Cooperative Energy Futures

Cooperative Energy Futures is an energy efficiency and community-owned clean energy cooperative based in South Minneapolis and serving members across Minnesota.

Website:  https://cooperativeenergyfutures.com

Contact Number: (612) 568-2479

Address: 3500 Bloomington Ave South, Minneapolis, MN 55407

We develop community solar gardens for our members and offer products and services to help you save energy and money in your home. We work to help you connect with neighbors to build a better energy future together.

Connect with Us

If you live in Minnesota, become a member and subscriber to the only no-barriers-to-access, low/moderate income clean energy cooperative in the state.

LEARN MORE

Mission

  • Cooperative Energy Futures (CEF) has a mission to provide clean, renewable energy, with no-barriers-to access, to low/moderate income households with immediate economic savings while allowing these households to retain ownership and equity in their energy production.

Why Energy Democracy?

By working with communities, with a focus on underserved and low-income communities, we create real community wealth by reducing energy use and then by producing our own clean energy. CEF believes that communities should be central to building and implementing solutions. By developing community energy solutions that reflect energy democracy, we help people and communities have agency, power, and decision-making authority over the energy systems that sustain our homes, our communities, and our economy.

Key Strategy

  • Find a concrete project model that can work now and organize public support around it: widespread understanding and community engagement grows when there are examples to build off of.
  • Get to a big enough scale to be sustainable economically, operationally, politically, and in terms of movement building. This is a challenge for many grassroots groups, and requires deep organizing to get a large number of people to take deeper risks (money, time, relationships built on trust) together.
  • Link projects that provide direct material benefits for community members to community-building and organizing that helps people feel power and inter-relationship and builds towards greater political and economic power.
  • Member owned cooperatives can be a powerful tool to transform standard renewable energy financing models into a pathway for community wealth.
  • Control of project development by co-ops/ community entities is essential for setting the terms of workforce development, community-friendly energy contracts, and local ownership. 

Accomplishments

  • Successfully secured ~$14 million in financing for 8 separate community solar gardens using a unique, no-barriers-to-access, low/moderate income, residential subscriber model . The total megawatt capacity of these 8 gardens is 6.82MW and consist of 4 ground-mounted solar gardens, 3 rooftop solar gardens, and 1 solar canopy garden on the top of a 7 story parking ramp in downtown Minneapolis.
  • Have either built, are in the process of building all 8 community solar gardens, which should be all completed and on line by Spring/Summer of 2019.
  • Recruited subscribers for 65% of the capacity of the 8 gardens in development, with four of the 8 completely full. The vast majority of these community solar gardens (82%) will consist of residential subscriptions.
  • Required 50% minority hiring on all projects developed, with the two projects completed averaging a round 90% minority hiring.
  • Built successful partnerships with the Cities of Minneapolis, Edina, and Eden Prairie, Minnesota Department of Transportation, and other local government partners.

Featured Photos

Hosted by Cooperative Energy Futures

[MEC id=”2788″]