of its energy supply today?

LOGAN O'GRADY: Most of our energy is actually coming from renewable sources. So that's a good thing. And that's great progress. We'd like to see a diversification from within that renewable portfolio. We want to see more solar on people's rooftops or farms. We want to see more solar gardens that apartment owners or condo owners can participate in, and of course, we want to see large scale developments as well, because those can provide more energy, oftentimes at a lower cost. So we sort of have an all of the above solar and storage approach to everything.

HOST: Some critics say renewable energy is less efficient than fossil fuels. How do you respond to that?

LOGAN O'GRADY: One of the great things about solar, in particular distributed solar, is what we call it, is you can put them next to where they're used, and that's how solar energy works. Even if you have a rooftop solar system of your own, you consume the energy first, and then you pass any excess on to your neighbors, and it goes to the closest neighbors that need it, right? And it's the same thing with community scale solar, mid-scale distributed solar, and all of the above. So when you have a generation source that close to where it's being used, you don't have the same efficiency losses that you have moving energy from a nuclear facility across the state or moving energy from a natural gas plant across state borders, miles and miles. So I don't understand where that idea comes from. Because if you look at just how solar works, that would be completely inaccurate.

HOST: Are solar power and other renewable options available to farmers in Minnesota, and how are they using them?

LOGAN O'GRADY: Farmers are some of my favorite success stories in the solar industry, because there's a lot of different options for farmers out there. They could use it just on their house and sort of remove from their electricity bills their residential living costs, and they could just put it on their roof if they wanted to. They could do a commercial project on one of their barns. We also see a lot of farmers, because they have a little bit more land, doing a ground mount system to offset kind of the commercial energy costs of their small business. You could also, if you own enough land, host a community solar garden and be compensated for allowing a developer to use your land. So you can diversify your farm operations and income and generate revenue that you didn't have before, and then, of course, if you wanted to host an even larger facility, you can work with the utility scale developer and a utility to host, you know, a utility scale solar project on your farm, and also receive rent payments for that. So there's a lot of different options for farmers, and I think that is about one of the best examples of how solar can be really beneficial, not just for, you know, cleaning up our environment, and not for giving you credits for your energy use, but how it can also provide a business a little bit more stability in an economy that's really unpredictable right now.

HOST: Logan, where are the biggest opportunities and challenges for solar in the next few years?

LOGAN O'GRADY: The legislature has created a path for solar in requiring all of our utilities, and that's all of them, from Excel Energy, our largest investor-owned utility, all the way down to our smallest cooperative utility in Minnesota have to procure all their energy from carbon free resources. There's only a few ways to do that, right, and solar is a really big part of that. And so the opportunity is that we are going to be very key and central, our industry will be to these utilities that have to legally meet that mandate. And so what we're trying to educate those utilities on is there are multiple tools available to you via solar to meet that in a quick way because 2040 is not that far away. I think the challenges come mostly from the logistics of that we have a really big problem in Minnesota related to interconnection. It's kind of a buzz word within our industry, but how do we actually interconnect a solar system that has been built into utility systems grid? We have a problem in Minnesota right now where utilities have not made investments necessary to sort of keep up with the growth trajectory of solar, and so many people wait in line for weeks, months, sometimes years for their solar project to be interconnected, and so that is the biggest challenge that I see our industry facing, is yeah, we can build this stuff, but we also need to work with the utility to make sure that that energy flows to the utility, and then, therefore, other customers.

HOST: Well, thank you so much, Logan. That's all the time we have. We appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us.

LOGAN O'GRADY: Yeah, thanks for having me.

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HOST: After the break, is the dream of higher education getting too costly for Minnesotans? This is North Star Stories: Voices from Where We Live, produced by AMPERS with support from the State of Minnesota. We'll be right back.

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HOST: You are listening to North Star Stories. I'm Chantel SinGs.

We continue our review of the news that made the headlines around the state.

Policing will soon look different in the northern city of Blackduck, near Bemidji. The city council voted to disband its police department at the end of the year and start contracting services from the Beltrami County Sheriff's Office in January. Blackduck has struggled with police staffing, and city officials say the change will save taxpayers up to $40,000 a year. One councilmember says the change will guarantee full-time police support.

BLACKDUCK COUNCILMEMBER: They're already covering this area. They have to provide us police protection. This guarantees us that 40 hours.

HOST: Meanwhile in southeast Minnesota, it's lights out for a Winona factory. Georgia-based Acuity Brands Lighting told state labor officials it will close its Winona plant, laying off 86 workers by the end of November. The company says it's moving most of the work to an Indiana facility.

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Access to higher education is a path to a better economic future for many Minnesotans, but a recent decision to raise tuition at state institutions could make college harder to afford for some. Reporter Jamad Jama spoke with students and officials about how the changes could affect their future in education.

