Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
In its tense geopolitical rivalry with the People’s Republic of China, the United States has been working at distinct, self-imposed disadvantage. Despite favorable geology and a resurgent industrial base, it is far behind the PRC when it comes to the extraction and processing of critical minerals.
In its tense geopolitical rivalry with the People’s Republic of China, the United States has been working at distinct, self-imposed disadvantage. Despite favorable geology and a resurgent industrial base, it is far behind the PRC when it comes to the extraction and processing of critical minerals.
Case in point: the Iron Range in northeastern Minnesota. The area is home to the world’s largest untapped deposits of copper and nickel, along with substantial reserves of cobalt. Yet these resources – with their wide array of commercial and military applications – are off-limits to American industry.
The riches are housed in what geologists call the Duluth Complex beneath the Superior National Forest near the federally designated Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. In 2023, the Biden administration placed a 20-year moratorium on mining in 225,500 acres in the Superior National Forest, effectively locking up the resources, to the delight of the hardened men in Beijing.
China is a global leader in the processing and refining of nickel, copper, and cobalt. What it doesn’t mine domestically, it gets from mines in controls abroad, in places like South America and Central Africa. Its ever-tightening grip on the global supply chain for these and other critical minerals, such as rare earths, is part of Beijing’s larger strategy of supplanting the U.S. as the world’s dominant power.
But a ray of sunshine broke through on April 16, when the Senate – by a vote of 50-49 – lifted the moratorium. The move came after the House – by a 214-208 vote – had approved nixing the Biden moratorium earlier in the year. Congress’s action was made possible by the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows regulations implemented late in the previous administration to be overturned by a simple majority vote in both chambers. It also prohibits a future administration from reimposing the same regulation once it has been rescinded by the CRA. Thus, with President Trump’s expected signature on the legislation, the moratorium will be gone.
The importance of the minerals stored in the Iron Range cannot be understated.
Nickel is used to produce stainless steel by enhancing resistance to corrosion. Nickel alloys are essential in aerospace and defense industries due to their exceptional strength and resistance to high temperatures. It is also a key component in electronics and batteries, where it improves storage capacity.
Copper is the third-most used metal globally, where it is found in home appliances, transportation equipment, electronic products, electrical grids, building construction materials, among other applications.
Cobalt is used in passenger and military aerospace high-performance jet engines, gas turbines, in the production of hard alloys for tools and cutting instruments, and in the manufacture of catalysts for petroleum refining and chemical processes.
The vote was good news for Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of Chilean mining company Antofagasta, which now will push ahead with the project. But the company still faces formidable hurdles, including litigation by environmental groups and a daunting permitting process that includes obtaining permits from the not exactly Trump-friendly State of Minnesota. The company is braced for a permitting process that could take years.
In the United States, “it takes 80% longer to permit projects than elsewhere in the world,” Charles Crain, managing vice president for policy at the National Manufacturers Association, said at a Capitol Hill press conference earlier this year.
Two bills pending in Congress – the SPEED Act and the PERMIT Act – address permitting delays rooted in federal statutes. The SPEED Act codifies a recent Supreme Court ruling limiting the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), clarifying that the law is purely procedural in nature. The PERMIT Act addresses permitting roadblocks in a section of the Clean Water Act, which allows states to block projects for reasons that have nothing to do with water quality. Similar permitting delays are contained within provisions of the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act.
But reaching a bipartisan legislative fix has stalled over whether streamlining the permitting process should include high-voltage transmission lines connecting wind farms and solar arrays in far-flung rural areas over hundreds of miles to more densely populated, power-hungry urban areas. Democrats favor the bow to green energy, Republicans do not.
“Transmission reform shouldn’t be a way to connect unreliable electricity sources to the grid at the expense of consumers or the reliability and the resilience of the grid,” note Daren Bakst and Paige Lambermont of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
From mining for critical minerals to the construction of pipelines, roads, bridges, and tunnels, efforts to upgrade America’s infrastructure continue to be tied up in red tape. Until that changes, realizing the potential of Minnesota’s Iron Range will slide into a distant future.
In early February 2026 a bald eagle was killed by a wind turbine at the University of Minnesota’s Eolos Wind Energy Research Field Station in Dakota County, Minnesota. The eagle was struck by the turbine blade, resulting in a gruesome dismemberment into three pieces. he U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (under the Department of the Interior) issued a violation notice to the university for killing the bald eagle without an “incidental take permit” under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
In early February 2026 a bald eagle was killed by a wind turbine at the University of Minnesota’s Eolos Wind Energy Research Field Station in Dakota County, Minnesota.
