Meeting notes
May 4, 2026
📝 MPLS MGU monthly meeting at Central Library
Meeting overview
We went through a very high level review of the state-wide thermal energy network site suitability study
We then talked about the Minneapolis thermal energy network site suitability RFP (request for proposal) that is kicking off now with completion expected sometime in 2027
We discussed how it’ll shift the work we’re doing from creating our own proposal for the city to do a geothermal utility study to advocating to the general population the importance of this study and for the city to pursue a municipal owned utility model
As a group we brainstormed methods of outreach to help move our work to focus on advocacy and general education.
We talked about reading and discussing the book “About Power” by George Crocker in future meetings
Available for purchase online or there are 2 copies available through the Hennepin County Library system
You can find our brainstorm online here where I’ve started to group together some common activities that I used for our June meeting survey (linked above)
Our last agenda item was to review the project website we put together to capture upcoming meetings, previous meeting notes and organize our research resources. There was a general consensus that this would be helpful to move forward with and publish.
Project website: https://www.mpls-mgu.com/
Feedback so far: create landing page for general population, create an about us page to explain our group and who we are, create QR code directing to landing page to use on flyers and other communication materials
Please reach out to me (Grace) with any more feedback or if you have any interest in helping designing, building or maintaining the site!
April 6, 2026
📝 MPLS MGU monthly meeting at Seward Co-Op Friendship Store
Meeting notes
Intro question: what questions do you have for Paolo?
Paolo spoke about TENs, geothermal systems 101, what CEF and UNIDOS are working on together, and why community-owned energy resources are good.
Aaron gave an overview of how organizing for a municipal geothermal utility fits into the organizing landscape around the UNIDOS climate equity campaign North Star Goal and shared the revised goal for our team.
4/6/26 language:TENs Project Team Vision - Every viable building in the City of Minneapolis is heated and cooled with a decarbonized thermal energy network, in line with goals laid out in the City’s Climate & Equity Plan.
Municipal Utility Goal: Establish a municipal TEN utility to facilitate broader deployment, use, and democratic ownership of TENs in Minneapolis.
Build power and partnerships to push a public venue to study 2-3 design pathways for establishing a municipal TEN utility.
Aaron, Lee, Anna, and Paolo shared take-aways from the Community Power meeting
Some discussion around benefits of a municipally-owned system. Here’s some highlights.
Questions that arose:
Some European cities have networked geothermal systems - what can we learn from them?
What happens if the power goes out? (ie. What redundancy measures can be put in place so that if the electricity goes out, buildings can still be heated or cooled?)
Would we want to think about other levels of government to have ownership over the municipal TENs network - such as Hennepin County or the Met Council? What assets does the City of Minneapolis have that would make it well-positioned?
How can Cooperative Energy Futures’ thermal energy network projects be mutually-beneficial towards establishing a municipal utility?
What’s the timeframe for winning a municipal utility?
Evaluation
Things that worked well:
Lots of information = high value for time
Case studies!!
Goals slides were helpful to visualize
People said they learned a lot and appreciated learning as a group
Paolo as a guest speaker was great
Request to continue learning together at future meetings - perhaps less content at once to be mindful of time and brain capacity
Geothermal utility is exciting bc it addresses air quality, GHG emissions, and environmental injustice on a big scale
Things to think about:
Tours of geothermal installs around the twin cities (suggested by)
Sabathani (Amy and Kent)
Hamms (Paulo - CEF)
Darcy well at UMN archives (Mary)
Meeting length: content ratio
Things to improve:
Table positioning to improve hearing/lip reading
Microphone?
