• Ann Arbor, MI
  • Voters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, create a local clean energy utility The municipal effort aims to supplement utility DTE’s grid with local, reliable, clean energy at below-market rates. (By Julian Spector November 20^th, 2024. Canary Media)

• Winter Park, FL
  • City of Winter Park, Florida municipalization story (Slideshow) 

• San Francisco, CA
  • "S.F. leaders want to cut ties with PG&E—again" (SF Examiner, 2022
  • "San Francisco considering municipal utility as PG&E prepares bankruptcy filing"  (Utility Dive, 2019)

• Portland, OR
  • The Portland Clean Energy Fund - passed by voters & created by the City of Portland in 2018

• National:
  • Bringing Cities and Their Utilities into the 21st Century: How Cities Can Renegotiate Franchise Agreements for the Clean Energy Transition (Rocky Mountain Institute)

NOTE: The Minneapolis Clean Energy Partnership has had a website but it has been malfunctioning for over a year (https://mplscleanenergypartnership.org/). Since it has compiled the Partnership's mission, work plans, meeting dates, notes, and reports, we are offering some of that info here. 

The Clean Energy Partnership’s stated work in  most Recent Annual Report, is summed up under 3 different themes:  

• Theme 1: Decarbonize Homes via Electrification & Energy Efficiency Retrofits
  • Includes their Home Electrification Guide
• Theme 2: Equitably Accelerate In-Boundary Solar in Support of the City’s Goal of 30% Distributed Solar by 2030
  • Includes the Resilient Minneapolis Project
  • The city had an In-Boundary Solar Task Force with Xcel but it has not met for a while.
• Theme 3: Impactful Reductions in Commercial and Industrial Building Gas Use
  • The New Normal Campaign
  • Large Industrial
  • Decarbonization Roadmap with Hennepin County 

The Structure of the Minneapolis Clean Energy Partnership 

Officials from the City, Xcel, & CenterPoint hold public meetings 4x per year. It also includes a 15-member "Energy Vision Advisory Committee" of Minneapolis residents, thanks to calls from community members for this oversight when the Partnership was begun. 

The Minneapolis Clean Energy Partnership is structured into 3 main components (see 

1) THE BOARD of the Clean Energy Partnership Board consists of 2 representatives from Xcel, 2 Representatives from CenterPoint and 4 board members from the City of Minneapolis. At the current time, 3 elected officials, City Council Members Katie Cashman (Ward 7), Aisha Chughtai (Ward 10), and Mayor Jacob Frey along with the City Operations Manager serve on the Partnership board. 

2) THE STAFF TEAM consists of employees from each of the three organizations who are specifically tasked with working on the Partnership. The Partnership does not have its own independent staff. 

3) THE ENERGY VISION ADVISORY COMMITTEE consists of 15 appointed energy experts and key stakeholder representatives from the Community who provide a vehicle for outside input into the Clean Energy Partnership. 

Now more than ever, taking action at the local level to slash pollution that causes climate change is critical, through a clean energy transition that Minneapolis and St. Paul residents overwhelmingly support across cultures and zip codes.

Minneapolis’ New Utility Franchise Agreements with Xcel & CenterPoint now released! Public Hearing was February 6th. 

Until January 13th, Minneapolis’ new utility franchise agreements with Xcel and CenterPoint were secret, having been under negotiation behind closed doors for more than 6 months. Starting last summer, Community Power board and staff published multiple articles and blog posts about this opportunity for local climate leadership such as “Minneapolis’ once-a-decade chance to fight for energy and the climate” and “10 years later - Minneapolis is again negotiating a grand bargain with Xcel and CenterPoint.” Our most recent article, just published in the Women’s Press is “Minneapolis Residents: It Is Time to Voice Views on Xcel and CenterPoint Agreements”. 

There are 4 different agreements in front of the city council:

• 2 proposed utility Franchise Agreements (one for each utility) 
• 2 Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) with each utility that continues their participation in the Minneapolis Clean Energy Partnership
• Thanks to the city for providing a summary of all 4.

Background & How we got here

About this time 10 years ago, the City signed earlier (now expiring) versions of these 4 agreements with both utilities that set the tone for today.

