The past and the future of electricity in America are perhaps most visible in a Minnesota town surrounded by potato farms and cornfields.
Towering over Becker, a community of a little more than 5,000 people northwest of Minneapolis, is one of the nation’s largest coal power plants. It is being replaced — to the dismay of some residents — with thousands of acres of solar panels and a test of long-duration batteries.
Becker is one of the first of a group of seven Minnesota municipal areas, called the Coalition of Utility Cities, making the change from a fossil-fuel-based economy to clean energy.
“We are the guinea pig for the whole group,” said Tracy Bertram, the mayor of Becker, acknowledging the anxiety some have felt about the loss of an economic anchor. “People don’t like change. It’s the unknown: ‘What will my world look like?’”
When the Sherburne County Generating Station, known as Sherco, completes its renewable project on adjacent land, it will stand as the largest solar farm in the Upper Midwest — replacing three coal units in Becker with three solar sites on the town’s outskirts along the Mississippi River.
Becker crystallizes part of the legacy of the administration of Gov. Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, and his commitment to Minnesota’s goal of 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2040. And it tests how the energy transition could unfold on a nationwide scale for jobs at decades-old fossil fuel facilities, local tax revenues and agricultural businesses.
President Biden’s climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, aims to cut U.S. emissions at least 52 percent below 2005 levels by the end of this decade, and his administration is counting on solar power to play a significant role in decarbonizing electricity production. One Energy Department report concluded that solar energy could provide up to 40 percent of the nation’s electricity by 2035.
Minnesota is among the states that can benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act by using it as a tool to replace coal plants with sources like solar farms. Through the law, Sherco’s owner, Xcel Energy, received tax credits that reduced the cost of the solar project for the utility’s ratepayers.
Becker is also one of two sites where Xcel is installing demonstration battery systems from Form Energy, a Massachusetts company. The systems — using readily available materials like water, air and iron — can store solar and wind-generated energy as a backup, with a capacity to power 2,000 homes for up to five days.
“This site is an incredibly valuable epicenter of the Upper Midwest,” Bob Frenzel, chairman and chief executive of Xcel Energy, said during a tour of the plant. “When you think about the geography of the grid, it’s incredibly valuable to maintain as an energy center.”
Besides power plants, much of the economy in and around Becker relies on agriculture, like Edling Farms.
For four generations, the Edling family made a living producing bags of potatoes for retail and wholesale customers, most of that time on land it either owned or leased near the coal plant.
Leasing has become too expensive because landowners can make four times as much from solar farm customers as they can from farmers. Farmers, the Edlings said, were paying a little more than $200 an acre on a lease, but solar developers began offering north of $900.
“Solar is a no-brainer,” said Jeff Edling, a co-owner of Edling Farms. “It’s a guaranteed check. You can’t blame them. Money talks.”
But the Edlings have no plans to quit the business their family began more than a century ago. They own the land used for the farm, though about 280 acres were leased and later lost to Xcel Energy’s solar project.
“They paid a lot of money for it,” Mr. Edling said. “So it is what it is. Everybody’s just kind of waiting to see what happens.”
Among skeptics of the energy transition, suspicion about solar runs as deep as the town’s cornfields are long. The Edlings said some residents questioned whether the solar farms would harm the soil with any chemicals and whether the renewable resource worked as well as the coal plant.
Many in the town still bristle at losing their precious plant, which supplied electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes in and around Minnesota for almost five decades. More than half the 240 jobs at the plant will soon be gone, though Xcel promises no layoffs.
A lonely “Save Our Sherco” lawn sign continues a silent protest at a home near Ms. Bertram’s office at City Hall.
“It’s a culture transition in addition to an infrastructure transition,” said Leah Stokes, an associate professor of environmental politics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It may take a little while for people to understand the benefits. All of these things do take time.”
Some electricity providers have questioned the pace and breadth of changes that Minnesota has mandated.
“While we recognize the leadership demonstrated in passing policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions, we remain concerned about the legislation’s impact on affordability and reliability,” Darrick Moe, chief executive of the Minnesota Rural Electric Association, which provides power to 1.7 million people, said in a statement.
But Matt Varilek, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, said Becker represented the kind of commitment the state was making to fight climate change and the need to ensure that the effort did not harm communities. Success in places like Becker could provide a template to help communities avoid collapse.
“We’re aware, of course, that when there’s a transition, that can cause economic dislocation, if there’s nothing to replace it,” Mr. Varilek said. With the kind of investments the state is making in Becker, “all of a sudden the clean energy transition looks a lot more palatable.”
Most residents have resolved that the future has taken root in Becker, where a Dairy Queen arrived a year ago and a more hipster-style coffee shop and bar, Dueling Brews, has become a local gathering place.
One of the coal plant’s three coal units shut down at the end of last year. Xcel Energy plans to close the others in 2026 and 2030, adding to the decline not only in coal but in fossil fuels in general. (Some of the buildings are expected to be repurposed for future clean energy projects.) In all, the company said, it has closed 24 of its 36 coal-fired power plant units across the country.
That sharply reduces coal consumption, as a single burner in a power plant like Sherco can consume as much as 120,000 pounds of coal per hour to heat water and produce steam for turbines to generate electricity.
Those closings contributed to a steep decline in electricity production from coal nationwide. By the end of last year, coal produced a little more than 16 percent of the nation’s electricity, down from 52 percent in 1990, and natural gas provided about 43 percent of the country’s power, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.
Campaigns like the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal plan highlighted the environmental and climate hazards posed by fossil fuels and other carbon-emitting resources.
Over the next several decades, solar power is expected to replace natural gas as the single largest source of electricity production, not just in Becker but across the United States — a position once held by coal-fired generators.
The transition away from black gold, as coal has been known, has been felt on both sides of the train tracks that divide Becker into residential on the north side and industrial on the south.
Train cars loaded with coal roll through town only half as much as they used to, but the utility maintains a stockpile visible in the town — a giant mound on the plant site, weighing 1.9 million tons — that can operate the plant for as long as 100 days, Xcel Energy said.
Becker is among a half-dozen areas eligible to apply for funding from a $4.75 million state program to assist with redevelopment efforts, attract new businesses and train workers for new jobs in the move away from coal.
In addition, state investments of more than $20 million into Becker will help bring a new industrial park that includes as many as three data centers. Some power plant workers plan to relocate to a nearby nuclear plant the utility owns.
But letting go of the operation where many have spent their entire careers creates a sense of anxiety, even for those who say they understand the need to move to clean energy.
“You don’t want to see this place go,” said Rob Miller, a journeyman who has worked at the Sherco plant for 20 years. “There’s a lot of pride, blood, sweat that has gone in here. It’s sad to see it coming to an end.”