Stay on schedule
Plan more time for questions
Have a time keeper
Don’t try to fit too many things in
Add more ‘phase changes’
Time to stretch
Break out sessions
Meetings should have clear plans and clear calls to action! Tighten up the agenda in future meetings
March 25, 2026
📝 MPLS MGU Kick-off meeting at Seward Co-Op Friendship Store
Meeting notes
Is this Twin Cities wide? There is a St. Paul team tackling geothermal too but not sure to what extent. Anna met with one of those folks last week, sounds like they’re in the initial stages. Concern about doing double work and turning into 2 mediocre research efforts instead of one coherent effort
Connect with St. Paul team to understand what they are working on
Unidos has done geothermal research previously, this effort is specifically around developing a utility in Minneapolis. But wondering what have we done before and why has it stopped or transformed?
Requirement for Centerpoint to do pilot projects for geothermal networks, Anna working on spreading awareness for potential spots (Rise up center)
Work has been ongoing but the municipal utility idea is newer and based on Ann Arbor, Boise, Massachusetts…
There is interest and momentum from the city that we want to capitalize on, but need to figure out who from the city is interested; CM Stevenson.. And want to connect with these champions to show them how successful geothermal energy is especially around the concept of creating a utility
Reviewing of what’s been done so far
Powermap
Ann Arbor research visit
Reviewing goal together
Build power to primarily push the city council to study 2-3 pathways to establishing a municipal thermal utility; and secondarily, broadly support thermal energy network development in Minneapolis.
Who will do the study?
Build power has a lot in there, should expand on what that means
Wording and structuring so it feels more expansive
Educating and enrolling and a really populous consumer movement of demand
Maybe expand higher than the city, even though we might not be going statewide the city might say its not impactful enough and power could be the people in the state legislator or the outer rings who could say yeah we’re not here yet but we’re really interested in seeing how it goes and building power with neighboring communities and governments
Example: State legislators saying they’re interested in doing this in other areas or hearing from other areas that they’re interested then our city council would feel motivated to jump on it
There are a few bills going through state legislator that we should pay attention to that are specifically to support geothermal energy networks statewide -> this is also a signal that now is the time to be tackling this
Cooperative energy futures is having problems with current legislation and are trying to get them amended, actively in progress to be amended?
Leveraging being a leader and evolving to what's needed and increasing resilience in the city and the goals being in the form of communication
Incentive to be the one on the cutting edge, thinking through competitive vs. cooperative and getting out in front of it and not beng left behind
Feeling building power is vague, threw out the idea of switching to “building movement”, "building campaign” to make it feel more actionable more like what we’re doing
How did this group conclude this is the best option? Feeling concerned hearing that centerpoint wouldn’t be interested in doing it and xcel wouldn’t be a fan.
Investor owned would rate base it and get guaranteed profits for shareholders which then comes at the expense of affordability for us
Municipally owned then goes into the general fund of the city, and cooperatively owned goes back to the members of the co-op
It is possible we do this research and come out thinking this isn’t a viable idea
Centerpoint doesn’t seem very serious about decarbonizing their industry, they are relaying gas pipelines that will be in the ground for the next 30-40 years and are continuing to make new infrastructure.
Does the city council make the decision? Do they have the power?
Ann Arbor showed that the city can make their own utility
Feels the utility part needs to be fleshed out
Ann Arbor didn’t want to be responsible for all new infrastructure and there’s is based around more module components
Where is that funding going to come from?
Should change city council to be local government because it could be met council, it could be hennepin county
History in this city about municipally owned utilities, vote with the city council about creating city owned electricity that made it to a public hearing but never made it to a vote (maybe like 10-15 years ago)
Is there any effect with the Iran war?
This country is self-sufficient in natural gas
May be affected by global market and prices could go up
That may change centerpoints tune if prices for natural gas go up
Let’s keep revisiting and iterating the goal, should be living and breathing as we learn more
As long as the role is to make sure we get this done
That we want geothermal to power the buildings and residences in Minneapolis - BOOM and then its flexible enough to fit whatever solution we land on to make it happen
Lots of talk about educational campaigns
Like how do we learn enough to be able to talk about it and answer questions without trying to solve the whole thing
Like what do we need to put together to put together a strong argument for why this is important
One big question will probably be why is centerpoint and xcel against this?
