Despite the pleas of citizens and activists in the hearing room, environmental issues were not deliberated by the PUC.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) unanimously approved the Certificate of Need for a transmission line project necessary for the construction of the Big Stone II coal-fired power plant in Milbank, S.D.

Despite a room full of citizens, many holding signs and some dressed in animal costumes, opposed to the plant’s construction because of environmental concerns, the PUC did not deliberate the coal-fired facility itself or the environmental impacts that it may have, focusing instead on the cost of the project and its implications for utility rate payers.

The five-member PUC was to issue a final ruling last June, but newly appointed Commissioner J. Dennis O’Brien requested further review of the project, and an inquiry was approved by a vote of 3-2. Boston Pacific was hired as an independent consultant to assess carbon dioxide emission costs, construction costs and fuel prices for Big Stone II.

Dr. Steve Rakow, a rates analyst from the State Office of Energy Security testifying on the commission’s alternative option decisions, stated that because the Boston Pacific report did not concern itself with issues like mercury emissions or water usage that his findings did not take such things into consideration.

“Boston Pacific wasn’t paid to consider more than the three cost concerns,” responded Commissioner Thomas Pugh. The commission proceeded with a primary concern of ensuring ratepayers were not left to carry the burden of the $1.3 billion facility. To that end, the commission attached conditional monetary caps to the construction of the project and future carbon dioxide tax expenses. Since no carbon tax has been established by Congress, there is an open debate as to what those costs will be. Environmental groups expect that global warming concerns will result in a relatively high carbon tax, meaning Big Stone II would be less viable economically. Industry estimates the future carbon tax will be low and the plant will be more profitable.

“We appreciate the the PUC saw the need for these transmission lines and granted the requested permits,” said Mark Rolfes, Big Stone II project manager. “We’ll need to wait until the written conditions are available from the PUC to determine how they affect the project.”

Artist's rendering of the plant with Big Stone Lake, headwaters of the Minnesota River and natural border between South Dakota and Minnesota in the background. Via BigStoneII.com

The PUC also stuck to its limited purview over the project, considering only the merits of the Minnesota portion of the transmission project and not the Big Stone II plant itself. Despite the fact that Big Stone II will be constructed a short distance from the Minnesota-South Dakota border on the headwaters of the Minnesota River and that residents of Minnesota will be the recipient of 45 percent of the electricity generated by the facility, only 12 percent of the entire project fell under the jurisdiction of the PUC.

“This is a tremendous disappointment from the PUC, a milquetoast decision that means that if Big Stone II gets built, shareholders and ratepayers will have to bear the extraordinary costs of coal and carbon that Otter Tail Power did not account for, not to mention the pollution,” said Darrell Gerber with Clean Water Action. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

The opposition groups will likely exercise one of their few remaining options and bring the PUC’s decision before the Minnesota Court of Appeals.

“This is certainly not the end of the road,” remarked Cesia Kearns, organizer with the Sierra Club.

“We know that coal is a risky financial gamble — coal plants are dropping like flies around the country, and with a carbon constrained future, it’s likely Big Stone II will join the ever-growing list of abandoned projects.”

The Certificate of Need allows the five utilities involved in the Big Stone II project to construct and upgrade 112 miles of transmission lines in western Minnesota. The plant itself is not expected to be completed and online until 2015.

Big Stone II will be constructed next to the existing Big Stone I plant on the South Dakota side of the border with Minnesota.

A four-year battle over a proposed coal plant in South Dakota could come to a close during a Minnesota Public Utility Commission (PUC) hearing in St. Paul on Thursday. The commission will decide whether to issue a certificate of need for transmission line upgrades in Minnesota required to construct the Big Stone II coal-fired power plant.

If the certificate is denied, the project will likely be scrapped entirely. If the certificate is approved, environmental groups will have little recourse to prevent the plant’s construction.

