Stories in the numbers

We just wrapped up our 2024 annual report and you play a key role in developing it. Can you share what you see as some of CERTs’ major accomplishments in 2024?

I have three things that I'll highlight. The first is our extensive energy burden work. We worked with over 3,000 energy burdened households — these include people who live in manufactured home parks, renters, and food shelf shoppers. I was doing a little back of the envelope calculations and we saved close to the amount of energy from this work alone that we saved in all of last year. Not quite, but close. These numbers really go along with our mission of reaching all Minnesotans and focusing on underserved communities. So that's number one. 

We also spent a lot of time engaging local communities. We hosted 70 events and conducted 820 different outreach activities in the past year. This is a significant increase from the previous year. We worked in over 300 communities across the state! These numbers show that we are doing what we want to be doing — being out in community.

Finally, it was a great year for solar. A lot of our energy savings came from the solar projects, many which were installed by local governments. We saw solar arrays installed on libraries, sports complexes, a lot — a lot! — of schools, as well as businesses. This was another highlight for me.

Are there any particular projects that stand out to you, either because they had a big impact on our metrics or because they were innovative or impactful in other ways?

In terms of metrics, it was the solar array installed by Prairie Island Indian Community, where we assisted with the planning process for their Net-Zero Project. And part of that has come to fruition in the installation of a 5.4 megawatt solar array, which is huge and really exciting.

One of the interesting and challenging aspects of our work is that it has multiple stages. At the beginning, it's outreach: we try to touch and reach many people. But the actual impacts — those clean energy projects — don’t always come immediately. It could be several years down the road, which makes it really challenging sometimes to evaluate our work.

When you started in November 2023, you jumped right into our annual report effort. Looking at those two annual reports that you've been involved in, is there anything you would share about how CERTs’ work has evolved over the past year?

I'll highlight one trend here: our increasing focus on workforce development.

Previously we've worked with White Earth Nation and White Earth Tribal and Community College around workforce development. We've continued that work and expanded into other areas as well.

We've hosted workshops for contractors, a panel on workforce development at our Metro CERT Annual Event, and launched a new Green Careers section on our website.

We have also been sharing these kinds of opportunities with high school students who are thinking about careers and their future. That's very exciting to me.

You've been with CERTs for a little over a year. What really stood out to you about our work in that time?

What stands out to me about CERTs are all the different approaches we take to engaging community around clean energy. We have different kinds of learning networks — Community Energy Network, Regional Steering Committees, Community Energy Ambassadors. But we're also doing a lot of boots on the ground assistance — like our energy burden work, where we're door knocking and handing out energy saving items.

The breadth of topics we support stands out as well. We work with a lot of tried and true technologies — LEDs, solar, things like that — but also are taking things to the next level, thinking about how to enhance clean energy in different ways.

Something that I found surprising about CERTs was the importance of storytelling within our work. This makes so much sense given that our work is based in community and what everyday folks want to happen. I really appreciate that this is at the forefront of what we do.

Why CERTs?

I first came to Minnesota for college when I was 18 and fell in love with the state. While I left soon after I graduated, I hoped to find my way back. Professionally, I was really interested in supporting rural communities and rural revitalization and had worn a number of different hats — like teaching about cooperative businesses in the Upper Midwest, and working with youth and farmers in Japan around watershed protection…After grad school, CERTs seemed to be the perfect opportunity to support sustainability in rural communities — and urban communities too — and utilize my social science skills through evaluating our work.

Going into 2025, any thoughts for the new year?

I’m looking forward to closing the evaluation cycle by creating more opportunities for learning from numbers and stats like the ones I’ve just shared. I think it’s easy to get caught up calculating numbers and checking boxes, but I’m excited to take that information and talk and reflect with staff about what it means for our work — I’m excited for a more strategic and impactful 2025!