Earlier this week, climate justice organizers in the Northland achieved a huge success: the utility companies withdrew their requested permit for Nemadji Trail Energy Center (NTEC), a $1B gas-fired power plant they hoped to build in Superior, WI.

Despite knowing that methane or “natural” gas is a major contributor to climate change and that the future of our energy needs to be in renewable sources, Minnesota Power, Dairyland Power Cooperative, and Basin Electric Power Cooperative have been pushing to build this carbon-producing plant for the last decade.

But luckily for us, climate justice organizations, including Minnesota-based groups like Sierra Club, MCEA, and MNIPL, have also been fighting this proposed plant since day one. Local tribes have named legitimate legal issues about their sovereign rights and the proposed plant’s proximity to the graves of 200 ancestors of the Fond Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Studies have been produced and shared that these utilities are producing enough energy without this plant. Health professionals have pointed to the environmental harms to people’s health. Local electeds, especially members of the Superior City Council, have been pushing to keep this plant from being built. This permit withdrawal is the result of 10 years of organizing by people and organizations in the Duluth/Superior region, who have been making the case that this plant is unnecessary and harmful to the community and the world.

If you’ve joined us and our partners in the work to keep this plant from being built, thank you! There’s absolutely no doubt that the biggest factor in the withdrawal has been the fierce, longstanding, local opposition to the proposal.

So what comes next? The decision to withdraw their permit request is reversible, and it’s possible they may choose to resubmit it. Community groups are watching, and we’re quite prepared to continue to fight this project for as long as it takes to defeat it. However, we’re hopeful that the utilities will use this opportunity to reset and abandon this dinosaur of an idea, and will instead consider the spending of their resources more wisely, by investing in real clean energy solutions for their customers and host communities.

This is a win for the Duluth/Superior region and for our statewide and global fight to decarbonize our energy production and build a more sustainable and interconnected world. Thank you for your commitment to this work and stay tuned for more information!

Interested in learning more? Click here to read an article from Wisconsin Public Radio about this news.