Minnesota solar industry mourns loss of its five-star general

The late Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman, a primary backer of the state’s community-solar law and zero-carbon requirement, took clean energy to pioneering new heights.

If you ask solar-industry observers of the late Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman, it’s a safe bet you will hear the word “champion.”

The word, of course, bears dual meanings: a winner and a leader of a cause. For the Minnesota solar industry, Hortman was both. Observers told pv magazine USA:

“Melissa was our champion,” said Reed Richerson, president of U.S. Solar, a private, Minneapolis-based clean-energy project developer.
“It’s a tragic loss of a champion,” said Jeff Cramer, chief executive officer for the Coalition for Community Solar Access, based in Washington, D.C.
“We as an industry are trying to figure out how to move forward, when our biggest champion is gone,” said Logan O’Grady, executive director of the Minnesota Solar Energies Association (MnSEIA).

Hortman was a champion of climate action and climate justice, the solar industry, and community and other distributed generation.

The Democratic former House speaker and her husband, Mark, died of gunshot wounds at home in Brooklyn Park, north of Minneapolis, over the weekend. Also shot were state Sen. John Hoffman, another Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, at their home in another town, Champlin, though they survive. Police have detained a suspect.

Solar-industry operators of varying stripes voiced the same theme: Minnesota has lost its most tenacious climate-change warrior, solar-industry proponent and community-solar godmother.

Several pointed out that even in the waning days of the state legislative session just ended June 9, Hortman once again succeeded in defending the state’s landmark community-solar bill she had done much to pass in 2013 to make Minnesota a national model. Hortman had backed the bill as chair of the Energy Policy Committee. As speaker in 2023, the lawmaker also led passage of a bill requiring utilities to source 100 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2040.

The community-solar bill paved the way for U.S. Solar to make a business out of developing, owning and operating community-solar, small-utility and energy-storage projects, Richerson said. In that light, he said, sizeable numbers of its 90-person workforce owe their jobs to Hortman.

Inside and outside of solar, Richerson said, Hortman also was known as an advocate for disadvantaged state populations. “Melissa Hortman has meant so much to so many communities across Minnesota,” he said.

House speaker for six years ending in mid-January, Hortman won many of her battles by confidently and quietly combining her political savvy and grit, her fixation on both vision and detail and a disarming measure of personal warmth, several observers said.

“She truly felt everyone was important, and people felt heard when talking to her,” Richerson said. “She was uniting. She looked for common ground.”

Hortman even relinquished her speakership early this year as part of a comprise to enable an evenly divided House to move forward, observers said.

Cramer met Hortman in 2018 in Minneapolis at his community solar coalition’s second annual conference. There, the two served together on a discussion panel, then later enjoyed trading notes about both having been philosophy majors in college.

Thanks in no small part to Hortman’s leadership, the community solar category now possesses a U.S. capacity equivalent to more than 1 million rooftop systems, Cramer said.

“I don’t think we’d be where we are at all without her,” he said. “She was willing to stick her neck out and really do something that hadn’t been done before then.”

In a LinkedIn tribute Cramer posted Tuesday, he wrote in part: “Speaker Hortman wasn’t just a legislative champion for community solar – she imagined a future where access to clean energy was a right, not a privilege.”

O’Grady recalls that when he formerly worked as a law-firm lobbyist, he was charged with convening a videoconference including Hortman, himself and representatives of the Lower Sioux Indian Community. As O’Grady expeditiously tried to steer the group into the main substance of the meeting, he said, Hortman mindfully interceded to guide it through protocols that she knew the tribal representatives considered minimally respectful.

Afterwards, Hortman and O’Grady conferred about what he dubbed the learning opportunity, O’Grady said. “I hope you found my direction gentle,” he said she told him.

Likewise, whenever political storms seized the Legislature, O’Grady said, “She just had this way of making you feel better about it and not take it too seriously.”

Hortman’s conscience about the urgency of climate change drove her agenda to marshal solar to fully deliver on its upsides, O’Grady said. “She just led the charge on making sure our industry could continue to grow and thrive,” he said.

MnSEIA gave Hortman a lifetime achievement award in 2023. Now, though he said the MnSEIA circle is mainly still raw in absorbing Hortman’s death, he imagines that the organization’s annual conference on Oct. 7 and 8 will again somehow honor her.

Meantime, the Minnesota solar industry is laid low – unsure how to move forward without her, O’Grady said. Other legislative leaders are poised to continue fighting for the industry’s role in climate action, he said. “But I just don’t think you can fill those shoes – ever.”

Richerson said for now, admirers of the late lawmaker just feel a void of uncertainty. “I don’t know what is going to be done to move on without her,” he said.

But in keeping with Hortman’s infectious determination, Richerson said he was certain about one inevitability: “We will bring motivation to the table.”

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