UMN Climate-Smart Municipalities Program Receives National Sustainability Society Achievement Award

The award recognizes a multidisciplinary, multi-sector team that has served the public good by addressing a clear and compelling societal need, and fostered just transitions through a project or initiative that seeks sustainable solutions to environmental and social challenges. 

The Climate-Smart Municipalities program (CSM) connects diverse international stakeholders and leaders from 12 cities in Minnesota and Germany to learn from each other and to accelerate the transition to a climate-friendly energy future at the local level. 

Through this international dialogue, cities in the program share expertise and create model climate and energy solutions for implementation. The projects implemented through the program inspire further action and build momentum for wider action and policymaking. For example, the program directly contributed to enacting a new Minnesota energy policy in 2023 that established a 100% Carbon-Free Energy Standard for electric utilities.

“The power of the Climate-Smart Municipalities program is relationships,” says nominator and executive director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment (IonE), Jessica Hellmann. “The hundreds of participants in CSM are all committed to building a better future, and they connect across sector, age, and even political party to learn from one another – and take action.” 

CSM participant and Olmsted County Commissioner David Senjem has seen the benefits: “There is absolutely no question in my mind that the CSM program has influenced sustainability in a positive way across Minnesota.” He also credits CSM for sticking with relationships over time and putting in the “hard work” to move the needle on energy and climate. 

Business leader, CSM co-creator, and IonE Fellow Ken Smith (Ever-Green Energy) knows that holistic solutions and systems thinking is essential to the energy transition. “US communities have much to learn from Germany and Scandinavian countries,” Smith says. “They use comprehensive policy and goals that prioritizes efficiency and deployment of holistic solutions in communities of all sizes that demonstrates a systems-thinking approach to the energy transition.”

Growing up on a farm in central Minnesota, Smith emphasizes the importance of finding solutions for rural communities. “The energy transition is coming to every community, small and large. For the communities that engage in the energy transition, the transition will happen for them, for those that don’t, the transition will happen to them. We all know that being part of the change is best.” 

“The Climate-Smart Municipalities program bridges the valley between academia and communities by translating knowledge into action,” says Christopher Boone, NSS interim president and professor at Arizona State University.  “The program has demonstrated a range of impacts with Minnesotans learning from their German counterparts and enacting meaningful policy changes based on those exchanges.”

CSM leader and IonE Program Director of International Partnerships Sabine Engel emphasizes that “this award is for everyone, for all the cities and state agencies that participate and for all the cities and states that can do their own work just like we have in Minnesota.” This program has also helped Engel show German collaborators exactly how much Americans care about renewable energy and the energy future.

This news release was originally published by the National Sustainability Society on September 11, 2024. The text has been lightly adapted.