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A handful of state lawmakers have advanced a bill to kill Minnesota's popular and successful community solar program, just two years after the Legislature made significant improvements. If passed, the bill would effectively end access to solar energy for many low- and middle-income customers, and slow much-needed progress toward the state's carbon-free electricity goal. Shareholders of monopoly utility Xcel Energy are the only group that stands to gain from the bill's passage. With rising electric bills, a shaky economy and no help from the feds on climate or affordability, we ought to be expanding community solar rather than seeking to end it.

Minnesota's 11-year-old community solar program has been so successful in lowering electricity bills and expanding solar access that 20 states have created similar programs to try to capture similar benefits. Community solar reduces energy costs for participants by 10%, sometimes more, in exchange for an upfront commitment to buy solar from the project. It also provides affordable clean energy resources for the grid. Located closer to where we use electricity, reduced delivery distances mean reduced electricity costs. By serving growing electricity demand, community solar projects can also save ratepayers money by reducing potential infrastructure upgrades. Locally built projects can also diversify the job opportunities from building new power infrastructure, such as when the Cooperative Energy Futures Shiloh Temple project hired members of the community to help install the rooftop solar panels.

Community solar also broadens the financial benefits from clean energy. Designed to allow participation from renters, those without sunny rooftops or those who can't afford the upfront cost of panels, community solar saves money for over 15,000 Minnesota customers. One-third of the state program's benefits flow to public participants like schools, libraries and cities, lowering property tax burdens or improving services. And with changes to the program just two years ago, community solar has become even more accessible to those with low incomes or poor credit scores. Everyone can benefit from community solar, especially those who have typically been left out.

The only entity to win big if the bill passes is Xcel Energy, the state's largest monopoly provider of electricity. With approval from state regulators to jack up rates by 15%, Xcel Energy's gross profits rose 19% in the past four years. Xcel's investors make billions by building utility-owned infrastructure — but gain nothing from the community solar projects that provide power and energy savings to the communities of Chanhassen, Winona County or the Mankato area school district. Community solar provides 60% of Minnesota's solar energy, crucial to the state's 2040 carbon-free electricity standard. But if Xcel doesn't own the community solar infrastructure, its shareholders don't profit. That's why Xcel and other monopoly utilities around the country fight to curtail or kill community solar at every turn.

For over 100 years, our state's electricity system has been structured around letting private companies have monopoly power often at the expense of priorities like affordable energy. Community solar represents a fundamental change — letting ordinary people collectively produce their own power and share the benefits. In the past 10 years, it's grown to provide enough power for 180,000 homes while reducing the bills of thousands of residential, small-business and public institution customers. Xcel Energy doesn't want to share power, and unfortunately they've found a few friends in the Legislature willing to help them. That doesn't make it right.

John Farrell directs the Energy Democracy Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a national nonprofit with offices in Minneapolis.