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