Make shared google doc of general resources
Lots of hands up about understanding the general geothermal spiel
Anna and Aaron to be point people for intaking and organizing for resources
Wrapping up
Next meeting Monday April 6th
Paolo as guest speaker, Aaron to reach out
Grace to send out invite
Next meeting
Appetite to do brainstorming around research visits, what questions we want to tackle
Keep brainstorming and collecting resources in the meantime
Upcoming presentation on Sunday with Community Power
To think about
Open doors, suggesting to city geothermal buildings open up and show
Collections facility at u of m, May 9th and 10th
March 23, 2026
📝 Unidos Climate & Equity city-wide meeting at El Colegio
Notes from Geothermal breakout session
Activity: Create Power Map
Themes:
Large energy users
A lot of public entities
Other notes
Not feasible to utilize gas pipes since we want to switch over to geothermal concurrently
What can we do so we don’t need to raid the environment for new materials to build the new geothermal systems? Talking a lot about how can we co-opt the systems that already exist in our homes already without having to throw things out and replace them
Dary wells deep wells?
New construction mandate or encouragement? Or even requiring them to put in geothermal utility lines along with others to give the option / support to connect to future geothermal networks
Anti displacement funding for supporting small businesses during any sort of installation or development built into the plan
Updates: Sabanthi starting drilling this week, MIA going geothermal and recently met with a team and are on a 2-year plan
February 23, 2026
📝 Unidos Climate & Equity city-wide meeting at El Colegio
Notes from Geothermal breakout session
We do not have to be energy experts to ask for this
Collect names & contact information
Why do people want this?
What questions do people have?
Does anyone have a specified engineering plan set up citywide?
Examples of cities that have something working and what was the process to get to it?
What issues are these cities encountering? What are the social impacts?
What are some of the biggest problems that might get in the way of this being successful?
What already exists? Locally and elsewhere?
Who is already thinking about this?
For people who have thought about this and decided not to, why did they decide not to?
What benefits does a city-owned utility TEN have over a utility-owned TENs?
What other political initiatives exist? At the county level?
What else is the city pursuing?
Sabathani is drilling their geothermal this week!
Janet Brown is the contact
How do we pay for this?
Next steps:
Meet again and establish roles
Help schedule research visits
Help organize list of questions
Why do we want a municipal heating/cooling utility?
Networked geothermal is recognized as the future of heating/cooling in Minneapolis - it is the most efficient heating/cooling technology that exists. Its efficiency offers grid infrastructure benefits compared to other forms of electrification
Our current utilities are not working fast enough to decarbonize heating:
Natural gas fuels 72% of end uses (space heating, water heating, cooking) in residential buildings as of 2024
Residential gas deliveries have increased 24% from 2010-2022 AND both utilities have submitted filings to the PUC projecting that gas delivery will continue to increase until at least 2038.
CenterPoint has continued to install new gas pipeline infrastructure in South Minneapolis just last year
This is climate justice.
The monopoly utilities that serve electricity and gas in Minneapolis have the primary interest to deliver profits to their shareholders NOT to decarbonize our city, provide reliable service, and keep rates as affordable as possible.
Natural gas is prone to spikes when there is a lot of demand (such as the winter storm that hit 70% of the US in January) - bills will be higher than average in February and March
Xcel has requested a rate increase the 5th year in a row. Part of this is to increased the Return on Equity to their shareholders - resulting in an additional $100million/year collected from Minnesotan customers. At a time where disconnection rates have been the highest in recent memory
Even if Xcel and CenterPoint decarbonize - this unjust system will not change much
We also want to make sure everyone has equitable access to decarbonize - will not happen by individual choices
This is the right time to start planning to get ahead of new infrastructure deployment which will soon be developed
What is your project Team goal?
Get the city to thoroughly investigate different municipal options and their feasibility
What will your team focus on now?
Help the city understand what the options are and then push the council to explore them
Research options
Ideas for building power
How to communicate the need for this idea simply
What are your next steps?
What outreach/ideas for building power/gaining public attention did your group brainstorm?