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Thomas Braun

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Thomas Braun is a partner in Stoel Rives’ Environment, Land Use & Natural Resources group who has broad experience in matters involving environmental and energy issues at the federal, state, and local levels. Thomas works strategically and finds creative solutions to matters involving (1) management, remediation, and redevelopment of contaminated properties (brownfields), (2) siting, permitting, and development of large commercial facilities, (3) due diligence in corporate and real estate transactions, and (4) regulatory compliance and response to enforcement actions.

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On December 21, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) set forth its plans to amend the state’s clean air rules to adopt Low-Emission Vehicles (LEV) and Zero-Emission Vehicles (ZEV) standards, known as the Clean Cars Minnesota rule.  As described in MPCA’s Notice of Intent to Adopt Rules with a Hearing, the LEV standard would require automobile manufacturers to deliver for sale in Minnesota only those vehicles that can meet California’s more stringent greenhouse gas and other air pollutant emissions standards.  The ZEV standard would further require automobile manufacturers to deliver for sale in Minnesota a certain percentage of vehicles with no tailpipe emissions.  Automobile manufacturers could comply with the ZEV standard through the delivery of battery electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, and hydrogen-fueled vehicles.  If approved, the rule would apply to new passenger cars and light trucks beginning in 2024.

The rule’s LEV standard will prohibit motor vehicle manufacturers from exceeding the fleet average non-methane organic gas plus oxides of nitrogen emission values and fleet average greenhouse gas emission values contained in the California Code of Regulations.  A vehicle manufacturer will have to submit an annual report to MPCA demonstrating that it did not exceed the fleet average emissions.
Continue Reading Minnesota drives forward with EV rules

Today, the Eighth Circuit determined that the Next Generation Energy Act (“NGEA”), a Minnesota law that established power sector standards for carbon dioxide emissions, was unconstitutional (decision available here). In so doing, the Court affirmed the decision of District Court Judge Susan Nelson, whose 2014 decision we covered in “Court Declares Minnesota…

Democratic legislators in Wisconsin plan to unveil a plan this week that would require investor-owned utilities, municipal utilities, and rural electric cooperatives (“electric providers”) to increase their renewable electricity portfolios to 30% by 2030. Wisconsin’s current renewable portfolio mandates that electric providers obtain 10% of their retails sales from electricity generated from renewable resources by…

Xcel Energy, the nation’s leading wind power utility, announced yesterday that it will add three large wind farms to its wind energy portfolio.  The 600 megawatt increase is the utility’s single largest increase in its Upper Midwest service area.

The 33 percent increase will augment Xcel’s existing 1,800 megawatts of wind capacity and allow it…

 The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently issued a decision in Illinois Commerce Commission, et al., v. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“FERC”), which has the potential to influence and provide direction for the federal district court currently considering the constitutionality of Minnesota’s Next Generation Energy Act (“NGEA”).  In Illinois …