Minnesota's clean energy progress stalls during the 2022 legislative session

CEEM’s Legislative Work

Clean Energy Economy MN (CEEM) develops and supports public policy that promotes the growth of clean energy jobs and the economic opportunities provided by clean, affordable and reliable energy. Working with the Walz-Flanagan Administration, state legislature, and before the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, CEEM provides “the business voice of clean energy” to influence policy decisions and grow equitable and inclusive clean energy market opportunities. Learn more about our work at the Capitol.

2022 Legislative goals and level-setting

Minnesota remains one of a few divided legislatures in the nation with Republicans leading the Senate, and Democrats in the Governor’s Office and leading the House of Representatives. With this split, policies needed bipartisan agreement to have any hope of passage. The legislature had many large issues to focus on like budgeting with the historic surplus, redistricting and issues remaining around COVID, police reform and public safety, which limited its ability to focus on a variety of other issues.

In 2022, we identified bipartisan opportunities that existed to build on the significant energy policy success of the 2021 Minnesota legislative session. Rapid decarbonization across all sectors of our state’s economy is required to mitigate the risks posed by a changing climate as well as pragmatic solutions that deliver economic benefits and prosperity for all Minnesotans. Given these parameters, CEEM worked on passing Solar*Rewards, building performance standards and community solar. Learn more about our priorities.

What got done this session?

The Agriculture bill that passed included a small increase in funding to the Bioincentive program, though it is still far from fully funded. The bill also included a minor policy change for solar, but no large legislation benefiting clean energy was passed during the 2022 session.

What was missed this session?

The following policy and funding priorities which Clean Energy Economy MN (CEEM) helped shepherd into the bipartisan bill will not be passed into law:

• $20 million in Solar*Rewards
• $16 million in Weatherization Assistance Program
• $20 million in Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act Competitiveness funding to help capture billions in federal funding
• Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (C-PACE) modification to allow energy efficient and water improvements to agricultural land

CEEM is disappointed legislative leaders and the Walz-Flanagan Administration could not come to an agreement to pass this critically important funding. Read more in our 2022 end of session press release.

Next up: the 2022 elections

Attention now fully turns to the upcoming 2022 elections with primary elections taking place on August 9 and the general election on November 8.

No matter the outcome of the election, there will be dozens of new policymakers at the Capitol next year with 36 retirements in the House and 23 in the Senate. This unusually large amount of change will give CEEM and our members a great opportunity to educate these new leaders in how clean, affordable and reliable energy will unleash economic opportunity across the state.

Over the next few months, we will be working to educate candidates and will be engaging our members to participate in this candidate education process to set up the clean energy community for success in 2023 and beyond.