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Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t the only one signaling that she favors higher electricity and transportation prices for Americans, with more inflation and a limited choices of cars. So is Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Consider his record.
Raising Electricity Prices
Walz signed legislation in 2023 requiring 80% of Minnesotans’ energy to be produced from carbon-free sources by 2030 and 100% in 2040. This will continue to raise electricity prices in the North Star State, contradicting another provision in the law that utilities must provide "affordable electric service to Minnesotans."
Minnesota has an advantage with its nuclear power plants, which produce 25% of its electricity, and its wind, which produces 23%. But it will be hard to substitute for the 45% that is generated by coal and natural gas.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz laugh during a stop at a campaign office on Aug. 9, 2024 in Glendale, Arizona. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Isaac Orr, vice president of the nonprofit group Always On Energy Research, has estimated that complying with Walz’s energy mandates would cost Minnesota $318 billion through 2050, and require building thousands of megawatts of wind turbines and solar panels.
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Orr told me that this would cause electricity costs for Minnesota families to increase by $1,642 per year – $136 per month. Costs for energy-intensive manufacturing would rise by $222,387 annually every year through 2050.
Minnesota's industrial electricity prices are already so high that the Northern Foundry in Hibbing, the hometown of Bob Dylan, closed its doors, explicitly citing power costs, eliminating high-paying union jobs.
Raising Car Prices
Walz is raising the price of transportation, too. Over the objections of the Minnesota Auto Dealers Association, he adopted California’s Advanced Clean Car II standards, which require 35% of new passenger cars, trucks and SUVs sold to be electric or hydrogen-fueled by 2036, and 100% by 2035.
EVs are more expensive than gasoline-powered cars, and their batteries lose range in the cold Minnesota winters. And those vehicles will be charged with higher electricity prices.
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Forced EVs will cause pain to Minnesotans, but will help the Chinese, who make batteries and components for electric vehicles and control a large share of the crucial critical minerals. But Walz has a long history of visits to China. He took his students there "nearly every summer through 2003" and honeymooned there in 1994, according to Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz.
Blocking Pipelines
Walz’s electric-vehicle rule will help China, America’s adversary, but he doesn’t want to help Canada, America’s friend.
In 2019 and 2020, Walz blocked construction of the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline, which replaced an older pipeline and brought oil from Canada to be refined in the United States – although the project was approved twice by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission. Despite Walz’s opposition, the pipeline opened in 2021.
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Enbridge Line 3 has created jobs for Americans both in building the pipeline and in refining the oil to turn it into products such as gasoline, diesel and heating oil.
The choices our elected representatives make will determine the amount people will pay for gasoline and electricity; and what kind of new and used cars will be in dealer showrooms, and at what prices. Higher energy and transportation prices translate into higher food prices, since food requires energy and fertilizers to grow and store, and transportation to get to the supermarket.
Our representatives also determine how much power Beijing will wield over America’s supply chain, and whether jobs will come to America or China.
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Congress passes major energy bills, but the president has ultimate authority when it comes to how much you pay for electricity and transportation through regulations enacted by individual agencies.
Tim Walz and Kamala Harris are birds of a feather. They care more about climate change than about inflation, and prefer the rights of solar panels and wind turbines to American jobs. Is this truly what Americans want?
Diana Furchtgott-Roth is the Director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment and the Morgan Fellow in Energy and Environmental Policy at The Heritage Foundation. Heritage is listed for identification purposes only. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect any institutional position for Heritage or its Board of Trustees.
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