Green New Walz: Everything you need to know about Tim Walz’s energy policy – ‘Walz has never seen a California energy policy he didn’t try to implement in Minnesota’

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Saturday Substack post to bring you this important bulletin: On August 6, 2024th, Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as the Vice Presidential candidate.

No one has done more work analyzing Governor Walz’s energy policies over the last six years than we have. Today, we detail the policies he has enacted or proposed in Minnesota and their implications for the nation.

In short, Walz has never seen a California energy policy he didn’t try to implement in Minnesota. His standard tactic has been the bait-and-switch, first proposing a seemingly moderate policy during election season and then lurching to the extreme end of the spectrum at his first opportunity.

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While campaigning for Governor in 2018, Walz said he was for a “modest” increase in the gas tax, but he did not mention a specific amount.

Once he was elected, he sought to raise the tax by 20 cents per gallon, a 70 percent increase. This massive tax hike would have cost the average Minnesota family an additional $207 per year and made Minnesota’s gas tax the 4th highest in the nation.

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Nothing about this proposal was modest. Walz eventually caved due to public opposition to the massive proposed tax increase, but it was the start of a trend where the proposed policies of Governor Walz diverged from the rhetoric of candidate Walz.

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In late October 2018, Candidate Walz told the Minneapolis Star Tribune he was satisfied with the Public Utilities Commission’s (PUC) decision to allow the project to move forward. “The PUC did rule. We need to follow the process in place,” said Candidate Walz.

Upon being sworn into office, however, Governor Walz quickly changed his tune. Instead of allowing the project, which had received unanimous approval from the PUC, to move forward, the Governor’s office delayed it in February 2019.

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Then, in 2021, Walz decided to knock ten years off the target date for the proposed mandates, moving it up to 2040. This quadrupled down on the bad energy policy requiring 25 percent of the state’s power to come from renewables by 2025, which has caused Minnesota’s electricity prices to soar.

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In 2019, he instructed his Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) to enact California’s Zero-Emissions (ZEV) mandates, forcing auto dealers to stock 14,000 electric vehicles on their lots in the first year of the program without the legislature’s approval.

The problem is that EVs don’t work very well in Minnesota because the batteries are drained by up to 40 percent if people use the heater in the car. That relegates them to a luxury purchase for affluent people, and as