My clients have a tendency to hang around like bad habits — once awake to utility schemes, they take a bite and won’t let go.  I’ve been blessed with an active bunch, and today I woke up to another example.  Nancy “BOOM!” Prehn is one of my faves, she lives on top of the only natural gas underground storage dome in Minnesota, under about 10 square miles north of Waseca.  She singlehandedly got an EAW on how the gas company was handling water.  At the time, they were releasing water from wells onto their fields, and it wasn’t helping the corn and beans any.  Turns out it wasn’t seriously polluted, and the gas company had to build a water treatment facility and storage tanks at each well to contain the water, and then suck it out, bring it over to HQ and run it through the treatment system before releasing it.

Nancy has a way of being ahead of the curve, and when she starts digging, look out.  Now she’s working on tax credits for those with utility infrastructure on their land, like a natural gas dome!  It’s needed for gas and oil pipelines too!

Here’s what she found today, from the 1979 legislative session, check Article 2, Section 20, a tax credit for landowners living under transmission lines — how did I not know this?

And it’s still law today:

Minn. Stat. 273.42

How much is this tax credit?  Well, it’s complicated… and there’s a ceiling, see the statute for specifics:

The amount of credit for which the property qualifies shall not exceed 20 percent of the total gross tax on the parcel prior to deduction of the state paid agricultural credit…

It was enacted during the last transmission build-out, circa 1979, and has been changed many times over the years:

They published my LTE in the Alaska Highway News:

That’s the Coal Creek plant, a photo I took on a tour.  If you’re an electric co-op member in Minnesota (elsewhere too?), they offer tours regularly, and it’s something you should do!  Check your co-op’s newsletter for info.

State Register Notice:

MPCA_StateRegister_Pages from 40_05

Just released FEDERAL Clean Power Plan:

Clean Power Plan Final Rule (PDF)(1560 pp, 3.3 MB, About PDF) – August 2015

Look at how the “adjusted” Minnesota’s baseline levels due to Sherco 3 being out for nearly 2 years:

The EPA examined units nationwide with 2012 outages to determine where an individual unit-level outage might yield a significant difference in state goal computation. When applying this test to all of the units informing the computation of the BSER, emission performance rates, and statewide goals, the EPA determined that the only unit with a 2012 outage that 1) decreased its output relative to preceding and subsequent years by 75 percent or more (signifying an outage), and 2) could potentially impact the state’s goal as it constituted more than 10 percent of the state’s generation was the Sherburne County Unit 3 in Minnesota.  The EPA therefore adjusted this state’s baseline coal steam generation upwards to reflect a more representative year for the state in which this 900 MW unit operates.

Clean Power Plan Final Rule (PDF p. 796 of 1560).

And from the state, which acknowledges imminent release of FEDERAL Clean Power Plan Final Rule , also released today, just in from the MPCA (direct quote):

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has issued a request for comments on possible rule amendments to bring Minnesota into compliance with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Clean Power Plan. You can read the full request in the August 3, 2015, edition of the State Register, available at www.comm.media.state.mn.us/bookstore/mnbookstore.asp?page=register.

The amendments we are considering will help Minnesota meet standards established by the Clean Power Plan, which sets state-specific carbon dioxide emission targets and requires each state to submit a plan detailing its strategy for meeting the targets. As of State Register press time, we have not yet started drafting a plan because the EPA has not yet published the standards that Minnesota’s plan will need to meet, so the MPCA requests public input to help guide our considerations of methods for meeting the EPA’s targets, as well as any other objectives that the state’s plan might include.

Stakeholder meeting agendas, notes, and other related documents are posted on the website for this rulemaking at www.pca.state.mn.us/w9y3awr.

To access information about a particular Minnesota rulemaking, visit the Public Rulemaking Docket.

Photo by Brent Stapelkamp

Yes, this whole Cecil thing does bother me.  I’ve seen a lot of criticism of people posting about Cecil when there are so many other awful things going on in the world these days.  But it’s not binary. And it’s not about “hunting,” because dragging an elephant as bait to lure a protected animal out of its sanctuary, wounding it with a bow and arrow and not tracking it immediately and not ending its suffering until 40 hours later, that is not hunting. And there’s also an interest curve, things pop and wane.  There are trends though about those who are making public waves about this.

