CERTs Co-directors

To Minnesota Communities, with love from the CERTs team

January 2025 has come and, in a blink, nearly gone already.

Back in December, we wrapped up our 21st year of partnering with Minnesotans on clean energy projects: community-based, community-led clean energy. It was a year filled with solar for schools, energy efficiency with manufactured home parks, assistance to businesses, and Community Energy Ambassadors. Most of all, it was a year filled with amazing people! 

people around a building

Hoot Lake Solar

People looking at electric vehicles

EV Ride and Drive in Ely

Tabling at MHP event

Rambush Manufactured Home Park Blitz

Minnesotans come to CERTs with all sorts of clean energy ideas, motivated by all sorts of reasons: saving money, increasing independence and self-reliance, conserving natural resources, diversifying farm income, sharing personal or organizational values, reducing pollution, addressing reliability or resilience concerns, helping vulnerable members of their communities…the list is a long one.

Sometimes, the project is quick and easy, the resources readily available, the solution obvious. Sometimes, it’s not — sometimes it takes digging, strategizing, problem solving. Either way, that’s what we’re here for: to support Minnesota communities with the projects that are important to them.

Over the next few months, we’ll be sharing stories of community-based clean energy projects funded in the 2024 round of CERTs Seed Grants. Watch for stories about lighting upgrades that save thousands of dollars, energy efficiency projects at food shelves and a homeless shelter, and outreach efforts to help residents save money on their energy use. 

We hope that they will inspire projects in your community, and if they do, the CERTs team will be here to support you!

Melissa, Joel, & Diana
CERTs Co-Directors

 

Get MN clean energy news & opportunities

We encourage reuse and republishing of this article. All Clean Energy Resource Teams news posts are made available under the Creative Commons Attribution license, meaning you can share and adapt the work as long as you give us credit. We'd also love it if you link back to the original piece. Have questions or want to chat? Drop us a line.