Minnesota is home to over 5.8 million people with a land area of close to 80,000 square miles making it the 12th largest and 22nd most populous state in the U.S. It is known for its 11,842 lakes, its freezing weather (with average winter temperatures of eight degrees Fahrenheit) and its stunning amount of snowfall, often getting around 70 inches per year.
CLIMATE IMPACTS
Like many other midwestern states, Minnesota is warming quickly and buffeted by supercharged weather — heat waves, droughts, deluges, wind storms, precipitation, flooding and even wildfires.
- The average annual temperature in Minnesota has risen 3.4 degrees (F) between 1895 and 2025, and are projected to increase an additional 8-4.5 degrees (F) by mid-century.
- Those famous cold winters are warming up at thirteen times the rate of its summers, a faster rate than almost any other state. The state’s average winter low temperature has increased by 6.9 degrees (F) and the 2023-2024 winter was the warmest on record, with the majority of the state receiving less than half of normal snowfall.
- The increasing warmth is taking a toll on the state’s natural environment, especially up north in its boreal forests. Many of Minnesota’s trees, including black spruce, balsam fir, paper birch, and quaking aspen, are likely to rapidly decline or even die out completely within the next decade if the warming persists.
- The warming winters are also harming Minnesota’s famous lakes, which are freezing later and thawing earlier, making them easy targets for voracious new pests, deadly parasites, and toxic algae. The state’s lakes have lost an average of 10-14 days of ice cover in the past 50 years, and last winter was the lowest ever ice cover recorded in the state. Another threat to the lakes is the more frequent storms, usually carrying fertilizer runoff, mainly phosphorus and nitrogen, from Minnesota’s farming sector, contributing to the death of species in lakes via a process called eutrophication leading to harmful algae blooms and low oxygen. Minnesota’s fish populations are also suffering from significant habitat loss.
- Floods and droughts, also a result of global warming, are impacting Minnesota’s significant agriculture industry causing, among other things, flash floods, which can be deadly. Between 1895 and 2025, the state experienced an average increase of4 inches of precipitation per year. With agriculture, forests, and waters in peril, all of Minnesota’s ecosystems are in greater danger.
- Climate change is already impacting tribal lifeways in Minnesota, threatening culturally important species like walleye fish, bison, and moose, shifting seasonal harvesting patterns of sugarbush, sugar maple, and wild rice, and impacting native pollinators.
- The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has developed an interactive Minnesota website where users can plot data for historical and projected trends for climate variables in different areas of the state and the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership has released the MN CliMAT, an online interactive mapping tool with localized climate projections across the state, and the Minnesota County Climate Trends mapper.
ENERGY
In 2024, renewables generated the largest total share of the state’s electricity at 33%, having almost doubled since 2013. Coal has declined from its peak in 2020, contributing 19% of the state’s total electricity in 2024. Minnesota’s largest power-plant by capacity is the coal-fired Sherburne County Generating Station, scheduled for retirement by 2034. That power plant will be replaced with the Sherco Solar Project, one of the largest solar-farms in the nation. In 2024, solar accounted for 5% of the state’s total electricity. Biomass was 2%, hydroelectric was 1%, and wind was the largest share of renewables at 25%. Minnesota is 8th in the nation for wind capacity, and one of the top five states for small-scale wind potential. The rest of the state’s electricity was generated by natural gas (26% in 2024, a record high) and nuclear power (20% in 2024).
CLIMATE PLANS AND LEGISLATION
- In 2007, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Pawlenty, signed the Next Generation Energy Act with support from both sides of the aisle. The act set goals for the state to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% between 2005 and 2050, while supporting clean energy, energy efficiency, and supplementing other renewable energy standards. Interim goals were also set: a 15% reduction by 2015, and a 30% reduction by 2025. In 2007 when the act was first signed, it made Minnesota second only to California in the toughness of emissions reduction legislation. However, in 2015 Minnesota missed its goal and was still not on track to meet future goals in 2022 with overall GHG emissions only declining by 8% from 2005.
- In 2019, Governor Tim Walz issued Executive Order 19-37, establishing the Climate Change Subcabinet and Governor’s Advisory Council on Climate Change.
