The Minnesota Legislature is at a crossroads in deciding whether our state should take serious steps to combat climate change or take a back seat as the status quo — driven by highway building interest groups — perpetuates the climate crisis. At stake is whether Minnesota’s groundbreaking 2023 highway emissions law will be implemented as intended or gutted by those who prioritize endless highway expansion and unchecked emissions.
In 2023-24, Minnesota passed nation-leading climate legislation targeting highways and highway expansions, the core of our carbon-intensive transportation system. This focus is essential: According to Crosswalk data, vehicles on Minnesota roads are our largest emissions source, generating 26.2 million metric tons of CO2 annually. That accounts for roughly one-third of Minnesota’s emissions.
Despite our state’s climate goals, we’re expanding road infrastructure faster than our population or economy is growing, and our state already has the fourth-most lane miles of any state in the U.S. At the same time, we’re experiencing rising traffic fatalities and facing an $18 billion maintenance backlog with no funding solution in sight. The way we invest today is not working.
When mapped, it’s easy to see how major roads in Minnesota impact our state’s carbon emissions as they crisscross the state.
Our climate law, inspired by Colorado’s similar measure, requires the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) to measure the climate impact of highway projects and offset any increases in emissions through investments in cleaner transportation alternatives. When a highway project would increase vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and emissions, MnDOT must implement corresponding measures — like adding transit, bike lanes or pedestrian infrastructure — to balance out those impacts. All of these projects will keep us moving, create good union jobs and allow for local flexibility to offset VMT and emissions.
This approach addresses the root cause of transportation emissions by requiring a balance between highway expansion and investments in cleaner alternatives. It’s a practical approach that doesn’t prohibit all highway projects but ensures that their climate impacts are offset.
Beyond driving down emissions (literally), balancing our investments will go a long way toward reducing transportation costs for Minnesota households’ bottom line and increasing safety and health.
Based on one estimate from RMI’s Smarter MODES calculator, Minnesota households could save $1,720 per year from reducing driving and the costs associated with car ownership — a savings comparable to an annual stimulus check. The same policy could result in around a hundred fewer road fatalities per year and over 700 fewer deaths from air quality-related causes.
The Politics of Climate Action
Minnesota Republican legislators have been working to undermine this important policy throughout the 2025 legislative session. House Republicans have organized to repeal, weaken or delay the climate provisions of the highway law.
The omnibus transportation bill currently being considered by the House puts the standard at risk of a three-year delay and a change in scope, eliminating the project-by-project analysis that is currently in effect. These proposed changes would essentially give highway projects a three-year free pass from climate accountability and eliminate requirements for individual high-emission projects to implement meaningful climate mitigation measures. They would also exacerbate the already significant burden of maintaining Minnesota’s vast road network.
In the Trump era of climate denial and abandoning climate action across all agencies and sectors, even some lawmakers in blue and purple states feel emboldened to follow suit on these important policies. Reducing VMT, however, has many benefits beyond climate: decreasing household costs, increasing safety and improving health outcomes. This should make it harder for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to abandon approaches that not only lower our global climate impacts but also provide direct benefits to Minnesotans. Even as climate change remains a polarizing topic, lowering costs and improving safety and health should not be partisan issues.
The threats to this landmark law extend beyond legislative opposition, too. Without the legislature’s involvement, MnDOT’s technical advisory committee has quietly redefined compliance to essentially mean keeping VMT and associated emissions at today’s baseline, as opposed to reducing VMT over time. This subtle but significant change undermines the law’s original intent to actively reduce VMT and emissions, not just prevent their increase.
Opposition has also come from the League of Minnesota Cities, the Association of Minnesota Counties, unions (including some that originally supported the policy), county engineers and industry groups that profit from highway building.
Public Support for Climate Action
Despite these opposition efforts, state-level climate action remains broadly popular. According to research by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communications, just over half of Minnesotans believe our governor, state agencies and local governments should do more to address climate change. Even more significantly, 75% of Minnesotans believe we should regulate carbon emissions as a pollutant, exactly what the current law accomplishes.
The implications of this law go beyond just reducing emissions. Policies to advance transit in the metro and greater Minnesota, invest in passenger rail, and improve bike and pedestrian infrastructure keep people safe while providing affordable and reliable transportation alternatives, regardless of how people travel across our state.
Transportation is the second-highest household spending category for American families, largely driven by the high cost of owning a car. Estimates suggest Minnesota would save $91 billion from adopting climate-smart transportation systems — savings that would benefit all residents.
Change Gears on Highway Investments
In transportation, state-level action is critical to advancing climate progress, now more so than ever, as blue states go in it alone.But local and grassroots organizing in this context is critical, because once people are organized, we can push for big policies that bring transformational change and protect them for inevitable attacks. Passing a policy is only half the battle, and it will take more than a policy wonk (like me) with a slideshow to defend it.
The Trump administration has canceled climate and equity initiatives and threatens to withhold Minnesota infrastructure funding aimed at addressing climate change and transportation affordability.This same organizing infrastructure will protect against these threats, too, because people who are organized are resilient to a variety of threats, whether it be to climate policy or broader attacks on human rights and our civil liberties.
Building climate solutions requires ambitious action and significant policy. It means ensuring that our state’s transportation dollars go to work to solve our most pressing problems. Many officials claim to support environmental goals while opposing the very tools needed to achieve them. If this law isn’t the right approach, what specific alternative do they propose, and when will it be implemented? Opponents have no clear answer.
States across the country, from Maine to California, are considering similar VMT standards and looking to Minnesota as a leader in the transportation space. Backsliding on our big legislation would undermine our state’s climate progress and potentially halt momentum nationwide.
Now is not the time to retreat from ambitious policies. Instead, it’s time for honest conversations about implementation to ensure these policies live up to the law’s intentions and other states learn from our approaches.
It’s also time to continue passing nation-leading laws to address the environmental justice dimensions of highways, not just climate impacts, through advancing cumulative impacts measures for major highway projects, generally left out of the conversation. This important policy was heard for the first time in the Senate Transportation Committee this year, as were our efforts to give our state the funding flexibility it needs to do more and better with less, implementing affordable and sustainable multimodal options.
All Minnesotans have the right to a healthy, stable environment. In economic terms, it’s a public good. We need to reframe climate policies in terms of everyday benefits: cost savings, safety improvements, and better transportation choices for families. By connecting global climate goals to local quality-of-life improvements, we’ll build stronger public support that can withstand political challenges and help Minnesotans experience tangible benefits in their daily lives.
This policy shouldn’t just get policy wonks excited; its potential for benefits should bring everyone else along, too.
Addressing transportation’s climate impacts in Minnesota — and potentially across the country — depends on defending this law and ensuring it delivers on its promise of a more sustainable transportation system that works for all Minnesotans. Please contact your legislators.
Editor’s note:“Street Views” appears in Streets.mn twice monthly. Respond to columnist and board member Joe Harrington directly at[emailprotected].You may also add comments at our Streets.mn pages onBlueskyandFacebook.