Another issue, think about Palmer’s choice when he learned that he’d injured and then killed a protected lion. His response was not to contact authorities and report the dead lion. Instead it was to behead and skin him and take those “trophies.” That moment he had a choice, he blew it. Since then, he’s hidden, sent out messages avoiding his responsibility, and not until the shitstorm hit did he acknowledge his actions. This is indicative of his moral compass and code, and consistent with prior acts of poaching and sexual harassment.

I’ve had some time now to consider what shows up in my computer… Of those of us who are commenting on Cecil, we can be concerned about many issues at once, we MUST be concerned about many issues at once.  Most of the people I’ve seen posting about Cecil are activist sorts, people also standing up for equal rights, those who worked for gay marriage, an end to police shootings and abuse, prosecution of bank fraud and rabid capitalism, sex trafficking, homelessness, essentially, demonstrating that we need to pay attention to all these issues for anything to change.  We can and will be concerned about many, many things.  Cecil will be high on the “interest curve” for a while and then we’ll be following the Ray Tensing trail, and then there’s the four Clean Line transmission proposals trying to steamroll their way through state and federal scrutiny. On the other hand, those who are not commenting about Cecil are the same ones not standing up about all things political, ethical, and illegal. I’m noticing the silence. Will watch this over time and see if this hypothesis holds!

The Science of why you are so upset about Cecil the Lion

Bottom line:

Small writes that “most humans are… not just ignorant of but indifferent to almost all of the species on the planet.” In fact, people are “biophobic” meaning they are “slightly to extremely negative towards the majority of species they encounter.”

My issue here is that this is such a blatant case of narcissism on parade, a demonstration of white male privilege in the extreme:

This guy is a privileged white male dentist who pays out more money than most of us make in a year to go around the world and kill beautiful rare animals and bring pieces of them home and display on his walls.   Oh, and he wants to convince us that he’s Putin II.  Oh, please…  urp… Well, then again, considering what we know of Putin, perhaps there are similarities.

N-A-R-C-I-S-S-I-S-M

As a part of his sentence, I’d like to see it include restitution of all he’s paid for this “hunting” to animal sanctuaries; that he must photograph in the wild each of the animals he’s listed as having killed, whether by his “hunting groups” or in criminal records (yes, go photograph a bear); that he face a public (and protected) public shaming; that he get a psych evaluation and follow the recommendation; that he lost his dentistry license for ethical breeches/unethical breaches.

That’s a start.

Here’s the Board of Dentistry’s Settlement regarding the sexual harassment claim against him in 2009 (note it is expressly not “Disciplinary Action”):

Walter Palmer_Agreement for Corrective Action – MN Board of Dentistry

And on NPR (I’d write that headline a bit different… “hunter?” … maybe just “Walt, call home!”):

U.S. Authorities Can’t Find Hunter Who Killed ‘Cecil the Lion’

Let’s keep on this guy… and let’s keep on all the other issues we care about, stop the Clean Line, all four of them, keep demonstrating at the Mall of America, jump up and with with glee as they shut down sand mines in the Driftless area, and run “Greenmark Solar” out of Red Wing!

Xcel Energy’s 2nd quarter call was this morning.

Xcel Energy (XEL) Benjamin G. S. Fowke on Q2 2015 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

From the Seeking Alpha transcript, a cute tidbut:

The decline in residential sales is driven by lower customer usage. We believe this trend is due to a combination of factors including appliance efficiency, conservation efforts, and an increase in multi-unit dwellings. We have adjusted our annual electric sales guidance to reflect year-to-date results, which lowers our expected growth rate for 2015 to about 0.5%.

Got that?

0.5%

That’s a ways away from the 2.49% upon which the CapX 2020 transmission build-out was based.  DOH!

And about multi-year plans and why they “underperformed,” there was this snippet on the Seeking Alpha transcript:

And I think if you look at why we’ve under-earned, we’ve had a lot of CapEx going through a funnel. We had to relicense our nuclear plants. We had some challenges there as everyone in the industry did. And we didn’t have a lot of forums to communicate some of those challenges. So it’s not only the mechanisms associated with the legislation in the multi-year plan; it’s kind of what that frees you up to do. And I am optimistic that we will make good progress next year and in the years to come.

And from our friends at Xcel:

2Q 2015 Report_1001200774

And more:

• Xcel Energy Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Report
• Xcel Energy Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Presentation

And for those of you into charts and graphs (from the 2Q 2015 Report_1001200774):