- In 2021, Governor Walz signed the Energy Conservation and Optimization (ECO) Act. The ECO Act modernizes the state’s Conservation Improvement Program, a long-term energy- efficiency policy that experts say has saved Minnesotans billions of dollars while avoiding millions of tons in carbon emissions since it began in the 1980s.
- Clean Cars Minnesota was officially adopted in July 2021 and went into effect on January 1, 2024. The initiative includes low emissions vehicle standard and zero-emission vehicle standard requirements.
- In 2022, Minnesota released its statewide climate plan, the Minnesota Climate Action Framework, identifying 6 main goals: clean transportation, climate-smart natural and working lands, resilient communities, clean energy and efficient buildings, healthy lives and communities, and clean economy. Under the Framework, Minnesota updated its emissions goals to reducing GHG emissions 50% by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. The following 2023 legislative session was a historic one for climate action with over 40 climate initiatives passed, many from the Framework, together accounting for the largest climate investment in the state’s history. This included a law mandating 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040.
- In February 2024, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, in collaboration with the Minnesota Department of Health, University of Minnesota Duluth, and the Climate Change Subcabinet, released Minnesota’s Priority Climate Action Plan (PCAP) under the EPA’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program.
- In 2025, an updated Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment and Adaptation Plan was released by the Bois Forte Band, Fond du Lac Band, Grand Portage Band, and 1854 Treaty Authority to explore how climate change is impacting the land and people within the 1854 Ceded Territory.
- Minnesota launched an updated Climate Action Framework in 2026 maintaining the six original goals of the 2022 framework while emphasizing the need for increased speed and scale of implementation to achieve targets. According to the state’s 2025 GHG inventory, emissions decreased 18% from 2005 to 2022, but increased 5.1% between 2020 and 2022. The revised plan includes a greater focus on collaboration with local and Tribal governments, an emphasis on affordability, and analyses of how to navigate a shifting federal landscape with reduced funding.
- In March 2026, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership submitted the results of their Climate Adaptation and Resilience Study to the Legislature, concluding that the cost of inaction exceeds the cost of investment. The study projects over $20 billion in damages each year by 2040 and $50 billion each year by 2070 unless the state makes investments in climate adaptation across all sectors.
- The 2026 legislative session had some climate wins including $430 million in funding for water infrastructure projects, $300 million for water conservation, wildlife management, public education and environmental resiliency projects, a tax bill tying Sustainable Aviation Fuel tax credits to a carbon intensity score, and a ban on fracking for gas development. At the same time, bills related to hyperscale data centers, wild rice protections, and a proposed Climate Superfund bill did not pass.
COLLABORATION WITH OTHER STATES
Minnesota is one of twenty-four states, plus Puerto Rico, committed to the US Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of governors committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
The nonprofit Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy (MCEA) files climate lawsuits, advocates for policy and legislation, and engages with communities to advance environmental change in the state. MCEA works to address a legacy of environmental injustice and racism across the state, with communities of color facing higher heat risks and concentration of pollution sources, traffic pollution 145% higher in areas where at least 40% of residents are people of color, Black Minnesotans facing over 2 times the cancer risk and 6 times the asthma death rate and Native Americans facing 3 times higher infant mortality rate than white Minnesotans. MCEA’s legal work has strengthened legal protections for waterways, required the evaluation of greenhouse gas emissions under environmental review, challenged mining permits, and helped draft and pass Amara’s law, a landmark statewide ban on PFAs named after Amara Strande, a young anti-PFA activist who died from a rare cancer.
Other environmental justice organizations to follow include: the Community Members for Environmental Justice (CMEJ), a coalition fighting environmental racism in North Minneapolis; Rise & Repair, working to advance Indigenous rights and climate justice (currently fighting a proposed petroleum pipeline in Southwestern Minnesota); MN vs. Big Oil, supporting Climate Superfund legislation; Zero Burn Coalition, fighting toxic trash incineration disproportionately concentrated in communities that are mostly low-income and people of color (read about their recent hunger strike protest); and Climate Justice Committee, a grassroots activist organization recognizing the necessary entanglement of anti-ICE, pro-Palestine, and climate justice organizing in the state.