The eagle was struck by the turbine blade, resulting in a gruesome dismemberment into three pieces.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (under the Department of the Interior) issued a violation notice to the university for killing the bald eagle without an “incidental take permit” under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
Legal Insurrection has previously reported on the growing record of eagle deaths at wind facilities nationwide, where spinning blades have been tied to dozens of documented bald and golden eagle fatalities and multimillion‑ dollar settlements with major wind operators.
Now an Obama- era University of Minnesota wind‑ energy research project is under fire after a campus turbine struck and killed a bald eagle, leaving the national symbol gruesomely dismembered beneath the tower.
The University of Minnesota is facing a proposed penalty of over $14,000 after it was discovered that a green energy initiative funded by a grant from the Obama administration was responsible for the gruesome death of an American bald eagle.
The incident occurred at the University of Minnesota’s Eolos Wind Energy Research Field Station in Dakota County, Minnesota.
Photos obtained by Fox News Digital show the moment a University of Minnesota wind turbine struck the bald eagle, dismembering it into three pieces and leaving a bloodied carcass on the floor below.
The violation notice says the university violated the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act by killing the eagles without what is called an “incidental take permit.”
According to a Department of the Interior violation notice reviewed by Fox News Digital, the university was aware that bird collisions were a danger and was in the process of testing its collision detection sensors when the incident occurred.
The eagle’s remains were discovered in pieces. The lower torso and tail were found by technicians first, while the head and wings were not found until over a month later.
Following the incident, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sent the university a letter, urging the institution to reassess the turbine’s danger to eagles and to consider applying for a long-term permit for incidental take of eagles. However, the January notice of violation issued by the DOI does not indicate that the university has since obtained any such permit.
The Minnesota turbine is a part of the university’s Eolos Wind Energy Research Consortium, a wind-energy research collaboration. The construction of the turbine was funded by a $7.9 million grant from the Obama Department of Energy awarded in 2010, according to local outlet the Minnesota Daily.
One of former President Barack Obama’s first major legislative achievements was the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), which according to a report by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, appropriated an “unprecedented $90 billion to ‘lay the foundation for a clean energy economy of the future,’ of which the U.S. Department of Energy received $35.2 billion.”
The Minnesota incident is not the only such killing to have occurred in recent years.
In November, Fox News Digital reported on FWS proposing hefty fines on renewable energy company Ørsted Onshore North America for two bald eagle kills by wind turbines in Nebraska and Illinois. In January, FWS issued notice of finalized fines of a total of $32,340 for the two eagles killed by Ørsted turbines.
Wind power may be branded as “clean,” but that label rings hollow when turbines are shredding apex raptors that anchor entire ecosystems. A truly sustainable energy policy must account for the full environmental cost, including the silent toll on bald and golden eagles that regulate prey populations and signal the health of the landscapes we claim to be saving.
Until regulators and policymakers confront the reality that these projects are wiping out key predators in the natural food chain, it is dishonest to market this form of power as environmentally benign.
The “Theft Industrial Complex” describes systems where taxpayer funds are allegedly diverted on a massive scale to political allies, activist networks, nonprofits, and insiders, rather than reaching intended beneficiaries.
The “Theft Industrial Complex” describes systems where taxpayer funds are allegedly diverted on a massive scale to political allies, activist networks, nonprofits, and insiders, rather than reaching intended beneficiaries.
Examples:
1.Minnesota’s Childcare Fraud
2.California’s High-Speed Rail Project (“Rail to Nowhere”)
Many Americans are watching in amazement and horror at the serious allegations of government fraud and waste. These are not small clerical errors or isolated mistakes. It’s about taxpayer dollars — on an enormous scale — siphoned away from the people and programs they were supposed to help. And being stolen from those who are footing the bill.
The most recent example is in Minnesota, where an independent journalist uncovered seeming widespread abuse in childcare and health programs, including Somali-run daycare operations accused of billing the state for services never provided. Reports suggest the potential total loss may reach into the hundreds of millions — if not more.
As Americans prepare to file their taxes in April, it is infuriating to watch billions of dollars treated so casually by the same politicians who constantly tell us they care about “affordability.” At some point, the culprits must be identified and held to account because the modern left has created a Theft Industrial Complex. That’s where taxpayer money is funneled to political allies, activist organizations, nonprofit networks, and consultants who laugh all the way to the bank while escaping accountability
Here are just three glaring examples:
Minnesota’s Childcare Fraud
The Minnesota daycare scandal is a heartbreaking example. Allegations describe fraudulent billing schemes, fake attendance records, and nonexistent children bused as financial vehicles to extract money from taxpayers. The money was supposed to support real families and real children. Instead, much of it may have gone to fraud, abuse, and personal enrichment.