JAMAD JAMA: For many students in Minnesota, financial aid makes the difference between attending a university or putting their plans on hold, and with tuition across Minnesota state colleges and universities increasing 6.25% in 2026, financial aid is one of the biggest lifelines for students.

SADO DOLA: I'm currently a rising junior at the University of Minnesota, studying healthcare management on a pre-law track. I think if it wasn't for financial aid, I think I would be in a predicament where I wouldn't be pursuing certain degrees instead of pursuing higher education. It would be like this barrier to higher education, without being in hundreds and thousands of dollars in debt.

JAMAD JAMA: Sado says that financial aid goes beyond tuition for students and can really help to relieve the burden of costs for other necessities.

SADO DOLA: I don't think people that kind of get the concept of what college expenses means for a college student, and I don't think they include food, paying for transportation, and room and boarding that you have to consider.

JAMAD JAMA: As students navigate the current costs of higher education, policymakers and advocates are asking about restructuring the financial aid system to better help recipients.

KEITH HOVIS: My name is Keith Hovis, and I'm the Communications Director for the Office of Higher Education in Minnesota. The Office of Higher Education applied for a grant with the Lumina Foundation. They have their great admissions redesign, which is seeking to invest in projects across the country to start developing what a new financial aid model looks like for Minnesota.

JAMAD JAMA: That grant from the Lumina Foundation, a national organization supporting higher education, is part of a larger effort to examine the current financial aid system and whether or not it still reflects what students need today.

KEITH HOVIS: Our current model is decades old, primarily for a long time. State grant was our main financial aid program, but we've launched a number of new programs, and so we thought it was a good time to step back and look cohesively at how we can create a model that better takes that all into account.

JAMAD JAMA: There are several reasons behind re-examining the current system, and Keith says they range from the sheer number of students enrolling to the need for a more transparent and simple application process.

KEITH HOVIS: It's exciting, but we've seen a lot more students enrolling, which puts a lot more need for our programs. The investment is not necessarily keeping up with the need yet, but we also thought, how can we create a model where students understand how much they're getting when they apply, and that that's consistent from semester to semester?

JAMAD JAMA: That's exactly the question this project hopes to answer in the coming years as they begin testing new approaches to support students.

KEITH HOVIS: So, this is really just a planning phase that we hope leads to a better system. So we're going to work with campuses with financial aid staff to figure out what is a way of providing financial aid that allows families to better plan and students to create a budget that they know that they can afford college.

JAMAD JAMA: For student advocates, financial aid isn't just about policy, it comes down to how students experience higher education every day.

MOLLY LEUTZ: My name is Molly Leutz, and I am the policy director at LeadMN, and we are the statewide student organization for the two-year community and technical colleges in the Minnesota State system, and what we do as an organization is really student-focused advocacy. It's really about them advocating and sharing their voices in the spaces where decisions are made about higher education.

JAMAD JAMA: And that advocacy work is part of a wider set of support and programs students can access through LeadMN and other statewide organizations, from private scholarships to advocacy services.

MOLLY LEUTZ: As we do talk about financial aid, LeadMN does have a robust scholarship program where we ourselves give out scholarships for students. We also have a scholarship database for students where they can try to find as many scholarship opportunities as possible.

JAMAD JAMA: And working with students so closely has given Molly a unique understanding on how access to financial assistance can shape students' decisions long before they begin university.

MOLLY LEUTZ: Within our system, on average, nearly 50% of students are receiving the Pell Grant. So we know that that means those are the students of highest need, where the barrier of cost is the highest.

JAMAD JAMA: In Minnesota, the federal Pell Grant provides aid to undergraduate students facing financial need, and advocates say the numbers show how many students are already starting college at a disadvantage, where financial aid through university can make all the difference.

MOLLY LEUTZ: We have so many first-generation students, returning students, pregnant parenting students, justice-impacted students, and really the students who have had the most need. It's not an overstatement to say it's the difference between going to college or not going to college,

JAMAD JAMA: And that diversity of need combined with the growing demand is central to whether or not the current model still makes sense for today's students.

MOLLY LEUTZ: We know higher education is important, and I think it seems like the right time to take a look to figure out how do we make a more sustainable model that serves our students, and doesn't harm our students of greatest need. They are really the next leaders, and you know, they're the next healthcare workers, they're the next mechanics, and HVAC workers, and they're just a huge part of the fabric of our communities.

JAMAD JAMA: And for students like Sado, being able to pursue higher education isn't just about getting a degree, it's a path towards securing their future,

SADO DOLA: Like pushing towards one goal and our aspiration, and we're all like helping each other with that, whether it's community college, university, trade school, cosmetology. I think they're all important and add all different values into our livelihood.

JAMAD JAMA: The Minnesota Office of Higher Education is planning to have a public proposal coming out of the Lumina Foundation grant in 2027, which would then need to go to the governor and legislature before being enacted. For students looking for resources, visit ohe.mn.gov. For North Star Stories, I'm Jamad Jama.

