Energy Minnesota
The majority of us flip a switch and do not think beyond the fact that the lights came on as we expect. At their regular noon hour meeting at Prante's on December 2nd. Rotarians and guests heard from a trio of speakers: Loren Laugtug the Legislative Affairs Manager for Otter Tail Power; Annette P. Henkel the CEO of Energy Minnesota a consortium of six gas and oil energy company investors and Geri Coyne the Operations Manager for Otter Tail Power in Wahpeton.
Loren Laugtug
There are 2.1 million households and these six companies supply energy to 1.5 million of them plus 670,000 businesses. They are the largest property tax payers in Minnesota as Minnesota Revenue deems all their poles, wires, gas lines, plants and buildings as property. In addition to tax issues they deal with municipalization of the utilities, fairness in paying for the electric grid, renewable energy mandates, preparing for electric cars and ensuring reliability. Otter Tail Power alone has 130,000 customers in Minnesota (60,700), North Dakota (57,900) and South Dakota (11,600). Their central stores operation is here in Wahpeton. CapX2020 has embarked on 2.2 billion dollars of transmission initiatives to upgrade the grid. Some of that many of us have seen along I-94 between Fargo and Mankato. The Big Stone Energy plant has spent $ 390 million dollars to upgrade and comply with the new EPA regulations relating to haze pollution.
Energy mandates are that 25 % of all energy in Minnesota (10 % in each of ND and SD) must be renewable fuel sources. A curious mandate by the Minnesota legislature is that there be a 1.5 % decrease consumption of ALL energy EACH year. If one does the math this mandates that we eventually stop using all energy. Initially the large energy utility companies will find the mandate easier to achieve but small municipal utilities like Breckenridge will soon fail to achieve this. The consequences are unclear. Members had many questions of the trio of energy experts.