Gavin Newsom’s Rail to Nowhere
California offers another example. Governor Gavin Newsom wants to continue to pour staggering amounts of taxpayer funding into a high-speed rail project that remains years behind schedule, way over budget, and nowhere near completion. After 16 years and $15 billion spent, the proposed 800-mile rail has only completed 119 miles. The Trump Administration correctly cut the remaining $4 billion. Families don’t see improvement, affordability, or accountability. What they see is a political class insisting taxpayers keep writing checks while producing very little in return.
Climate Cash and Political Allies
Then there is the Biden administration’s climate agenda. Internal records and congressional findings reveal that political activists — including figures such as John Podesta — played influential roles in steering major policy decisions like the pause on natural gas export approvals. Potentially to boost financial gain for family members. At the same time, billions in federal climate grants have been awarded to organizations tightly connected to Democratic operatives. One group linked to Stacey Abramseven dissolved after congressional scrutiny intensified. Once again, the people benefiting were not working-class families — they were political insiders and aligned institutions.
The total sum of these three examples is north $18 billion dollars in questionable or wasted spending. And that’s only a snapshot of what has become routine.
It Was Never Really About Affordability
The next time you hear a leftist politician claim they are fighting for affordability, fairness, or working families, it is worth asking a simple question: why does the money so often seem to end up with political allies, activist networks, and government insiders instead of the people they claim to champion? That’s the Theft Industrial Complex at work. Taxpayers provide the funding. Political machines reap the rewards. Ordinary Americans are expected to quietly pick up the tab year after year.
As another tax season approaches, maybe it’s time to demand leaders who treat taxpayer dollars like a trust — not a slush fund. Because whenever the left starts talking about climate spending, childcare expansion, or new “equity” initiatives, the pattern is becoming impossible to ignore. They’re not fighting for our families. They’re fighting for our money.
Larry Behrens is an energy expert and the Communications Director for Power The Future. He has appeared on Fox News, ZeroHedge, and NewsMax speaking in defense of American energy workers. You can follow him on X/Twitter @larrybehrens.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
The New York Times (NYT) published a long piece describing recent destructive wildfires in Minnesota, claiming that they were “fueled by climate change” and more likely to happen again in the future because of ongoing global warming. The NYT’s claims are unfounded. The NYT’s own article admits that serious fires are not unprecedented for the region, and data show that wildfires and fire weather have not been getting worse in Minnesota.
The New York Times (NYT) published a long piece describing recent destructive wildfires in Minnesota, claiming that they were “fueled by climate change” and more likely to happen again in the future because of ongoing global warming. The NYT’s claims are unfounded. The NYT’s own article admits that serious fires are not unprecedented for the region, and data show that wildfires and fire weather have not been getting worse in Minnesota.
Minnesota suffered from three significant wildfires this May, which the NYT reports “consumed more than 32,000 acres and destroyed an estimated 150 structures, serving as a kind of wake-up call for residents who often see their state as spared from the very worst of disasters fueled by climate change.”
The article explains that Duluth is considered “climate-proof” by Californians and other south westerners looking for reprieve from heatwaves and wildfires, which is completely absurd on its face. The climate always changes, everywhere, and extreme weather likewise happens everywhere, so whoever is leading people to believe that they will be safe from weather in any given state is being dangerously misleading. This same narrative drove people to Asheville, North Carolina, in the years leading up to the catastrophic and deadly flooding from Hurricane Helene. Climate Realismexplained then that the region has a history of killer floods and other severe weather, but apparently real estate “experts” had told people it was some kind of haven from bad weather.
NYT claims that the recent wildfires in Minnesota “underscore that the warming climate is also making disasters more likely in Minnesota as wildfire season — a fact of life in the state — is becoming longer and more severe, experts say.” They claimed that Minnesota usually sees an average of 1,200 wildfires, impacting 12,600 acres, but this year has seen a spike; a thousand fires, which destroyed over 50,000 acres.
However, wildfire data for Minnesota from 2006 to 2024 is publicly available, and paints a different story. Accepting the NYT’s claim that this season so far has seen 1000 wildfires which have burned 50,000 acres, I was able to plot this chart.
Figure 1: Wildfires in Minnesota from 2006 – 2024, plus the season so far in 2025 according to the New York Times. Data from the National Interagency Coordination Center.
Even if by the end of this year Minnesota has a record breaking wildfire year, it is clear that there is no trend towards a greater number of fires, nor larger amounts of acreage burned in this dataset. If anything, the data indicate that the number of acres lost to wildfires annually has declined since the early 2000s, as have the total number of fires.
The warm season may become longer with modest warming, as spring arrives earlier, but that doesn’t mean that the fire season will become longer or more severe. The data in Minnesota just doesn’t bear that out.
