How Minnesota Named Its Solar Program After a Leader
Minnesota honors a leader by advancing its community solar program, setting a model for equitable clean energy access nationwide.
Melissa Hortman didn't live to see her name on the bill. In June 2025, she and her husband Mark were fatally shot inside their Brooklyn Park home — a shocking act of violence that took one of Minnesota's most consequential clean energy architects. Less than a year later, Governor Tim Walz signed legislation renaming the state's community solar garden program in her honor, following bipartisan votes in both chambers. It was the kind of tribute that actually means something: not a plaque or a proclamation, but a living program that touches hundreds of thousands of ratepayers across the state.
"Naming this program in her honor ensures her legacy lives on as her work continues to shape our future," Walz said at the signing.
That's not ceremonial language. Minnesota's community solar program is, by any honest measure, one of the most important pieces of clean energy infrastructure policy in American history.
The Program She Built
When Minnesota passed its original community solar garden legislation in 2013, it was the first program of its kind in the country. No other state had done it. The concept — allowing residents who can't or won't install rooftop solar to subscribe to a share of an off-site solar project and receive credits on their utility bills — seems obvious now. It wasn't then.
That 2013 bill became a national template that more than a dozen states eventually copied, making Hortman's legislative work one of the more quietly consequential acts in American renewable energy policy.
Hortman didn't stop there. Her legislation also established a solar energy standard requiring investor-owned utilities to source at least 1.5% of electricity from solar by 2020 and 10% by 2030. For a utility like Xcel Energy — one of the largest in the Upper Midwest — those mandates weren't suggestions. They reshaped capital allocation, procurement strategy, and long-term planning across an entire regional grid.
Kevin Cray, vice president of government and regulatory affairs at the Coalition for Community Solar Access, put it plainly: "We wouldn't have the program we have today without her."
A Program Rewritten, Not Just Renamed
Naming the program after Hortman coincides with a period of significant evolution in how it operates. Ten years after the original legislation, bill HF 2310 passed — what Cray describes as "an entire program rewrite." The headline change is expanded access for low- and moderate-income (LMI) households, a long-standing weak point in community solar programs nationwide.
This matters because community solar, in theory, is supposed to democratize clean energy access. Renters. People with shaded or north-facing roofs. Households that can't absorb a $15,000–$25,000 upfront installation cost. In practice, early versions of these programs often attracted subscribers who were already financially comfortable — people who could navigate the paperwork, understand the savings calculus, and commit to multi-year subscription contracts.
Minnesota's rewrite addresses that gap directly, with a dedicated carve-out and improved incentive structure for LMI subscribers.
One of the underappreciated design details here is who now administers the program. Under the previous iteration, Xcel Energy handled administration — which created an inherent tension: a utility managing a program that competes, at least partially, with its own generation assets. Under HF 2310, administration has transitioned to the Minnesota Department of Commerce. That structural shift matters as much as the policy changes themselves.
On the Ground: What Equitable Access Actually Looks Like
Cooperative Energy Futures, a Minnesota solar developer explicitly focused on LMI communities, has installed roughly 13 MW of community solar across both program iterations. That's not a massive number by utility-scale standards — but in the context of community solar serving underserved populations, 13 MW represents years of patient work navigating subsidy structures, community outreach, and regulatory complexity.
Pouya Najmaie, the organization's policy and regulatory director, told *pv magazine USA* that the new LMI-focused program structure has directly enabled their mission. "The new program's carve-out and better incentive structure for LMI populations significantly helped us achieve our goals and, more importantly, create a more equitable renewable transition in Minnesota," he said.
That framing — equitable transition — is worth sitting with. The renewable energy industry has a legitimate equity problem. Solar adoption has historically skewed toward higher-income homeowners in sunnier states. Community solar was supposed to fix that, but early program designs often failed to close the gap. Minnesota's revised approach, with dedicated LMI incentives and Commerce Department oversight, is one of the more serious attempts to actually deliver on that promise.
A recent report from the Minnesota Department of Commerce confirms the program is driving measurable progress on equitable clean energy access for LMI ratepayers — a data point that other states should be watching closely.
The Economic Case Doesn't Need Exaggerating
Supporters of the naming legislation also cited the economic footprint Hortman's solar policy created: thousands of jobs, Minnesota-based companies expanding operations, a strengthened clean energy economy throughout the state. Community solar programs generate local installation and maintenance work that can't be offshored — a structural advantage over some other clean energy investments.
The policy architecture Hortman built didn't just add renewable megawatts; it seeded an industry ecosystem that now has its own economic momentum.
That's the kind of durable impact that outlasts any single legislative session. When a state creates stable, predictable demand signals for solar development — the way Minnesota's mandates did for Xcel and others — private capital follows. Developers hire. Supply chains deepen. The industry becomes harder to dismantle politically because the jobs are real and the constituents are local.
What Other States Should Take From This
More than a dozen states have modeled community solar programs on Minnesota's 2013 framework. The next wave of adoption should look at the 2024 rewrite, not the original — specifically the LMI carve-out structure, the shift away from utility self-administration, and the Commerce Department reporting framework that creates public accountability for equity outcomes.
The states that get this right will do what Minnesota did: build bipartisan political durability into the program from the beginning. Community solar isn't ideologically contentious in the way that, say, vehicle electrification mandates can be. Ratepayers saving money on electricity bills don't sort neatly into partisan camps. Hortman understood that, and she built a coalition accordingly.
The program that now bears her name isn't a monument. It's infrastructure — operational, expanding, and still being improved. That's exactly the kind of legacy a serious policymaker would want.
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