Great River Energy’s Score Drops From an ‘A’ to a ‘D’ After Backtracking on Clean Energy Promise, Sierra Club Report Shows

St. Paul, MN – The Sierra Club released today the second edition of its ground-breaking report, The Dirty Truth About Utility Climate Pledges, that exposes how most major electric utilities greenwash their climate action commitments. The report grades utilities across the country based on their plans to retire coal plants, cease building new gas plants, and invest in clean energy. The report demonstrates if, and to what extent, each utility’s plans make the necessary changes to confront the ongoing climate crisis by curbing CO2 emissions.

In our 2021 report, Great River Energy (GRE) earned an “A” grade based on its commitment to retire its unprofitable Coal Creek coal plant and replace it with clean energy. However, approximately six months after the first report came out, GRE abruptly reversed, announcing that instead of retiring the plant and saving customers between $35 million and more than $85 million, it would sell the Coal Creek plant to Rainbow Energy in North Dakota. Under its deal with Rainbow Energy, GRE will buy back energy and capacity from the coal plant, sticking customers with the bill. Having backtracked on its promise to retire the plant, GRE’s score in the second report dropped 52 percent– from an ‘A’ to ‘D’.

Margaret Levin, Minnesota State Director, released the following statement:

“Clean energy commitments must be taken seriously. Great River Energy’s backpedaling on its promise to retire its dirty, expensive coal plant is extremely harmful to Minnesotans– not only will it negatively impact their health, but they will also bear the brunt of the cost to keep the plant open. GRE’s reneging goes to show that its true commitment is not to improving our shared environment, or even to its Minnesota customers, but to North Dakota fossil fuel interests.

“At this point in the climate crisis, propping up expensive further fossil fuel infrastructure on the backs of customers should be out of the question. We must continue putting our energy behind shutting down coal and gas plants, instead investing in low-cost clean energy. Utilities like GRE, who go back on their clean energy promise, must be held accountable.”

Background

The Dirty Truth, Version 2, scores the largest 50 utility parent companies and 77 utility operating companies based on their plans for coal retirements, new gas generation, and clean energy commitments. The report highlights the massive discrepancies between the climate pledges utilities make publicly and their actual plans meeting those pledges. Dirty Truth exposes the “greenwashing” tactics many companies use to make false, misleading, or untrue claims about utility impacts on the environment. The report also highlights the unprecedented potential of the newly-passed Inflation Reduction Act, which includes nearly $370 billion in clean energy incentives that utilities should tap into in accelerating their response to the climate crisis.

Accompanying the report is an updated interactive website which allows the public to look up their utility’s grade, how much coal their utility is retiring, its planned gas plant capacity, and its investments in clean energy. The website also includes a national map to help users look up their utility service area and a digital dashboard for researchers, energy analysts, and media partners to keep track of each utility’s progress over the next decade.