One expert interviewed by the NYT, Sarah Strommen, head of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, said that they “are trending toward hotter, drier weather[.]”
Data compiled by the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) refutes this claim. According to the state climate report, although temperatures in the state have risen 2.5°F since 1900, annual precipitation has been increasing over that period, and days with temperatures of 90° or higher have declined since the 1930s peak.
Figure 2: Chart from the NCEI, text from NCEI report reads “Observed total annual precipitation for Minnesota from 1895 to 2020. Dots show annual values. Bars show averages over 5-year periods (last bar is a 6-year average). The horizontal black line shows the long-term (entire period) average of 26.4 inches.” https://statesummaries.ncics.org/chapter/mn/
Springtime precipitation has also been increasing over time in Minnesota, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data.
Interestingly, the NYT admits that the forests of northern Minnesota and Canada “are designed to burn,” and the “second deadliest fire in U.S. history was in 1918 in this very part of Minnesota, and is believed to have killed more than 1,000 people.” The largest fire in Minnesota history was the Great Hinckley Fire of 1894, which burned 350,000 acres and killed 418 people. That one happened in September, but like in the recent fires, there was a weather inversion present, which the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources described as “hot air trapped by cooler air above it,” accompanied by “the temperature climbing to 90 degrees, strong winds, [and] lack of humidity[.]” These are the exact conditions described in the NYT article about the recent fires.
The types of wildfires Minnesota has recently experienced are not unprecedented and state weather data does not support the claim that climate change has had anything to do with them. A terrible combination of temporary weather conditions created the right environment for serious fires, yes, but such fires and the conditions that led to them are entirely natural, if historically relatively rare for the region. The New York Times should have exercised a little journalistic skepticism, and fact checked the information given to them by the “experts” they interviewed as sources. This would have improved the NYT’s flagging reputation for truth seeking and integrity and left its readers better informed.
In Episode 454 of District of Conservation, Gabriella breaks down VP Harris’ running mate, MN Governor Tim Walz, and his extreme record on conservation, gun rights, and climate. Tune in to learn more!
“Climate change impacts lives and livelihoods in every corner of our state…Minnesota will continue to lead the way in combatting climate change, and we’ll create clean energy jobs in the process. This bill is an essential investment in our future that will continue to pay off for generations to come.” — Governor Tim Walz, February 7, 2023
In Episode 454 of District of Conservation, Gabriella breaks down VP Harris’ running mate, MN Governor Tim Walz, and his extreme record on conservation, gun rights, and climate. Tune in to learn more!
In Episode 579 of District of Conservation, Gabriella discusses the permitting reform bill – aka BAAJA – that is gaining traction in Congress now. The Senate will hold a cloture vote starting at 3:30pm ET in a motion to proceed. Gabriella discusses the status quo without permitting reform, how BAAJA is good for the environment and affordability. Tune in!SHOW NOTESBipartisan Policy Center: BAAJA ExplainerEstimating the US Energy System Impacts of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act
Nineteen Republican state attorneys general hit five Democrat-controlled states with a legal challenge alleging that the blue states are illegally attempting to impose aggressive climate policies on the rest of the country.
Nineteen Republican state attorneys general hit five Democrat-controlled states with a legal challenge alleging that the blue states are illegally attempting to impose aggressive climate policies on the rest of the country.
The coalition of red states filed the challenge with the Supreme Court on Wednesday, alleging that the five blue states — California, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and Minnesota — are trying to advance an anti-fossil fuel agenda for the entire country via tools like climate nuisance lawsuits against oil companies. The coalition of red states requested that the Supreme Court step in to determine whether these Democrat-controlled states can effectively interfere in other states’ energy policy.
The coalition of plaintiffs asked the Supreme Court to examine the complaint in the context of the Commerce Clause, which gives the federal government the ability to address matters of interstate commerce that are beyond the jurisdiction of one state or another. The states that filed the complaint include Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
“In essence, Defendant States want a global carbon tax on the traditional energy industry,” the complaint states. “Citing fears of a climate catastrophe, they seek massive penalties, disgorgement, and injunctive relief against energy producers based on out-of-state conduct with out-of-state effects.”
The complaint references climate nuisance lawsuits that have been pursued by Minnesota and the other defendant states as evidence that the five blue states are trying to alter the national energy landscape by seeking to extract large settlements from traditional energy companies. In many instances, the third-party law firms that are helping prosecutors bring these tort cases stand to reap large paydays if the energy companies being sued decide to settle.
“Defendant States assert the power to dictate the future of the American energy industry,” states the complaint. “They hope to do so not by influencing federal legislation or by petitioning federal agencies, but by imposing ruinous liability and coercive remedies on energy companies through state tort actions governed by state law in state court.”
