| Energy.Source | Percentage |
|---|---|
4 Electricity
4.1 Introduction
Electricity emissions are driven by the fuel mix used for power generation rather than by on-site combustion. The Twin Cities metro falls within the Midwest Reliability Organization West (MROW) subregion of EPA’s Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID), which provides the emissions factors used to convert electricity deliveries into CO2e. The MROW grid mix is shown in Table 4.1.
Emissions from electricity consumption have declined substantially since 2005, largely as a result of coal-to-wind transitions in the MROW grid. In 2023, Minnesota passed a bill mandating a carbon-free electricity standard by 2040, requiring 80% carbon-free retail sales by 2030 and 100% by 2040 for all electric utilities. This section presents emissions attributed to electricity delivered to residential, commercial, and industrial end users across the seven-county metro. Natural gas consumed at power plants for electricity generation is treated separately in the Building Energy section’s sector decomposition to avoid double counting.
4.2 Results
4.2.1 2022 county and subsector breakdown
Electricity accounted for an estimated 12,535,113 metric tons CO2e across the seven-county metro in 2022. Residential electricity accounts for approximately 34% of total electricity emissions.
4.2.2 Baseline emissions
4.2.3 CTU per-capita electricity emissions
Per-capita electricity emissions vary across the region, reflecting differences in housing density, building stock, commercial and industrial activity, and the extent to which a community’s electricity demand is dominated by residential versus non-residential load.
4.3 Summary
Electricity is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions in the seven-county metro, but one that is declining as the MROW grid transitions from coal to wind and solar. The 2040 carbon-free electricity standard will accelerate this trend. Sector decomposition shows that residential electricity accounts for the largest share of emissions, with the non-residential remainder split into commercial and industrial using NREL SLOPE modeled ratios. At the CTU level, per-capita emissions are uneven across the region, spiking in communities with large commercial or industrial electricity loads relative to population. As building electrification increases — shifting heating and transportation loads onto the grid — continued grid decarbonization will be critical for realizing net emissions reductions.