Via the City of Minneapolis, here is a chart of greenhouse gas emissions from citywide activities.
Greenhouse gas emissions decreased 3.1% in 2016 compared to the 2015. Increases in emissions from natural gas consumption, solid waste, and wastewater were offset by decreases in emissions from electricity consumption and on-road transportation.
The City adopted goals in April 2018 to achieve 100% renewable electricity for municipal facilities and operations by 2022 and citywide by 2030. Emissions from electricity consumption are the largest share of the City’s output, but are expected to be eclipsed by natural gas by 2020.
What electricity sources is the city of Minneapolis going to use to be 100% renewable energy by 2030 without regular electric outages?
I have enough solar at my house to cover more than 100% of my yearly usage, but without other sources of electricity at night I wouldn’t have any electricity at night.
Presumably rather than hook up city hall to solar panels they’re going to use the program Xcel Energy has where you can pay extra on your electric bill and in turn Xcel will buy that amount more of renewables than they’re legally required to.
I’m curious what the boundaries are for the on-road transportation. With that part being much smaller than electric and natural gas, I suspect they are not including emissions from non-residents entering the city (are are only taking a small portion of it). While that may be sound mathematically, it does not fix the climate problem. The city is a huge trip generator, not taking concrete steps to improve transit (see: lack of bus lanes on Hennepin, 4th in upcoming construction projects) will not help the global problem nor will it improve equitable access to jobs.