What is the role of the MPCA in decisions affecting electric power generation?
The MPCA’s primary role is to provide environmental information about the various types of electric generation – sources, emissions, environmental effects – to decisionmakers such as the legislature and Public Utilities Commission. Environmental considerations are one factor in deciding our electric generation sources and how their emissions may be controlled. MPCA is making greater efforts to provide decision makers with information so environmental considerations can play a larger role in energy resource choices. The MPCA has been supportive of Xcel’s Metropolitan Emissions Reduction Project. This project calls for switching the Riverside (Minneapolis) and High Bridge (St. Paul) power plants from coal to natural gas and updating the Allen S. King plant in Oak Park Heights by adding new pollution control equipment. This project will lower total state emissions of SO2 by 16.8%, NOx by 3.1% and mercury by 4.9%.
