The demented tariff chaos and Minnesota’s electricity
From earlier today:
Ontario’s premier has announced a 25% tariff on electricity exports on Monday in retaliation to the Trump Administration’s trade war, in a move expected to impact Minnesotans…
“Only a very small portion of our electricity comes from Ontario, in 2024 those costs totaled about $300,000. So we would expect the impact on our customers to be negligible,” (Minnesota Power) spokesperson Amy Rutledge said…
Manitoba Hydro accounts for 11% of Minnesota Power’s energy and Rutledge said Minnesota Power spent $108 million on energy from Manitoba last year. The Duluth-based energy company is the largest utility company in northern Minnesota.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean Manitoba would be left out of the tariff conversation and any similar move from that province could have much larger impact on northern Minnesotans. The province has yet to announce anything official as of Monday.
(Bring Me The News)
This, from Minnesota Power’s website, shows the area that it covers. Mostly majority Trumper, you’ll note.
From what I’ve seen Lake Country Power might also get some electricity from Ontario. If I can clarify that I’ll update.
Will the deranged dumb shit Trump ever realize that his fantasies of world domination by tariffs are not going to come true? Heck if I know. He seems completely obsessed with flaunting his power and the attention that that brings.
Trump only believes what he wants to believe, what “pushes the right buttons” psychologically, regardless of fact and reason. The thing is, while he’s an extreme case, that’s largely true for a lot of people, when it comes to their politics and worldviews. On the one hand, if that’s what makes them happy maybe it’s not really my place to judge. On the other hand, it’s clearly a big problem, probably among the biggest, here in the real world.
Comment from Joseph Musich: Years ago in my Environmental Issues from a social studies class we worked with the Bell Museum to create a giant pop up book. It was a takeoff on the character Curious George. It is tucked away in the basement so I cannot retrieve at the moment. The bibliography had a reference to a native community desiccated in order to build a dam to create hydro power that could be carried down the grid to the metro area for overload times(cold winters hot summers). This was not Northern States Power. But Xcel.
Comment from Mac Hall: A lot that I am reading indicates that this may be a statewide headline that does not impact everyone’s bills. For example, maybe you live in a community like New Ulm … Brad Finstad’s home town … where the city is serviced by the city’s electrical grid which has 36 solar power generating systems. Also, New Ulm currently receives 5.5 MW of wind energy. Or you live in Brainerd in Pete Stauber’s district and are serviced by Crow Wing Power … their wholesale power provider is Basin Electric located in North Dakota which does not have any business relationship with Ontario. According to Basin’s website, they have reduced their use of coal from over 84% down to 35% … with wind picking up 26% of their need.
So maybe there is a silver lining to this predicament that Trump has pushed us into … people will realize that “wind” and “sun” cannot enact a tariff … but with Trump there is never all silver … as I suspect that he has cancelled Biden-approved clean energy projects – as his term was ending, Minnesota was awarded over $825 million in projects (e.g. Steele-Waseca Cooperative Electric was awarded $16.6 million to construct 8.6 megawatts of clean, renewable energy from wind and solar).
It’s pretty easy to demonize the Saudis for oil prices, so Klobuchar should be talking up clean energy as a counter to Ontario tariffs.
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