Democratic New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin expressed confidence that the Supreme Court will not side against him and described the red states’ complaint as politically-motivated.
“We are proud to stand up for New Jersey residents and consumers in combating the deception the largest oil and gas companies engaged in for decades. It’s a shame that other states are trying to hamstring our efforts to protect New Jerseyans under New Jersey law,” Platkin said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “But we are confident the Supreme Court will see this for the desperate stunt that it is, and deny their motion. In any event, our important work continues.”
Democratic Connecticut Attorney General Chris Tong issued a statement on Wednesday deriding the complaint filed against his state.
“This must be a fake lawsuit filed in the Land of Make Believe. I live and work in the real world, where I am focused on actual threats — like the climate crisis — to the health and safety of the people of Connecticut,” Tong said. “This is pure partisan political theater, and it will not distract or deter us from fighting for Connecticut consumers, families and our environment.”
The offices of Democratic Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Democratic Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha and Democratic California Attorney General Rob Bonta did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
A broadcast by NBC News, titled “Ice fishing threatened by climate change,” claims that warmer winters, particularly the 2023/2024 winter, is affecting the ice fishing season due to supposed influences from climate change. This is false. Climate change does not make such localized effects in a short time, and it is well established that the warmer weather pattern this winter is a result of El Niño patterns in the Pacific Ocean.
A broadcast by NBC News, titled “Ice fishing threatened by climate change,” claims that warmer winters, particularly the 2023/2024 winter, is affecting the ice fishing season due to supposed influences from climate change. This is false. Climate change does not make such localized effects in a short time, and it is well established that the warmer weather pattern this winter is a result of El Niño patterns in the Pacific Ocean.
The story begins stating:
NBC News’ Jesse Kirsch explores how warmer temperatures are impacting a winter tradition. Business owners near Minnesota’s Mille Lacs Lake who rely on the cold weather say they’re having a slow season.
The video then proceeds with interviews of ice fishermen and local business owners who are the bemoaning the fact that they are having a slow season. In the video they say “over the past 50 years Minnesota has lost 10 to 14 days of lake ice” but they did not back that up with any scientific citation.
First, it has to be said that any single winter having warmer than normal temperatures and the resultant less ice is in fact due to short term weather patterns not long-term climate change. It is well defined that climate change takes place over 30 years. As discussed in Climate at a Glance: Weather vs. Climate:
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) defines climate as “…the average weather conditions for a particular location and over a long period of time.” To create a climate record, 30 years of weather data is averaged to create a “normal” climate expectation for a location or region. What we experience on a day-to-day basis are weather events, not climate events. Weather is not climate.
Therefore, the 2023/2024 winter is cannot be attributed to climate change unless it is indicative of a long-term trend, but no evidence of such a sustained trend is found in the record.
It is already well established that the warmer temperatures of the 2023/2024 winter are a direct result of a significant El Niño pattern in the Pacific Ocean, affecting much of the United States. For example this report from Fox weather details the connection in US just had its warmest winter in history thanks to El Nino.
The story goes on to say:
“El Niño played a large role in the record heat,” said FOX Forecast Center Meteorologist Cody Braud. “The pattern for El Niño typically means a strong Pacific Jet, which displaces the Polar Jet farther to the North. There are obviously other facets to the story, but this largely keeps the coldest air trapped out of the Lower 48.”
That is clearly a short-term weather pattern, not climate.
Contrary to this year’s pattern, back in the winter of 2019 it was significantly colder and Minnesota had one of their biggest ice fishing tournaments ever with over 10,000 people on the ice in a single lake. As outlined in this story in Men’s Health titled: “Ice fishing event expects enormous crowd, More than 10,000 people will gather on frozen ice of Gull Lake, Minnesota, for world’s largest charitable ice fishing contest Saturday.” The story includes photographs of the lake covered by thousands of people and ice huts.
More recently, in January 2022, ice was thick enough to support vehicles in addition to the usual fishing huts as the photo below shows.
Vehicles towing ice houses drive on Lake of the Woods in Minnesota in January 2022. Credit: Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images.
Clearly, prior to the 2023/2024 winter ice fishing seemed to be doing quite well in Minnesota. One bad year is not evidence of climate change. This winter’s low and thin ice is a result of weather patterns this year that created a warmer winter in the United States, and of course, Minnesota.
Some examples of this longer time-scale variability might include a series of abnormally mild or exceptionally severe winters, and even a mild winter followed by a severe winter. Such year-to-year variations in the weather patterns are often associated with changes in the wind, air pressure, storm tracks, and jet streams that enclose areas far larger than that of your particular region.
