UMRR  Upper Mississippi River Region - Interleague organization

SPOTLIGHT

St. Cloud, Minnesota, is a city of 80,000 people that straddles the Mississippi and they are flipping the script on climate change!  Eight years ago, St, Cloud Mayor Dave Kleis set a goal for City operations to be carbon neutral by 2030, not including energy generated by the city's hydropower dam on the Mississippi. The city met the goal of carbon neutrality in 2020 - ten years ahead of plan. When taking into account the hydro facility, the city now produces three times as much energy as it uses as a municipality — saving about $1.5 million  from their annual budget.  The City's new goal is that by 2028 the entire St. Cloud community is carbon neutral for its electrical use, and by 2038 will be carbon neutral for electrical, building heat and transportation.

February 7, LWV UMRR will host a webinar featuring St. Cloud's Public Services Director, Tracy Hodel, beginning at 1pm.   Tracy will tell us about how the City Of St. Cloud has become a national and global leader in its sustainability work and the many positive community impacts resulting from these actions.   We will learn how a community has taken waste products and turned them into an enterprise that is leading the way to a clean energy future!

The LWV UMRR Blog post, "St Cloud's Circular Economy - Defining the Clean Energy Future", includes links to articles about the City's work and awards.  It's good reading!