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HOST: For many in the state, higher education is not the only path to employment. Many non-degree occupations can also lead to well-paying careers. To learn more about opportunities for individuals without a college degree, we're joined now by Luke Greiner, the Department of Employment and Economic Development's regional analyst for central and southwestern Minnesota. Luke conducts research, writes publications, and provides presentations about Greater Minnesota's economy, job market, and higher education outcomes. Thank you for joining us, Luke.

LUKE GREINER: Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thanks for reaching out to me.

HOST: What does the job market and available careers in greater Minnesota look like?

LUKE GREINER: I would say the labor market is probably pretty close to what I would consider an equilibrium, where employers are able to hire the people that they want and job seekers are able to find employment.

HOST: Luke, can you talk a little more about what non-degree occupations are and what the job market is like for those careers?

LUKE GREINER: We see the labor market as this very dynamic ecosystem, and there's truly no one best way to navigate it. I think that's maybe what turns a lot of people off on the value of higher education. If you're operating under the presumption that going to college is a guarantee to financial success, that might be the case, but it might not be. It's not a guarantee. It is an investment, and because of that, and because there's so many different types of occupations that require different types of education, we really emphasize and try to stress figuring out what you want to be, and then determining from there what type of education you might need to achieve that. So you might not need any higher education, you might need a certificate at a two year school, or possibly a certificate earned through an employer, you might need to go to college, you might need many, many years of college. But it really truly depends on what you want to be, and high school education, or a GED, you know, I tell everybody that is the gateway that bar none opens up the gates of our economy.

HOST: What kinds of jobs are we talking about?

LUKE GREINER: In particular, good paying jobs, which I, myself, I mean, everybody has their own definition. I define it as a job that can pay a living wage for a single person, which is roughly $38,000 a year in the state. And to be honest, almost half of all the jobs that can support a single person require nothing more than a high school diploma or GED. The nuance is because you don't typically walk out of your high school graduation and then pick up a hammer and become a supervisor right out of the gate, you know, you work your way through that, and it's, it's really not any different than what experienced college graduates face. So, the best paying jobs, they typically work their way, they gain experience through different occupations, and they use that job as a stepping stone to get the next better job and the next better job, and they just, they kind of work their way up. And it's the way all of us experience the economy. There is this, you know, if you don't go on to college, it's just a little bit different, because you don't have that dedicated time and money and resources towards college at the front end.

HOST: As the state experiences rapid technological changes, like artificial intelligence, are non-degree jobs secure in the face of these advances?

LUKE GREINER: A lot of the jobs that don't require college will still likely interact with AI, say, like machinery maintenance. One example I have from an employer, they, they uploaded all of their technical manuals for all their machinery on the floor, and now they use AI as basically as a repository for all the troubleshooting. So instead of having five people looking through technical manuals to find the troubleshooting tree, now they can have one person just ask AI, and it has their whole library of all their manuals from their machinery. So that's a case where that person doesn't have a college degree, I'm fairly certain they're interacting with AI in a highly productive way, and our take is to be job secure. You're probably going to need to learn how to leverage the technology rather than avoid it.

HOST: Luke, is college worth the financial cost?

LUKE GREINER: This is a question I get from a lot of folks. It seems like people either frame it with college isn't worth the cost or you're going to be pigeonholed if you don't go to college. When I talk to students, I really emphasize figuring out what you want to do. And because it's kind of graduation season, one of the questions that I would say annoys me is when people ask college or high school students at graduation, where are they going, like implying that they're leaving to go somewhere that they need to. I think it's a stupid question. I think we should be asking, what do you want to be? The answer to that is far more important. That will determine whether or not college is a good option.

HOST: Well, Luke, we thank you so much for joining us. That's our time. We appreciate you. Thank you.

LUKE GREINER: It's my pleasure.

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HOST: And finally, you can celebrate the nation's 250 anniversary in the Minnesota outdoors. State parks and recreation areas offer plenty of Fourth of July weekend fun. The Department of Natural Resources says most Minnesotans live within 30 miles of one of the state's 73 parks and recreation areas, and visitors can enjoy swimming, fishing, paddling, camping, and naturalist programs. Fireworks are not allowed in state parks, making them a quieter place to celebrate the holiday. You can find park locations, campsite availability, and event listings at the Minnesota DNR website.

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This is it for today's program. If you missed any part of today's newscast, you can find this and past episodes at AMPERS.org or listen to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. You can also get North Star Stories daily on our website or check your favorite station's schedule. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back next week with more stories and voices from the North Star State.

OUTRO: North Star Stories is produced by AMPERS, diverse radio for Minnesota's communities, with support from the McKnight Foundation and the State of Minnesota. Online at AMPERS.org.