If Minnesota has a banner ice fishing season next year, it is doubtful NBC News will send a reporter to cover it and correct its story from this year. This sort of singling out of particular weather events is part of a troubling pattern in which the media tries to link virtually anything that might be thought of as abnormal weather to climate change even when no long-term trend is evident.
For the media, pushing the climate alarm narrative seems to be more important than reporting factually on a story.
What can one wind facility in Southwestern Minnesota tell us about the state of the American electric grid? Quite a lot, actually.
In 2007, Minnesota began its quest to power the state with wind turbines and solar panels when the Next Generation Energy Act (NGEA) was signed into law. This legislation mandated that 25 percent of the state’s electricity come from “renewable” energy sources by 2025.
These mandates, along with generous federal tax subsidies and monopoly utilities seeking to maximize their government-approved profits by building new infrastructure, led to a building boom in wind turbines and solar panels.
From 2007 through 2022, Minnesota built thousands of wind turbines totaling 3,690 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity and 1,143 MW of solar capacity en route to meeting the mandates in 2020, five years ahead of schedule.
However, many of the turbines built to comply with the 25 percent mandate are already being refurbished or “repowered” long before the end of their supposed 25-year useful lives. In fact, one of these wind facilities, the Nobles wind farm, has already been repowered after just 12 years in service.
But why was Nobles refurbished more than a decade before the end of its useful life at a cost of $240 million? The official reason provided by Xcel Energy for repowering Nobles was to spur economic activity in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and extend the retirement date of the facility from the year 2035 to 2045.
This story makes for a good newspaper headline, but the data tell a very different story. Digging deeper into the reasons surrounding Xcel’s decision to repower the Nobles facility illustrates how our state and federal energy policies are causing America’s energy decisions to grow increasingly irrational.
What is Repowering, and Why Does it Occur?
To fully understand the depth and gravity of this situation and why it has a profound impact on energy policy moving forward, it’s helpful to take a closer look at what repowering is and why it is done.
Repowering is the process of retrofitting or replacing wind turbines in full (full repowering) or in part (partial repowering). Full repowering is the act of completely decommissioning smaller existing wind turbines at a facility and replacing them with larger, but typically fewer, wind turbines.
Partial repowering is the most common form of repowering, and it consists of replacing portions of old turbines, such as the gearbox, hub, main shaft, bearing assembly, rotor, and blades, while maintaining the original steel towers and concrete foundations.
NREL researchers replace an existing gearbox (front) with a fully instrumented Winergy gearbox and SKF main bearing in the DOE-owned GE 1.5-megawatt wind turbine at NREL’s Flatirons Campus. Photo by Dennis Schroeder, NREL
New gearboxes can be needed because the bearings responsible for helping convert the relatively slow rotations of a turbine’s blades into the high speeds needed to generate electricity can develop cracks, reducing the wind turbine’s efficiency. Larger rotors and longer blades are frequently placed on the original steel towers to increase the wingspan of the wind tower, thus allowing it to access more wind energy and convert it to electricity.
All of these actions help increase the productivity of wind turbines, but the biggest reason that companies seek to repower wind turbines has nothing to do with how they perform and everything to do with money. Repowering wind projects allows them to requalify for the wind Production Tax Credit (PTC), a lucrative federal subsidy that expires after the first 10 years of a project’s life.
It should come as no surprise, then, that data from the U.S. Department of Energy shows that the wind facilities partially repowered in 2021— totaling 1.6 GW of capacity, down from 3 GW in 2020 — ranged in age from 9 to 16 years old, with the median age being 10 years.
In essence, the lucrative federal subsidies paid to wind turbine operators are creating a perverse incentive to prematurely refurbish or replace wind projects long before the end of their useful lifetimes, including the Nobles wind project in Minnesota.
Nobles: Promises Made
Nobles is a 201-megawatt (MW) wind facility consisting of 134 turbines spanning 26,880 acres just outside of Reading, Minnesota — about 45 miles east of the South Dakota border. Construction of the wind “farm” cost $538 million (in 2010 dollars), and it began commercial operation in December 2010.
According to documents filed by Xcel Energy to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC), the project was supposed to produce 40.9 percent of its potential energy output — a metric known as its “capacity factor” — every year over the course of an assumed 25-year lifetime.
From 2011 through 2020, Nobles did a relatively good job of meeting Xcel’s expectations, producing an average output of 38.2 percent of its theoretical potential during these years. But things changed in 2021 when the annual capacity factor of Nobles plummeted to 19.5 percent, and it performed only moderately better in 2022, with a capacity factor of 23.6 percent. These down years brought the 12-year average capacity factor of the facility down to 35.4 percent, which you can see in the accompanying graph below.
But why did electricity generation at Nobles fall so dramatically in 2021 and 2022 when the Nobles 2 wind project, a newer, larger wind project which is located just six miles to the northwest of the original Nobles, had a capacity factor of 42.7 percent in 2021, and 49.9 percent in 2022?