Big Stone II is to be a 580-megawatt facility constructed next to the existing, 450-megawatt Big Stone I plant in South Dakota near the headwaters of the Minnesota River and the border with Minnesota. While the PUC has authority only over the transmission lines and not the actual proposed power plant, 45 percent of the plant’s generated electricity will be delivered to Minnesota, giving the Minnesota panel decisive power.

The five-member PUC was to issue a final ruling last June, but newly appointed Commissioner J. Dennis O’Brien requested further review of the project, and an inquiry was approved by a vote of 3-2. Boston Pacific was hired as an independent consultant to assess carbon dioxide emission costs, construction costs and fuel prices for Big Stone II.

The Boston Pacific report, issued in October, concluded that “the range of emissions, construction, and fuel price inputs used in the Applicants’ analyses were not appropriate; put another way, they were out of line with current ‘best practices’ resource selection methodologies.”

The report took particular exception to the applicants’ emission costs.

“We found the Applicants’ use of a $0 to $9 per ton CO2 tax, without escalation over time, to be far lower than the ranges justified for resource decisions today,” the report said.

Artist's rendering of the plant, via BigStoneII.com

Opponents of the plant accused the five utilities involved in Big Stone II of underestimating the cost of the plant and overestimating the cost of alternatives.

Dan Sharp, communications manager for the Big Stone II project, had no strong objections to the findings in the Boston Pacific report and stated it was very much in line with the utilities’ own numbers.

“Construction and fuel costs were very close to our own numbers,” Sharp said. “The simple reason for the difference in construction costs is that we originally used an estimated completion date of 2013 and the long approval process resulted in Boston Pacific pushing that to 2015.”

As for the criticism that the applicants’ carbon dioxide tax fell below justified ranges, Sharp said that it is difficult to estimate a tax that does not yet exist and that the utilities used the estimates required by the PUC in their application.

There is much more to the battle over Big Stone II than cost estimates. Environmental concerns about carbon dioxide and mercury emissions, water usage and coal ash have been at the center of the four-year debate, but opposition groups have had success only in Minnesota.

Existing Minnesota laws are at least partly to credit for that success, according to Chuck Laszewski of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy.

“Our laws are more restrictive for coal, largely because of recent legislation requiring emissions cuts,” said Laszewski.

In 2007 Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed the Next Generation Energy Act, which required, among other things, greenhouse gas reduction goals of 15 percent by 2015, 30 percent by 2025 and 80 percent by 2050. With those goals in mind, many argue that the electricity produced by Big Stone II could be provided through alternative sources such as wind and solar energy.

Sharp countered that the upgraded transmission lines will be required for those solutions as well and said that Big Stone II is just one project being developed by utilities that are also developing alternative energy projects.

Both sides feel confident that the PUC will rule in their favor. Laszewski said he believes the PUC will deny the certificate of need based on the findings of the Boston Pacific report.

“If the permit is denied, we celebrate,” said Laszewski. “If it’s approved, our coalition will have to regroup and consider what our next step would be, if any.”

Sharp said he believes because the PUC has jurisdiction over only 12 percent of the entire project — the Minnesota portion of the transmission line upgrade — the commission will not deny North and South Dakota the benefits of Big Stone II.

“The main reason we believe it will be approved is there is such an overwhelming need in this region for upgraded transmission lines,” Sharp said. “If its denied, it will be a big disappointment, not just for us, but our customers and wind energy developers will be losing out as well.”

The PUC hears testimony beginning today and will reconvene Thursday morning.

Republican incumbent Rep. Michele Bachmann and two challengers who hope to unseat her to represent Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District in Washington met in Stillwater Wednesday evening for the first candidates’ forum. In front of a standing-room-only crowd, Bachmann, DFL-endorsed El Tinklenberg and Bob Anderson, the unendorsed Independence Party candidate, sparred mainly over the economy, although energy, the war in Iraq and the Stillwater lift bridge each garnered some attention.

Many people couldn’t get in through the door and watched through the foyer. The crowd, particularly Tinklenberg supporters, got rowdy at times, especially when Bachmann brought up ANWR and offshore drilling.

