Biggest ever turnout for the Clean Energy Partnership: July 2025 Newsletter

Robust community turnout to the Minneapolis Clean Energy Partnership Q2 2025 meeting

On Thursday, July 17th, we saw the largest community turnout to any of the Minneapolis Clean Energy Partnership’s quarterly meetings in its 10+ years. 

Check it out! After many months of waiting, the Minneapolis Clean Energy Partnership between Xcel, CenterPoint and the City finally has its new website up and running. 

Note: This is the main news feature from our June newsletter, or please, if you prefer, you can download the whole newsletter here in pdf.

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The partners spent the majority of the meeting discussing Thermal Energy Networks (TENs), a set of technologies that are key to ending our dependency on fossil gas. In coming months and years as part of their Natural Gas Innovation Act investments, both CenterPoint and Xcel Energy plan to pilot geothermal heating networks, another way of thinking about TENs, and the discussion touched briefly on possible sites and other details.

Here are some of the points made at the meeting:

• The Department of Commerce is doing a site suitability study, combining geology and population density, with council member Cashman sharing ideas about Minneapolis sites for TENs. 

• TENs would create jobs for people with the same skills as installing gas pipelines, and could be an attractive alternative for gas utilities.

• The recently passed federal reconciliation bill that guts tax credits for residential solar (see above) and phases out tax credits for solar and wind farms, nevertheless retains incentives for geothermal energy. 

One main driver of turnout to this Partnership meeting was Unidos MN, which is involved with community outreach for a "Block by Block" approach to TENs in both Minneapolis and St. Paul. 

Hear this community read a petition to the city at the beginning of this first video of the clean energy partnership meeting

... and the rest of the Partnership meeting in this next video.