In Northeast Minnesota, CERTs leveraged McKnight Foundation funding to assist three highly-motivated Minnesota GreenStep Cities (Grand Marais, Mountain Iron, and Pine City) with advancing energy efficiency and renewable energy within their business and commercial sectors.
“We wanted these city leaders to gain a greater awareness of existing energy efficiency programs, resources, and opportunities for their regional businesses,” stated CERTs co-director Joel Haskard. “Gathering these business-specific resources within the GreenStep Cities structure is hopefully going to increase local capacity to carry out this work in the future.”
After an initial conference call with CERTs staff, the three cities worked with Michael Orange of Orange Environmental who created Commercial and Industrial Inventories for each city. From there, the cities worked one-on-one with staff from CERTs and the Great Plains Institute to achieve some of the GreenStep Cities energy best practices that they had self-identified as high priorities. For example, all of them wanted further assistance in creating an expedited permit process for businesses to install solar energy systems (best practice 26.7). In the case of Mountain Iron and Pine City, both cities signed on to Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE). As best practice 26.3, this enables local businesses to utilize this innovative funding mechanism for energy efficiency and /or renewable energy projects.
By the end of 2015, the three cities had made great strides. Grand Marias moved from having zero best practices listed to having twelve and becoming a Step 2 GreenStep City. Pine City passed PACE and went from two best practices to four best practices listed. Mountain Iron’s city council passed PACE and went from three best practices to six best practices and became a Step 2 GreenStep City.
Participants in the year-long effort were pleased with the results. “Joel and Bill have made themselves available and reliable resources to help us decipher the requirements of the GreenSteps program and look at the bigger picture for energy reduction and production,” said Jay Arrowsmith DeCoux, Grand Marais mayor and business owner (who just installed solar on his family’s bed and breakfast)
“Our CERTs coordinator, Bill, has been tremendous to work with,” added Nathan Johnson, Community Development Director and City Planner with Pine City. “His passion to assist cities in his region become less energy dependent is amazing. He continuously puts opportunities in front of us that are difficult not to respond to and move forward on.”
Watch a video featuring Pine City leaders about their diverse work on sustainability from a recent event:
CERTs is a founding partner in the GreenStep Cities program. During the fall of 2007, CERTs held regional listening sessions around the state to discuss community-based energy opportunities and the state’s Next Generation Energy Act of 2007. The idea was raised of creating a sustainable cities program, free to cities that would challenge, assist and recognize cities that were “green stars.” This idea was taken up by the 2008 Legislature, which directed the MPCA, the Division of Energy Resources at the Minnesota Department of Commerce, and CERTs to recommend actions cities could take on a voluntary basis. To learn more, visit http://mngreenstep.org.
