Community Power 2017 Year in Review

 Community Power Highlights and Accomplishments from 2017!

• Built out the Inclusive Financing for Minnesotans campaign alongside coalition partners by hosting a leaders training; organizing three expert info sessions for key decision-makers; and gathering sign-on letters from community organizations. See the awesome new logo and read more here!

• Hosted 8 different Q&A Forums for voters to hear from Minneapolis city council candidates on inclusive financing, and our other local climate & energy priorities. 

• Hosted a Minneapolis Mayoral Candidate Forum with all 11 mayoral candidates in the race at that time with an audience of over 150 people. 

• Received 2 dozen responses to our 2017 Community Power questionnaire from Minneapolis Mayoral and City Council candidate, helping educate people running for local office about our priorities. 

• Signed up Central Minnesotans for over 400 kW of cooperatively-owned, local solar energy developed by Cooperative Energy Futures, in our first ever collaboration on an individual community energy project. Subscribers include East African and Latino small businesses, renters, a manufactured housing park, and residents up the road from the installation and from towns that host nuclear and coal plants. Look for more in 2018 and 2019!

• Completed the Renters & Energy community engagement pilot grant alongside three neighborhood organizations (Nokomis East, Corcoran, and Holland) in order to demonstrate to city-utility leadership what barriers exist to participation for renters and communities of color in energy and bill savings programs.

• Won a $1.4 million increase in city funding for accessible energy and cost savings programs for renters, homeowners, small businesses. The citizen-led Energy Vision Advisory Board will provide public accountability for this fund. The City’s publicized intent for the fund? “..Energy will be clean, local, available equitably, affordable, and reliable” (straight out of our mission statement!).

• As a member of the Minneapolis Renters Coalition, Community Power advocated for and won an increase in multi-family building inspectors for complaint-driven inspections to better follow up to renters' livability concerns, and better balance workloads of overburdened inspectors.

• Mobilized between 40 and 50 community members to speak at the three November/December public hearings in front of Minneapolis City Council, all in unanimous support the Franchise Fee Funding Plan originated in the Clean Energy Partnership.