The best line of the night came when Tinklenberg criticized Bachmann on her offshore and ANWR drilling proposals: “The strategy that she has proposed of ‘Drain America First’ is a bad strategy.”

The Minnesota Independent will have full video available shortly, but here’s a preview of some of the discussion.

On the $700 billion bailout

Bob Anderson, on the Wall Street bailout: "I do not feel that we should put this burden on the taxpayer."

“I do not feel that we should put this burden on the taxpayer,” said Anderson. “We need to do something but this is not the way to go.” He said he would rather have private financiers gobble up some of the problem.

Bachmann was critical of the bailout. “We do have a very real credit crunch but I don’t believe the prescription put forward by Bush and the leadership in Congress is the right way to go.” Of the Senate version she said, “It just has different wrapping paper on it. There’s a lot of spending in there as well as the $700 billion… I will be a ‘no’ vote on that bill.”

Instead she favors privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, suspending the capital gains tax, repealing the Community Reinvestment Act and suspending mark-to-market accounting.

Tinklenberg said he also opposed the bailout. “What the economy, what the financial markets needed most of all on Monday was a sense of confidence. The rebuilding of confidence, the belief that somebody was in charge and somebody was leading and somebody was moving this forward to find a solution,” he said. “And instead what they got was uncertainty and chaos. The ‘no’ vote, you saw what the outcome was.”

He believes assisting families facing foreclosure would have lessened the crisis months ago. “I think we would have made much more progress in terms of helping to stem some of the underlying problems that we have seen in the meltdown over the last week,” he said.

The war in Iraq

Tinklenberg on Afghanistan: "That's where al-Qaida was. That's where bin Laden was. That's where we should've been focusing our effort."

Bachmann says the surge was successful. “We saw a 60-percent improvement level from July 4 to Christmas — what no one thought was possible, the peace that was brought and the calm that was brought to that region,” she said. “Then we went to March of this year, and there was a 70-percent level of improvement. Today, al-Qaida has essentially been vanquished in Iraq.”

Bachmann gave no indication when she thought the conflict might end, but said that the Iraqis should give the United States some funds. “My opinion is that Iraq is getting on its feet. They did have $76 billion in surpluses, and I believe they need to take over the funding for this measure. I don’t believe the United States should be funding the measure.”

Tinklenberg said that turning over responsibility to Iraq and a responsible end to the conflict is his policy. “I have long advocated the idea of a timeframe that would help provide the environment in which the Iraqis would stand up and take more responsibility for their region and for the security of Iraq,” he said. “It’s interesting that now the president and the Iraqi government have also agreed that we need to be moving forward with some kind of a timeframe that establishes that message to the Iraqi people: that we are not there permanently, that we are going to be removing our troops.”

He also said that the United States should never have weakened its presence in Afghanistan by engaging Iraq. “I think we need to reinforce the troops in Afghanistan. They are doing an incredible job there, but we have seen that they are not there in sufficient strength to be able to deal with the resurgence of violence in that country,” he said. “And that’s where we should’ve been fighting from the beginning. That’s where al-Qaida was. That’s where bin Laden was. That’s where we should’ve been focusing our effort. It’s unfortunate that we discovered too late that al-Qaida was not in Iraq. They were not in Iraq until we were engaged there, and that brought them into that country. And now we have to fight to try to quell the violence there while they have also been growing in strength again in Afghanistan.”

Anderson said these decisions need to be left to General Petraeus. “Terrorism is something that we’re going to be dealing with for a long time, and I think we need to be on the offense. We’ve got to be trailing them, keeping an eye on them, surveillance, and troops,” he said. “I’d leave the decision to General Petraeus.”

St. Croix River Bridge

The lift bridge over the St. Croix has been a project that has needed action for years. It’s outdated for the amount of traffic that crosses through the area into Wisconsin, but there is significant disagreement in Stillwater and surrounding communities over environmental, aesthetic and funding considerations.

