Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
To Build Natural Gas Plants, or Not to Build?
Last year Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed legislation into law that mandates state utility providers create "100% clean electricity" by 2040. Xcel Energy didn't push back; the de facto monopoly actually has its own goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Problem is, a coalition of green energy advocates warn, Xcel is also... planning on constructing six or more new fossil fuel plants in the interim.
The company says those natural gas peaker plants—think classic puffing smokestacks—are needed to meet peak demands and keep prices down. Those green energy groups aren't so sure about that. Using Xcel's same modeling software, they arrived at a potential solution that could save ratepayers $3.5 billion, Energy News Network reports: one single new gas plant, plus additional reliance on existing plants, more efficient storage and demand response, and, here's the big one, purchasing surplus power from the regional grid. “It’s a much better solution that’s flexible in this time of uncertainty without making this big commitment to gas resources for the next 40 years,” says Amelia Vohs with the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy.
“Xcel is using a sort of fiction of modeling because the reality is we’re part of a regional grid,” says Allen Gleckner of Fresh Energy, adding that he considers Xcel's approach extremely conservative. "[The result is a plan to] build a bunch of new resources that we know are either not compatible with our state laws or are going to be costly and likely to retire early.”
The Minnesota Attorney General's Office shares those concerns, warning that freshly constructed fossil fuel plans might become obsolete “stranded assets.” Xcel executives acknowledge that risk, but a spokesman says the company's favored approach, “avoids overreliance on the energy market, which could expose our customers to excessive risk." Honestly that's not either of the big risks at the top of my mind, buddy. You can make your voice heard by sending comments to the Public Utilities Commission by October 4.
City Mulls Permits for Unlicensed Fruit Vendors
Notice all those roadside fruit vendors popping up around the Twin Cities? So have Minneapolis City Council Members Jason Chavez and Aurin Chowdhury. Together, they're working to create permits or licenses that would make those vendors, many of whom are asylum-seekers from Ecuador who can't yet work legally in the U.S., legit in the eyes of the law.
Understandably, no unlicensed workers wanted to speak on the record with Sahan Journal during a recent sunny weekend near Minnehaha Falls. But reporter Alfonzo Galvan still managed to form a nicely framed account of the thorny issues surrounding them.
“The reality is that right now, folks are not allowed to do it, and they’re getting letters saying to stop doing what they’re doing,” Chavez tells Sahan. “And they’re being given routes to get permitted, but the permits that exist wouldn’t allow them to do what they’re doing.” Going above board would allow for food-safety protocols to enforced, he adds, as well as protections for the workers themselves.
In the meantime, the current arrangement appears to be pissing off licensed local vendors, including Brooklyn Mike’s Italian Ice owner Michael "Mike" Auciello. “A lot of the food trucks out there and vendors have given up. They’re selling their trucks. They don’t want nothing to do with this baloney no more,” Auciello says, putting much of the blame on “illegal vendors.”
"MN Mystery Beast" Captivates Most Sensationalist Corners of Internet
We'll let the always restrained headline authors at TMZ tee this one up: "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!?! MINNESOTA MYSTERY BEAST BAFFLES EXPERTS." Adds the U.K. Daily Mail, fellow travelers in journalistic subtlety: "Incredible footage shows mystery beast stalking the woods in Northern state: 'We have never seen this.'"
For answers, we'll turn the source: Our pals at the U of M's Voyageurs Wolf Project, who captured footage of said mystery beast during their ongoing research efforts in far northern Minnesota, way up near Voyageurs National Park. In the YouTube video description posted below, the VWP team seems amused by their sudden tabloid fame, though they're not afraid to call out shoddy reporting; the Daily Mail piece attributes a VWP post to Jack London, the famous (and famously dead!) outdoor adventure writer. "We learned that Jack London has risen from his grave and now writes our social media content," they write, adding that AI authorship might be the culprit.
As for the mystery beast, the group doesn't have firm answers, thus legitimizing the "mystery" angle, but they do have sober, scientific-yet-speculative hunches...
Anyway, for those who did not see our post about this peculiar animal a month ago: We documented a wolf-like, dog-like canid of sorts roaming the area this past winter. It sort of looked like a mix between a wolf and a malamute or something... Notably, we have never seen a “wolf” that looks like this but we suspect that either this canid is a wolf with some strange mutation that makes it super fluffy and extra large (seems unlikely but trying to think through the options)... or it is a wolf-dog hybrid. Since we have seen no evidence that wolves are breeding with dogs in our area or heard of this occurring in northern Minnesota, we think it most likely—if it is indeed a hybrid—that the animal is a hybrid that was either released or escaped.
Hear Our Hot Dog/Beer Reporter Talk 9-9-9 Challenge; Hear Our Co-Owner and Mega-Commenter Talk Movies
Forgive the navel-gazing here, but there's just so much audio content related to our lil website.
Big thanks to the Adam & Jordana program on WCCO Radio for booking Spencer White, our intrepid 9-9-9 challenger who recently housed untold beers and hot dogs at local baseball games for the amusement of Racket readers. Appearing earlier today, White regaled hosts Adam Carter and Jordana Green with tales from his gut-busting stunt journalism adventure.
"I saw something about it on TikTok at the beginning of the summer, some people just trying to destroy their own bodies," White tells much older 'CCO listeners. "And I thought: I could do that."
Elsewhere, in the land of podcasts, Racket's own Em Cassel was invited to be a very special guest by a very special host—Taco Mike, aka the king of this site's comment section. Taco Mike co-hosts a movie podcast called I Can't Believe You Made Me Watch That (support 'em via Patreon), and this week's disbelief comes courtesy of the 2021 dramedy CODA, a dud film that gets dissected in great detail over the course of an hour.
I asked Em to hype her episode, and she responded thusly: "If you’ve ever wondered about the similarities and differences between a fishing cooperative and a cooperatively run news/arts/culture website, that’s addressed in this episode."
I think my finger just snapped from tapping "download" too fast.