The answer illustrates how federal subsidies and state mandates are incentivizing the construction of so many wind turbines that the energy produced by them is often wasted.
Lost in Transmission, Congestion
Nobles is located in a very windy part of the state, which prompted the construction of dozens of wind facilities nearby to meet Minnesota’s renewable energy mandate and to maximize the generation of electricity and federal tax credits.
Currently, there aren’t enough transmission lines to move the power generated from these wind facilities to other areas of the 15-state regional grid that could use it. This is because the existing transmission lines can only transport so much power at a time, similar to how water flowing down a sink is governed by the width of the drainpipe. As a result, the oversupply of electricity frequently causes power prices to go negative, which sends a signal to wind turbine operators to scale back supply, at least it works that way in theory.
In reality, the PTC pays wind projects $26 for each MWh of electricity the facility produces, whether or not that electricity is needed. The subsidies mean that electricity generated from wind farms could potentially be sold into the market at a price of negative $25 per MWh and still turn a profit for their owners. This is why the areas with the most wind turbines see the most negative prices, which you can see in the map below.
Without the subsidies, however, wind turbine operators are forced to reconcile with the realities of supply and demand because selling wind generation at negative prices would lead to substantial losses. This causes the turbine operator to shut the wind turbine down — an industry process called curtailment — when wind generation is high but wholesale power prices are low in an effort to avoid losing money.
Data from Minnesota PUC filings show a large increase in curtailment at Nobles in 2021 when 47.6 percent of the potential output from Nobles was curtailed, and in 2022, when curtailment rates reached 38 percent, as you can see in the graph below.
The spike in curtailment is important to understand because it suggests that wind facilities around the country are at risk of becoming uneconomical once the PTC expires after 10 years, long before the 20 to 25 years that are commonly cited as their useful lifetimes.
Wind advocates argue that we need to spend billions of dollars building hundreds of miles of new transmission lines — which routinely cost $2.5 million per mile — to transport larger quantities of wind-generated electricity to reduce the amount of wind power that is ultimately wasted.
However, this solution would be temporary, at best, because the availability of federal subsidies would once again distort the market and encourage utility companies to build an excess of wind facilities in an area where there isn’t adequate transmission capacity. In the end, we would end up in the same situation after spending more money at great cost to taxpayers and ratepayers in Minnesota.
Costs to Consumers: Is Repowering a Bait and Switch?
When Xcel Energy proposed its Nobles repowering project to the Minnesota PUC, the company claimed that customers would benefit from this and six other repowering projects by saving $160 million in energy costs over the next 25 years. But the biggest beneficiary of the Nobles repowering project was Xcel Energy because repowering means the company will earn millions of dollars in profits for their shareholders at taxpayer expense.
Because investor-owned utilities in Minnesota, like Xcel Energy, are regulated monopolies created by the state of Minnesota, they are not allowed to make a profit on the electricity they sell. Instead, they are only allowed to charge enough to cover the cost of providing electricity to everyone, plus a government-approved 10.2 percent profit, or rate-of-return on equity, when they spend money on capital assets such as new power plants, transmission lines, and even new corporate offices, so long as the PUC approves those expenses. However, the 10.2 percent profit declines every year as the capital assets depreciate or lose value over time.
This gives Xcel a powerful incentive to spend millions of dollars building as many wind turbines as possible and to spend millions more repowering them long before the end of their useful lifetime.
The graph nearby shows the unsubsidized annual cost of the Nobles wind facility from 2011 through 2045, depicting the yearly cost of the project before and after the repowering project. As you can see, the total annual cost of the project jumps from around $51 million in 2022 to $74.8 million in 2023 after repowering. Xcel’s profits constitute the largest cost increase, rising from $22.9 million in 2022 to $39.6 million in 2023, a substantial dividend of $16.7 million that year.
We present the unsubsidized annual cost of the Nobles project because subsidies don’t change the cost of a good or service, they simply change who pays for it. In this instance, federal taxpayers, or future generations, are picking up part of the tab on behalf of Xcel Energy’s customers.
Our analysis did find that repowering the Nobles facility to requalify for the tax credit and extend the “book” life of the facility by ten years would slightly reduce the cost per MWh at Nobles for Xcel’s ratepayers compared to allowing the facility to run at lower capacity factors due to curtailment and allowing the subsidies to expire. That is, only if the facility operates for the “expected” 25 years this time.
However, we also concluded that even the subsidized cost of the repowered Nobles project would never be lower than the cost of generating electricity at the Sherburne County (Sherco) coal plant or the Prairie Island nuclear plant, which produced electricity for $38.80 per MWh and $41.13 per MWh, respectively, as illustrated in the nearby graph. This is because the PUC allowed Xcel to continue earning profits on the original assets that were replaced through 2045.