Anderson didn’t know much about the issue. “I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on this subject,’ he said. “I’d need to be educated on that, that’s for sure.”

Bachmann said: Keep the old bridge and build a new, higher capacity bridge. “I love the lift bridge. I would love to be able to see us keep it, but we also need to have a new bridge, as well. I think it is going to happen, and that’s what I want to make sure during my time in Congress, that we actually get a bill.”

Tinklenberg said community leaders need to reach a consensus on the issue to communicate it to Congress. “I want the bridge decision to reflect a consensus in the community, what the community wants for its future, how it’s going to address the needs of the community, how it’s going to connect with 36 and other communities that are a part of this and affected by it, and then I would do everything I could in terms of going after funding,” he said. “There has been a lot of discussion over a lot of years. I think it’s time to build a consensus in the community and see what the community wants to do, and then I’m going to do everything I can to help them implement it.”

Energy

Bachmann says the answer to energy problems is right under foot. "We have more oil in the United States than in all of Saudi Arabia."

Bachmann talked about drilling. “American energy independence, this is something we absolutely must embrace. I don’t want to see us enriching foreign nations on foreign oil, especially when we’re sitting on the answer to our own problem — we have more oil in the United States than in all of Saudi Arabia, and that’s just in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming,” she said. “We have so much oil here that we don’t need to go outside our country to be truly energy independent.”

Tinklenberg said that energy independence depends on sustainable energy. “I think that there are more things that we can be doing,” he said. “The strategy that she has proposed of ‘Drain America First’ is a bad strategy. It’s bad in that it maintains our dependence on petroleum, and it’s bad in that it reduces the security of our future energy policy. It means that we have used up our reserves. I agree with her: we need to be exploring more domestically, we need to identify those reserves, and we need to protect those reserves, because petroleum is going to continue to be a part of our future. But we also need to move aggressively both in the area of conservation and in the area of alternatives. We can do so much of a better job in terms of reducing consumption.”

He attacked Bachmann for not voting for renewables. “And I was disappointed that Rep. Bachmann voted against extending the tax credits for wind and solar. Those are important resources for our future and can be a part of the mix, along with what she has said about natural gas.”

Anderson said he wants a mix of everything. “I believe in ‘All of the Above.’ Drilling in Alaska? They’re telling us that it’s okay,” he said. “I’m no expert, but if the people in the state think we should do it, I guess I don’t have a problem with that.”

According to the report from the Department of Interior inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, 19 members of the RIK staff accepted illegal gifts from 2002 to 2006 and several were found to have manipulated the contract process. The report indicated that oil companies Chevron, Shell, Gary Williams Energy Corporation and Hess Corporation provided the gifts to RIK employees.

RIK was not limited to ethical corruption either. Employees engaged in sexual encounters with “prohibited sources.” A few members of the RIK staff were referred to as the “MMS Chicks” by oil industry representatives and lascivious emails often preceded industry functions. Rampant cocaine, marijuana and alcohol abuse was also reported.

“The single-most serious problem our investigations revealed is a pervasive culture of exclusivity, exempt from the rules that govern all other employees of the Federal Government,” Devaney reported.

The timing of the report comes at a particularly difficult time for Republican lawmakers currently pushing new energy legislation that loosens regulations on drilling on the outer continental shelf.

While shipments of turbines from Germany, Denmark and Spain are the norm, exports from North Dakota manufacturers are on the rise. Most large-scale turbines are made in Europe, where the industry has enjoyed greater demand and government support, but an increasing number of Midwest factories are have begun producing turbines and parts. Minnesota lags behind Iowa and North Dakota in wind-related manufacturing, as previously reported by Minnesota Monitor, but that hasn’t prevented its largest port from reaping the benefits.

Energy mandates like Minnesota’s 25 by 2025 all but ensure that the port will be handling wind-related cargo for a few more years.

