Who will own our energy future? There’s a battle playing out in northern Minnesota with major ramifications for this question.

It centers on the region’s main investor-owned electric utility, Minnesota Power, whose parent company, Allete, struck a deal in May 2024 to be acquired and taken private for $6.2 billion by two entities: Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), which is fully owned by the global asset management behemoth BlackRock, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP).

Minnesota Power, Allete’s core holding, says the deal will provide the capital needed to build new clean energy infrastructure to comply with Minnesota’s requirement for 100 percent carbon-free electricity sources by 2040.

But a broad coalition of customers, ratepayer advocates, watchdog organizations, climate groups, local heavy industry, and the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and Department of Commerce is opposing the deal. They say its overall public benefit has not been demonstrated, and they worry it would impose private equity control over their utility, threatening affordability and transparency, and leave ratepayers and regulators at the mercy of far-off financial profiteers. Some also question the deal’s climate rationale.

The deal has been approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and Wisconsin regulators, but it awaits a decision from Minnesota’s Public Utility Commission (PUC), likely coming in the fall. A Minnesota administrative law judge will make a nonbinding recommendation on the deal to the Minnesota PUC in July following public hearings earlier this year.