By JEFF TOMICH
It took Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — who Kamala Harris tapped as her running mate today — all of a month after being sworn into a second term to sign a sweeping clean energy bill that put in place one of the Midwest’s most progressive climate policies.
The law requires utilities to supply 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2040, and it is just one in a litany of clean energy bills he’s signed while in office. After 12 years in Congress representing a rural, Republican-leaning district in southern Minnesota, Walz came to the governor’s mansion with a history of pitching skeptical voters on climate action.
Still, the carbon-free energy standard was made possible by Democrats flipping the state Senate in November 2022 and giving the party a political trifecta for the first time in nearly a decade.
The vote to pass the measure was along straight party lines and fiercely opposed by Republicans. Critics outside the state included Walz’s GOP neighbor, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who has emerged as a top energy adviser to former President Donald Trump and continues to threaten to sue Minnesota over its energy policies.
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“I have to tell you, when I hear people say, ‘You’re moving too fast’ — we can’t move too fast when it comes to addressing climate change,” Walz said at that 2023 event. “This idea of waiting is a luxury we do not have, and Minnesotans do not have.”