“If Congress is truly interested in solving the problem, they can send the right signal by saying we’re going to explore for oil and gas in the U.S. territories, starting with ANWR,” Bush declared. “We can do so in an environmentally friendly way.”

The president’s enthusiasm for drilling underneath the placid wilderness of northern Alaska makes it seem as if ANWR is the best, or only, source of domestic oil currently available, but this is far removed from reality. Bush made no mention of the oil and oil shale reserves in Colorado and North Dakota.

North Dakota has been a small oil producing state for many years. Prior estimates of proven petroleum reserves in the state were a little over 400 million barrels. But the U.S. Geological Survey recently reported that the amount of recoverable oil in North Dakota’s Bakken Formation is now estimated at 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels, though past independent analysis has put that number as high as 300 billion barrels.

The Rocky Mountains are also an emerging source of recoverable oil. A 2005 study conducted by the Rand Corporation at the behest of the U.S. Department of Energy revealed, “oil-shale deposits in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming have technically recoverable reserves of 500 billion to 1.1 trillion barrels of oil. The estimate – 800 billion barrels – is three times the size of Saudi Arabia’s reserves and enough to meet 25 percent of current U.S. oil demand for 400 years.”

And while the emphasis has been on domestic sources of energy, the Athabascan Oil Sands in Alberta, Canada have an estimated 173 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil and proven reserves approaching 1,700 billion barrels.

For comparison, the total US petroleum reserves as of 2006 was approximately 20 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Estimates suggest that there are somewhere between 5.7 and 16 billion barrels or recoverable oil in the area around ANWR. If drilling was approved today, oil from ANWR would not reach the market for 10 years and have little to no effect on current gasoline prices.

While conservationists fight to protect ANWR, environmentalists have raised concerns about the amount of energy and fresh water required to extract crude oil from shale or bitumen. The rapid growth of the petroleum industry and the energy-intensive extraction process have resulted in proposals for the Athabascan oil sands to have their own nuclear power plant, an idea that most find counter-intuitive. But the dramatic price increases, which have nearly tripled the cost of a barrel of crude in just seven years, has made the extraction of oil from shale a profitable venture.

Obama opposes the gas-tax holiday and has said it would only save an average driver about $30 all summer. I haven’t checked out his math, but I don’t see any way in which the McCain-Clinton idea addresses the causes of oil inflation or gets us any closer to a long-term energy solution. It’s like taking a Tylenol to mask the symptoms of something so you can keep doing what you were doing.

“When the summer is over,” Friedman writes, “we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.” His column continues with a description of the important renewable-energy credits that are about to lapse because of inaction and disagreement in Congress. Read it here.

When Minnesota passed one of the nation’s most aggressive renewable electricity standards last year, there was reason to think the law would signal to the renewable energy industry that Minnesota is a good place to do business. It requires that utilities generate 25 percent of electricity from sources like wind, solar or biomass by 2025.

So far there hasn’t been a windfall, and that’s in part because of the intense competition among states to attract “green” manufacturing. As demand increases for wind turbines and solar panels, some predict a wave of new domestic manufacturing jobs.

Our neighbors to the south have perhaps put more into courting these jobs than any other state. Iowa’s governor is known to roam trade show floors. Its economic development office has two employees working exclusively with wind firms. It has an office in Frankfurt, Germany, near many of the major turbine manufacturers. It exempts turbines and other equipment from sales tax. A $100 million “Iowa Power Fund” rewards innovation in renewables and energy efficiency.

So, why can’t Minnesota do what they’re doing?

It’s a question Dentley Haugesag said he gets on a regular basis. Haugesag is Minnesota’s economic development specialist for the wind industry, and he admits Iowa is a formidable competitor.

“Instead of talking about doing it, they’re actually out there doing it,” Haugesag said. “My hat is off to them. They’ve been very successful.”

Continued: Click “Read more”But that success isn’t necessarily Minnesota’s loss, Haugesag said. Wind turbines are made up of lots of parts — things like gears, electronics and hydraulic systems — and some of those parts are already being made in Minnesota for turbine manufacturers in Iowa.

