Last week, in preparation for the Senate Transportation Committee hearing on the Clean Transportation Standard, we co-signed the below letter to legislators. Along with 13 other supporters from businesses, nonprofits, and local governments, we believe a Minnesota Clean Transportation Standard is an important step to reduce emissions from transportation and reach our state’s climate goals.
While the bill was discussed in committee, no vote was taken.
March 4, 2024
Honorable Scott Dibble
Chair, Senate Transportation Committee
3107 Minnesota Senate Building
St. Paul, MN 55155
Dear Chair Dibble, Vice Chair Morrison, Ranking Minority Member Jasinski, and members of the Senate Transportation Committee,
We, the undersigned, are writing to ask you to support a Minnesota Clean Transportation Standard.
We are grateful to the 2023 legislature for establishing the Clean Transportation Working Group and to the Minnesota Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Pollution Control, and Transportation for convening a comprehensive group of stakeholders that concluded that a Minnesota clean transportation standard “could be the largest single policy for reducing carbon pollution from transportation in Minnesota”.
The Minnesota Future Fuels Coalition has been working together for several years to support the development of a clean transportation standard for Minnesota. The coalition is facilitated by the Great Plains Institute, and members include renewable fuel producers and marketers, electric utilities, environmental nonprofits, auto manufacturers, and agriculture and industry groups.
As a diverse group of stakeholders, we support a clean transportation standard tailored to Minnesota. We believe that a policy designed based on recommendations in the white paper “A Clean Fuels Policy for the Midwest” can have many benefits, including:
- Benefits for consumers through market access for clean fuels that are often lower cost than conventional fuels and currently face barriers to entry in the marketplace.
- Equitable access to clean transportation for all Minnesota communities.
- Increased investment in cleaner fuels for all types of vehicles and aircraft, facilitating a more innovative and prosperous clean fuels sector and spurring consumer demand for cleaner products.
- A technology- and fuel-neutral, performance-based approach that rewards the cleanest fuels and expands the fuel market without having government pick winners and losers.
- Reduced air pollution and associated health benefits, particularly in areas that have been disproportionately impacted by transportation pollution.
- Economic incentives and market demand to maximize the resource value of organic waste (including manure, biosolids, and food waste), reducing the climate impacts of organic waste, and supporting counties’ efforts to achieve state recycling goals.
- Increased energy independence by relying less on imported resources and more on state resources.
- Reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation, electricity, and agriculture sectors.
- The potential to support voluntary farmer-led efforts to invest in and adopt agricultural conservation practices that benefit soil health and water quality and reduce farm-level greenhouse gas emissions.
Bills passed in 2023 positioned Minnesota as a national leader in climate legislation, and being
the first Midwestern state to pass a transformative piece of legislation such as a clean
transportation standard would further cement that position. There is no time to waste to start
reducing emissions from transportation, Minnesota’s highest polluting sector, so we urge you to
support this policy that will be critical to get us to our climate goals.
Sincerely,
American Biogas Council
Amp Americas
ChargePoint
Clean Energy Economy Minnesota
Clean Energy Fuels
Conservation Minnesota
Delta
Electrify America
General Motors
Gevo
Gladstein Neandross & Associates
NGVAmerica
Partnership on Waste and Energy
SWTCH