Editor’s note: Xcel Energy previously announced plans to purchase the Pleasant Valley Wind Farm after it’s built in Mower County.

The St. Cloud Times

Xcel Energy opened the new year with some encouraging, realistic news in the evolution of America’s energy sources.

The electricity and natural gas company, which serves about 5.4 million customers in eight states, offered a plan to more than double its renewable energy portfolio by 2030. The plan would reduce Xcel’s carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent from 2005 levels, which would meet federal requirements.

While that might not please those folks championing 100 percent renewables immediately no matter the costs, Xcel’s plan is reflective of the pragmatism needed in charting a reasonable course from heavy use of fossil fuels to more clean energy sources.

Near St. Cloud, the proposal casts the brightest spotlight on Units 1 and 2 of Xcel’s Sherco Generating Plant in Becker. The plant burns about 30,000 tons of coal daily to power about 2 million homes. Given its size, it’s the largest emitter of carbon dioxide emissions in Minnesota. It also releases mercury and sulfur, all of which inspire some environmentalists to demand it be shuttered.

Xcel said in a news release this plan calls for “gradually decreasing reliance on Units 1 and 2 at Sherburne County (Sherco) Generating Plant through 2030.”

Xcel officials have said previously that shuttering Sherco in the near future would require spending hundreds of millions of dollars or more to build replacement facilities.

At this point, replacing Sherco’s output with renewable sources seems both cost-prohibitive and risky, given the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow.

That’s why this board likes the pragmatic, long-term approach visible in this plan.

It calls for adding 600 megawatts of wind by 2020 and 1,200 megawatts by 2030, bringing total wind power on Xcel Energy’s Upper Midwest system to over 3,600 megawatts. It also adds 187 megawatts of large-scale solar energy by 2017, plus an additional 1,700 megawatts of large-scale solar and 500 megawatts of customer-driven, small-scale solar.

Nuclear plants in Monticello and Prairie Island continue to operate, too.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission will review the plan throughout 2015.

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