As the result of our 2013 Minneapolis Energy Option Campaign pushing the city to consider forming a green municipal energy utility, we - as a city - had some key wins: 

1. A shortened agreement term (from 20 years to 10 years); Historically, the utilities were able to set franchise agreements for 20-year terms, say, from 1974 to 1994 to 2014, with no way for the city to exit. 
2. A first-in-the-nation "Clean Energy Partnership" between a city and its utilities;
3. More flexibility on how and when the city can update the utility franchise fees through the ordinance authority of the City - un-linking that from the agreement itself. Franchise fees have since become an important way that the City of Minneapolis has funded local climate justice work. 

We also learned some very valuable lessons from 2013:

1) The utilities are afraid of bad press that could undermine a carefully greenwashed PR image.

2) The utilities are even more afraid of competition and threats to their market share, which they maintain with the aid of secrecy and a stable of lobbyists.

Those 2 points explain why eleven years ago, both utilities told the city to not look into the option of forming a green municipal energy utility by promising to be “good partners” with the city’s ambitious 2013 Climate Action Plan goals. Then, together they formed the Minneapolis Clean Energy Partnership to give the utilities every opportunity to prove they are genuine in this promise.

Where things stand now

Now here we stand, 10 or so years later with two new agreements to look at, now that the 2014 agreements are expiring. 

The Just Transition Coalition, which Community Power is part of, holds a rally on July 31st, 2024, in front CenterPoint Energy's offices on the Nicollet Mall. This story was covered in the Southside Pride “Why utility franchise agreements matter for equitable climate solutions” and in the Sahan Journal “As 10-year utility deals expire, Minneapolis residents seek more climate action from CenterPoint, Xcel.” 

Then the City Council extended the expiring 10-year franchise agreements until April 17th, 2025. This bought the city more time to work out a better deal rather than giving in to utility pressure to reach one prematurely on the wrong terms.   

The relevance of these negotiations - beyond calling into question our desire to be served by these corporations at all - also comes from the impact of franchise fees on City budgets. The city of Minneapolis has gotten around $40 million each year from these agreements with Xcel and CenterPoint, its largest source of revenue after property taxes. Minneapolis now has, at long last, a dedicated fund specifically to resource local climate action starting first in 2017 with ~$3 million, and expanding in 2024 to add an additional $10 million annually. That is still scratching the surface of what is needed for a just transition, but it is an impressive and much awaited beginning.

Pollution is at apocalyptic levels because the financial health of monopolistic power companies improves when they sell more electricity. At least in cases where it is generated from fossil fuels, the outdated electric utility business model rewards practices that spew more CO2 into the atmosphere and thereby increases the industry's contribution to ecological destruction.

So much of the energy from fossil fuels does not even make it to consumers and is simply wasted at various stages of the process such as transmission line losses or 2/3 of the energy from coal burned in power plants being simply lost to waste heat. Yet utilities are not being forced to internalize the environmental costs that such rampant waste poses.

So, we are hit with a 1-2 punch of utilities being rewarded for customers consumption while not being financially penalized for emitting the pollution responsible for climate chaos. We are apparently locked into a system where energy utility profits are tied to their sales.

The rules of an outdated system tilt the playing field against energy conservation practices that decrease energy sales and thereby reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions injected into the atmosphere. That is backwards. And this does not have to be the case.

In this essay: 

1) THE RECEDING CENTRAL STATION ERA & THE EMERGING MODERN RENEWABLE ERA ARE DRIVEN BY THE DIFFERENT ECONOMIES OF SCALE

2) RENEWABLE POWER LOWERS BARRIERS TO ENTRY FOR COMPETITION

3) IF RENEWABLE POWER IS GETTING CHEAPER AND MORE COMPETITIVE THEN WHY DO SO MANY UTILITIES CLING TO THE OLD CENTRAL STATION POWER PLANT MODEL? 

4) THE UTILITIES’ NUMBER ONE MOTIVE IS MARKET SHARE

5) UTILITIES BUILDING RENEWABLE POWER IN A WAY THAT MIMICS THE CENTRAL STATION MODEL AS A WAY TO DEFEND MARKET SHARE

6) ARCHAIC RULES ENABLE UTILTIES TO EXTERNALIZE TRANSMISSION COSTS

7) SO, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS MODEL? IT ENABLES MONOPOLY CONTROL AND PUTS UP BARRIERS TO COMPETITION

8) THE BENEFITS OF DISPERSED AND DISTRIBUTED POWER BEYOND ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY AND ACCESS

9) BEING “AGNOSTIC ON OWNERSHIP” PUTS PUBLIC APPROVAL OF RENEWABLES AT RISK