Nobles would theoretically cost less than Prairie Island in 2034, but the PTC would expire after 2032, and Nobles would go back to being 75 percent more expensive than the existing nuclear plant.
These concepts are complex, but they are not impossible to understand. Unfortunately, it appears the five commissioners on the Minnesota PUC — all of whom were either appointed or reappointed by Gov. Tim Walz — do not seem to understand that voting to approve the repowering of the Nobles wind facility would increase electricity costs to Minnesota families and businesses compared to encouraging Xcel Energy to run the Sherco plant more frequently.
If the PUC commissioners were interested in protecting ratepayers from Xcel Energy’s bait-and-switch tactics and holding electricity prices to the standard of the “just and reasonable” clause in Minnesota statutes, they would question Xcel Energy’s perpetual money machine of building wind turbines and repowering them long before their 20-to-25-year useful lives. Instead, all five rubber-stamped the Nobles repowering project and the associated costs.
Final Thoughts: What Nobles Means for America
The life, premature demise, and repowering of the Nobles wind facility suggests the United States is No Country for Old Wind, and Nobles is no anomaly.
Data from the U.S. Department of Energy show that 30,000 MW of wind capacity will have been repowered by 2026, which would constitute 21.4 percent of the total wind capacity installed nationwide in 2022. It also isn’t unreasonable to think that the Nobles and other wind facilities will undergo another round of full or partial repowering if the federal subsidies are still available in 2032.
Taxpayer subsidies and utility profit motives are converging to incentivize the premature destruction and replacement of wind installations throughout America, and this trend will almost certainly become more common as an increasing number of wind turbines are added to the nation’s electric grid. Utility companies and wind turbine operators will seek to renew their access to the PTC to reduce the need for curtailment and to increase their government-approved profits on capital expenditures as long as these subsidies are available.
It’s a green grift all the way down.
Be sure to like, subscribe and share this piece, or YOU will need to be “repowered.”
Also, enjoy this song from The Kinks, which was the inspiration for the title of this article.
Allergies are a negative by-product of a beneficial greening world. The longer allergy season is a result of a longer growing season which has benefitted, plants, insects, animals, and humans as the planet has modestly warmed.
Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) ran a segment during its local morning edition titled, “Climate change is contributing to an extended allergy season.” While the story itself is likely true, it buries the lede. The longer allergy season is a result of a longer growing season which has benefitted, plants, insects, animals, and humans as the planet has modestly warmed. Allergies are a negative by-product of a beneficial greening world.
Cathy Wurzer and Gracie Stockton report at MPR:
If you suffer from seasonal allergies, you may be dealing with sneezing, sniffles, and itchy eyes further into the fall — and that’s in part due to climate change.
. . .
The allergy season has been extended by 21 days in Minnesota, ….
Warmer temperatures and increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the environment make plants and trees happy, Potter says. That means more photosynthesis and thus more pollen on both the front and back ends of the season.
Way to bury the lede MPR. Reading only the headline one would be left with the impression that allergies were just one more supposedly unmitigated harm resulting from climate change. Yet, as even MPR acknowledges, allergies are a negative side effect of the carbon dioxide induced greening of the Earth, which trees benefit from. And, they aren’t the only ones.
As explained in previous Climate Realism posts, here, here, here, and here for example, pollinators like bees and bats, wild and domesticated plants (think crops and flowers), and people, in general, have benefitted from the extended growing season.
Interestingly, despite the longer allergy season, cities and suburbs are increasingly devoting land to permanent “green spaces,” touting the benefits of bringing nature (and pollen-laden plant life) into urban areas. These benefits include decreasing the urban heat island effect and associated warming, improving air quality, and there is even an international study from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and Colorado State University suggesting that urban green spaces reduce premature human deaths.
Global greening has contributed to the largest decline in global hunger in history. Greater plant growth not only removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but the allergy causing pollen it emits is great for pollinating insects like bees, and birds.
Although no one should dismiss the plight of allergy sufferers resulting from the greener world, allergies are by and large treatable. Worrying about climate change will do nothing to mitigate the warming induced extension of allergy season. As a result, the best recommendation for allergy sufferers is to stock up on allergy medications, and then enjoy the benefits of a much greener world. Outdoor exercise can be healthy and fosters an appreciation of nature. More plants, wild plants and food crops alike, means fewer hungry and malnourished people and more habitat for wildlife; surely even most allergy sufferers can see the net benefit of that.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
In addition to directing The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, Burett puts Environment & Climate News together, is the editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and the host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.
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