Minnesota regulations should not drive up North Dakotans’ energy costs!

The North Dakota Public Service Commission is currently considering a request for an increase in rates for Xcel Energy’s customers in the state. While such increase requests are not uncommon and are, in some cases, justified due to rising costs electric utilities incur, which then must be passed on to consumers, some such requests are different and this one falls into that category.

Xcel Energy is held hostage by Minnesota’s unreasonable regulatory standards which add needlessly to the cost of generating and delivering electricity to those who live within its service area and, as a result, are forced to purchase their electricity from the firm.

The fact that this company is domiciled in Minnesota and subject to its left-wing driven, restrictive regulations is not something for which North Dakota rate payers should be penalized. 

Woke Regulations Run Amok

Minnesota regulators saddle utilities located there with overreaching regulations such as requiring that diminishing percentages of power come from traditional, reliable baseload power sources upon which we’ve relied for generations and, instead, requiring more and more power to be produced by so-called “renewable” energy sources.

So extreme are our neighboring state’s energy portfolio demands that they do not even include hydroelectric power as a renewable energy source when calculating compliance.

What could be more “renewable” than water running over a dam?

It doesn’t matter to left wing politicians and regulators in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. They’re so bent on forcing more wind and solar energy upon citizens that they’ve even redefined obvious terms nonsensically in order to attempt to accomplish the goal.

Baseload power is indespensible to a reliable, efficient energy supply.  Of course, the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. When that’s the case, wind and solar power are useless and baseload power from good old sources like coal, natural gas and nuclear, which are always available, are essential.

Germany once tried to go completely “renewable” in its energy grid and promptly retreated when the clear limits of such folly became obvious.

An ”all of the above” approach is fine, but such extremes are costly experiments which don’t work.

North Dakota is an energy state.  While we have solar and wind power, we’ve also long been a bastion of low cost, efficient, reliable baseload power from sources such as our clean coal power plants. The fact that woke regulatory policy in our neighboring state, for political reasons, denies the broad, reasonable use of such power, which would keep rates low and ensure reliable energy, should not be North Dakota‘s problem.

If Minnesota’s regulatory framework requires Xcel Energy to increase prices because of these regulatory practices, those costs should be borne by its Minnesota rate payers, whose public officials have caused the problem, not by the North Dakota citizens our Public Service Commission represents and serves.

The PSC should deny the exorbitant requested rate increase by Xcel Energy on North Dakota rate payers.