That supply chain is central to Minnesota’s wind strategy, Haugesag said. The state hasn’t committed the resources to chase down turbine manufacturers in Europe, so instead he’s focused on helping existing companies tap into the growing market for wind turbine parts.

Haugesag has been touring the state to meet with manufacturing companies that have the capacity to make various turbine parts. He came up with about 60 that were interested, and information about them is being compiled into a web database that will be unveiled at this year’s wind energy industry conference in June.

So, say you’re a turbine manufacturer and you’re looking for a company to make some gears for you. You could search “gears” and get a list of all the Minnesota companies that are up to the task. The database will also be a tool to convince larger turbine manufacturers that Minnesota would be a convenient place to set up shop.

“This will go farther than Minnesota. This will go farther than Iowa. It might go even global, because now, with the weak dollar, it’s certainly feasible to ship components offshore,” Haugesag said.

It’s a strategy that was born of frugality, he admitted, but added he doesn’t think it’s a bad strategy. It’s maybe a bit like comparing the Minnesota Twins to the New York Yankees. The emphasis is on developing existing talent instead of spending big to bring in star players.

“This is kind of a ground-up approach,” Haugesag said. “I think we’re going to get a lot done. It just might take a little longer, but I think it might be more securely based.”

An opportunity blows past

Last November, Dutch wind-turbine manufacturer Vestas announced its intentions to open a research and development center in the United States that would come with about 80 high-paying jobs. The unusual announcement, via press release, set off a marketing war among more than 30 states hoping to attract the research center.

In Minnesota, Rep. Jeremy Kalin, DFL-North Branch, and Rep. Aaron Peterson, DFL-Appleton, saw an opportunity for Minnesota to attract “green” jobs to the state, and they started organizing an effort to win the company. Gov. Tim Pawlenty reportedly contacted Vestas on his own, and the state’s Department of Employment and Economic Development started preparing its pitch and organizing a letter-writing campaign. The governor, the mayors, University of Minnesota leaders, and others all wrote to the company, according to Haugesag.

Then, a couple months ago, as the state was completing its final proposal to Vestas, the Dutch company announced it had narrowed its choice to five states. Minnesota didn’t make the cut.

“The frustration from a lot of us at the Capitol is that not making the short list wasn’t a [matter] of not being the right state to do it, but actually just not having the right effort out there to sell the state,” Kalin said. “I think folks from the state were really expecting it to be a formal, RFP, old-school 20th-century process, and the business world doesn’t work so much like that anymore.”

While Haugesag said an “energetic” effort was made to win over Vestas, Kalin said the incident is a example of why the state’s effort to attract “green” industry needs to be better organized and better funded.

Kalin said there was confusion during the Vestas process about who was taking the lead. It turned out it was legislators, he said, “because there’s not really capacity in the executive branch — or not commitment — to be a real player at this high level.”

The Vestas miss, as well as conversations with the Blue-Green Alliance, a coalition of the Sierra Club and United Steelworkers, helped prompt Kalin and Peterson to submit a bill that would increase the amount of money and attention spent on recruiting green-collar jobs to Minnesota.

“We need to be on top of this, and we need to be moving as quickly as we can,” Kalin said.

House File 3999 would start a task force similar to the one recently organized by the mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul. It would also open existing business infrastructure and job skills development grants to any company that helps the state meet its environmental goals. And it calls on the commerce and economic development departments to partner on a report identifying how all existing grant and loan programs can be used to target the “green” economy.

Kalin said he’s very optimistic the measures will pass this session.

“Right now we all need to work together to identify how we can overcome some challenges in making Minnesota a leader across the board in the green economy,” Kalin said. “As a business venture, and the state is a business venture in some ways on this stuff, we have to do this together, and we have to be all on the same page.”

