Friday, the Minnesota House of Representatives announced its concurrence with HF3 as amended by the Minnesota Senate, a bill facilitating the building of a natural-gas fired power plant to replace the two coal-fired units slated for shutdown at Xcel Energy’s Sherco electric generating complex in Becker, Minnesota. HF3 will now go to Governor Dayton, who announced his support for the bill earlier this month.

 

Rep. Jim Newberger (R-Becker) is chief author of HF3, which initially passed the House Feb. 9.

 

"This bill will give Minnesota a reliable energy resource and is a good step in securing our energy future" said Newberger. "It will also help to retain some of the jobs we would be losing at Sherco, and will go along way towards sustaining a very important tax base in Sherburne County and in the City of Becker. I am very proud of the way our community came together to advocate for this bill. The support we got from our elected officials, local cities, townships, counties and school districts over the past two years really made a measurable difference. I would also like to thank Senator Matthews and former Senator Brown for all of the hard work they put into making this a reality."

 

Prior to this bill’s passage through the House and Senate, the Public Utilities Commission had decided to delay their decision on whether or not the coal-fired units at Sherco could be replaced by gas-fired units.

 

The PUC also had not offered viable alternative solutions to produce baseload power for the portions of Minnesota served by the Becker plant, and maintain energy industry jobs in the Becker community.

 

The concurrence with HF3 as amended passed the House with a bipartisan vote of 80/45.