Minnesota’s plan to produce “carbon-free” electricity by 2040 pits environmentalists against human rights activists. That’s because Minnesota’s plans require increased solar power, whose components are produced using forced labor in China.
The Heritage Foundation reported that 95 percent of all solar panels worldwide contain materials built by forced labor in China.
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has previously blocked solar imports over suspected ties to forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region, the Daily Caller News Foundation previouslyreported.
The Biden and Trump administrations both took steps to restrict imports tied to China’s Xinjiang region, where the Chinese government has been accused of subjecting Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities to forced labor.
In recent years, CBP has detained or blocked shipments of solar products under theUyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) after determining importers failed to demonstrate their supply chains were free of forced labor.
The UFLPA has proven ineffective in stopping the sale of Chinese solar equipment made by forced labor because China simply moves its solar supplies now through third-party countries, like Malaysia or Vietnam, before those supplies make it to the United States.
Environmentalists refer to solar energy as being “clean,” but when at least 45 percent of all solar products are built using slave labor in China, some hard moral questions need to be asked of the Minnesota policymakers pushing for the transition away from coal to solar.
The expansion of Sherburne County Generating Station (Sherco Solar), one of the largest utility-scale solar developments in the United States, reflects Minnesota’s accelerating transition away from coal-fired power. Xcel Energy is replacing electricity once generated by coal with a combination of solar generation, battery storage and other energy resources to ensure the company meets Minnesota’s clean-energy requirements,according to MPR News.
Xcel Energy is a Minneapolis-based electric and natural gas utility. According to representatives from Xcel, the proposed fourth phase of Minnesota’s energy transition from coal to “clean” sources of energy, like solar, could be completed by 2029, bringing the site’s total capacity to 910 megawatts.
The transition marks a significant shift for a facility that for decades served as Minnesota’s largest power plant and one of the region’s primary sources of electricity.
The Sherco Solar project contains approximately 1.7 million solar panels, according to MPR News. And most, if not all, of those panels will come from China–meaning they will likely be built by slave labor.
The site’s total generating capacity is approximately 910 megawatts, further extending the company’s transition away from coal while making the Becker-area facility one of the largest solar installations in the country.
The project is part of their larger plan to move to solar. They claim that it will create 300 more union jobs and produce $90 million in local benefits.
Last month, the Department of Energyannounced up to $350 million for four coal modernization and reliability projects.
The scale of the project highlights the growing demand for solar components as U.S. officials continue to scrutinize global solar supply chains for potential links to forced labor.
BLOCK FIELD
The solar project is among the largest in the country, and Xcel hopes to make it bigger, MPR News reported.
“We’re obviously the largest in the state of Minnesota, and one of the largest in the Midwest for sure,” senior operations manager of Sherco Solar Luke Molus told MPR News. “We’re farming the sun.”
Southwest Power Pool manages a portion of Minnesota’s power grid. Due to extreme heat conditions, the Department of Energy released an emergency statement ordering Southwest Power Pool to provide electricity to 17 states–including Minnesota–affected by blackouts that occurred due to a massive heatwave.
Laura T. Murphy, Professor of Human Rights and Contemporary Slavery at the Helena Kennedy Center for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University, said that, “While global demand for renewable energy soars, the industry must scrutinize their supply chains to ensure that they are not contributing to this crisis.”
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