Each summer, thousands of wind-energy power players gather for a three-day conference featuring speeches, workshops and exhibitions from the biggest names in the industry. For states like Minnesota that are eager to attract wind-energy jobs, it’s a chance to make pitches to the major turbine manufacturers, many of which are based in Europe but are expanding to meet growing demand in the United States.

A typical strategy involves setting up a trade show booth and dispersing economic development employees with stacks of glossy folders touting financial incentives and quality-of-life issues. A handful of states such as Iowa, however, are upping the ante and dispatching governors to personally schmooze company officials at the events.

“That’s pretty hard to compete with. It’s pretty clear who you’re going to meet with first, and who you’re going to remember,” said Rep. Aaron Peterson, DFL-Appleton, who would like to see Gov. Tim Pawlenty follow the lead of some of his peers and play a more personal role in recruiting wind and other green manufacturing jobs to the state.

The use of governors to recruit wind companies is an indicator of the huge potential some see in the future “green economy.” As more states approve laws favoring energy efficiency and renewable electricity, the transition is expected to create a surge of demand for technologies like wind turbines, solar panels and the components that go into them.

And that means jobs. Potentially lots of them.

Continued: Click “Read More”The mayors of Minneapolis and St. Paul last week unveiled their strategy for attracting these “green-collar” jobs to the region. Some are questioning, though, whether the mayors’ effort will be limited in what it can accomplish without greater support from the state, and in particular from the governor’s office.

Pawlenty has supported some important renewable energy legislation and made the issue the focus of his time as chairman of the National Governors Association. He’s also, however, reportedly spent about one of every three days this year outside the state, much of it campaigning for John McCain. Some think he needs to spend more time stumping for Minnesota as a place for green jobs.

“What we’re looking for is the governor to get on board with green job creation. We haven’t heard that from him yet,” said Gerry Parzino, a representative of the United Steelworkers. Parzino’s organization will be canvassing fairs and other events across the state this summer seeking to build political support for a state-level green-jobs initiative. “We feel it has to go above [cities] and come down from the state.”

The governor’s communications office did not return a phone call for comment on this story.

Here’s are a few examples of what other governors are doing and how it’s paying off:

• Iowa Gov. Chet Culver manned the Iowa booth for an entire day at last year’s annual wind energy conference in Los Angeles. He also regularly leads delegations to Europe to meet with wind firms. Culver’s commitment follows in the footsteps of his predecessor, Tom Vilsack, and has helped lure five wind turbine manufacturers to set up facilities in the state, bringing 1,500 jobs and $185 million worth of investment.

• Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer was a keynote speaker at last year’s wind energy conference and has met personally with wind turbine manufacturers. Last month, German turbine manufacture Fuhrlander announced plans to build a $25 million plant in Butte that will employ 150 people and up to an additional 600 in the future.
• Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell’s state hosted a green jobs conference earlier this year. After meetings with Spanish wind firm Gamesa, the company decided to spend $84million building its U.S. headquarters in the state.

Rep. Peterson said he thinks it’s critical for Pawlenty to be more involved if Minnesota is going to be successful in attracting similar investment.

“If the governor’s not involved, Rybak and Coleman can do all this stuff. That’s great. The unions can talk about it, and everybody can get fired up about it and have a series of meetings that never end,” Peterson said, but “you need the governor to, for lack of a better way of putting it, to wine and dine these people. They’ve got lots of options of states that want them come to their state. You need to recruit them at the highest, highest level.”

Tuesday: Minnesota has a “ground-up” strategy to generate green manufacturing jobs, but some think the effort could use powering up.

Interesting report by Mark Steil of MPR on Minnesota farmers’ soaring incomes — which rose by 70 percent last year, according to a University of Minnesota survey. 

It’s the ethanol, stupid: Steil writes that “Rising ethanol production was the most significant factor in boosting grain prices. Most ethanol is made from corn, so increased production of the alcohol fuel increased the demand and price of corn. Ethanol also had a secondary impact. As farmers planted more acres with corn, soybean and wheat production fell. That lowered supplies of those commodities and led to higher market prices.”