Leaders in Morris, Minn., Create a Model for Rural Resilience — Episode 150 of Local Energy Rules

Troy and Blaine, welcome to Local Energy Rules.

One was, there were some very early work around connecting the U.S. community with German communities, which Blaine can say more about, but there was also some work in our community where we started to frame up this idea of the Morris Model, which was a partnership between the city and the campus to think about shared sustainability aspirations, especially around energy conservation, clean energy, community resilience, cultural exchange, and celebration. So we have these kind of pillars Blaine was exploring a bunch of conservation and LED lighting projects, which you could say a lot more about. And so we started using this framing of the Morris Model of wanting to be, you know, basically we already felt like Morris was a model community – we’re out in west central Minnesota. You know, there’s a little bump on the very Western edge of the state. That’s where Morris is at.

And, and so we, we viewed Morris already as a model destination – ag and energy tourism destination, but we also knew that we wanted to be more of a model. And so we wanted to do more. And I would, I would just mention that the cultural exchange piece is one way of referencing our German partnership, but also the community resilience pillar really related to a lot of climate adaptation work we were doing at the time. So we were one of the first communities to do a rural climate dialogue. We worked on some extreme weather action planning stuff. And so all of this was swirling around back in 2013, 2014 when we started getting going.

And as Troy was saying, once we made those connections, we just started looking at all the different things that we could do. And then the Morris Model really was the organization that tied us together to start working on it. And then eventually, we passed a sustainability strategic plan that really said, instead of just working on stuff, let’s figure out what our goals are and then we can continue to work on stuff. So it started out as kind of a university thing. And then everybody just started jumping in and then the Morris Model is the organization that of keeps it all together and working together.

And, and the end product. If you look at the cover page and see all the people that were there to me, it was just very impressive that we had all those people there. And so the end result of that goal setting was something that was very meaningful. It wasn’t a small group of people that got together that are environmentalists, that wanna see all the stuff happen. Everybody was at the table. And then we came up with some very big goals. And actually I kinda laughed because one of the goals that we threw out, Otter Tail Power’s sitting at the table making goals. And one of our goals is to produce 80% of the power that we use locally. And that is one of our goals. And we can do it. We really can, because we have, we have resources that we can farm, as we say, like the sun and the wind and we can utilize ’em and that’s actually started.

But one of the ones that I, I laugh at is our goal by 2025 is to not landfill garbage. And people just looked, looked and said, what, you’re never gonna be able to do that. Well, that’s the easiest goal because the largest portion of our garbage is organic. And, and the follow on to that whole process is now our county has a grant to start the organic collection process. There’s an intern. We, we actually are gonna be meeting this afternoon with the Green Corps member that the city got to work on organics, Pope Douglas, solid waste management has now a site that is gonna be an organic collection site. So we have the capability of… we, we knew how to do it because Saerbeck Germany does it. We, we know how to do it. We gotta figure out how to get it. And we know where to bring it. And in the end, if we can make all that stuff happen, then we don’t have to truck any garbage to a landfill, cuz it it’ll work, you know, and we have seen it.

And then obviously reducing energy is, is a big one for us, the amount of energy we use and then education, you know, we’re sitting here talking to you because that’s part of the Morris Model’s goal is to share the information that we learn with others so that they can do it. So education is a very big part of what we do. You, and I don’t know, I might have missed something in there, Troy.

And, and so realistically the one thing I did not say is I said 80% of the power that we use would be generated here. I didn’t say we, we would own it just that it’s generated here. And so now Otter Tail Power is a partner in the, the solar projects that we’ve done on four of our buildings, cuz they’re providing incentives for us to put up solar and they know that and understand it. So we’re actually producing power that they’re gonna be buying back, but the world has changed so much. The same thing happened with electric vehicles – It’s never gonna happen. Nobody’s ever gonna buy electric pickup truck. It’ll never happen. And how many Ford electric pickup trucks have been ordered so far? Yeah, it’s the world has changed completely, you know?

And so we were at the beginning of it and we brought ’em along. And so then I, I mean the last thing I would just mention is that they came to Morris as a board to meet and have a retreat. It, because they were interested in what we thought and what we were doing here. And so that’s pretty powerful that they they’re watching us to find out what we know out here because, and the whole reason we know this stuff is cuz we are part of this organization with the University that is tied into the German government and, and all the bigger players really in, in some of the, the energy and sustainability worlds.

So there’s a lot to say about what is happening in energy and in Morris and what main street looks like and what this future looks like. There’s just a lot to unpack about what these energy changes mean for the future of rural communities and how we do those changes in a really good way. For example, we have, we do have an ethanol plant in town. We, we just have a, a big amount of investment come into the community, working with the, the local dairy operations that these giant dairies out in, in west central Minnesota and Morris. And so, you know, basically a, an entrepreneurial company came in to basically make renewable natural gas and push that into the pipeline. So these are also ways that that energy is being made in Stevens County and in Morris, how all of this fits together is part of what our Morris Model is doing.

And, and I should just say too, we’ve been, we’ve referenced it a couple times, but this community that our sister city of Morris is Saerbeck Germany. And they’re one of the top clean energy communities in Germany. They are the winner of the European energy award. I think multiple times, they produce over 400% of the energy that their community needs. They’re also rural a town of about 7,000 and they’ve done so much with, with, with local investment. And so I think part of this exchange be with our, with our German colleagues – and Blaine could say a lot more about this too,  probably – is we’ve been learning about the differences between our two cultures. We’ve been learning a lot more about the differences between our policies and legal frameworks and trying to basically push along these edges of what’s possible, right? To see what, what could we, what could we do in similar ways here, but, but our German friend and Saerbeck, you know, have really built out a community energy framework and that’s, we’ve, you know, Blaine all your talks about, I appreciate how you, you say sometimes you see the future when we go to Saerbeck or when we travel to Germany, Blaine. And I feel like, you know, a part of our hope is that when people travel to Morris, they are also gonna catch a little bit of a glimpse of the future.

That some of the rurals are a little bit farther behind as far as buying into the whole issue of, you know, solar and wind. We kind of joke out here that, you know, people go, well, what if the wind doesn’t blow? And it’s like, the wind blows all the time out here. You know, the university has two big wind turbines and they know and understand what happens. Or what happens if the sun doesn’t, you know, the sun’s not out well, that’s we put up our solar systems not just to make power, but we put ’em up as a tool to learn about how they work. You know, the first thing I did as a city manager was after the first snowfall, I went and looked at the solar panels to see if snow was sitting on ’em and it wasn’t. Things like that. But, uh, I don’t know that that’s gonna be the harder goal to do, cuz of the regulation is basically what I’m trying to say.

So literally like right now, today, all of the energy at this moment is coming from renewable. So if you were to look at the demand of where, where we’re drawing power, it’s zero, we’re not drawing any power from, you know, so we’re about a thousand kilowatt campus about a, about a one megawatt campus. And all of that power basically is coming to us from wind and solar. And so, you know, what that means is, is on an annual basis, uh, about 60% or more of our energy comes from renewable sources at the Morris campus. So already the, the UM Morris produces the most clean power of any campus in the entire United States. So that’s a point of pride and we have some really interesting projects bubbling up, including with Otter Tail where we’re gonna be exploring over the next couple years, potential energy storage. So, so Otter Tail and, uh, OETI and some other partners will be working together to explore energy storage. And that’s been something that, that I could say more about, but that’s an ongoing project that addresses what Blaine was saying earlier about, you know, we still hear some conversation. I mean, it, we are in a culturally conservative, rural place and there’s still a lot of questions about, well, it doesn’t – sun doesn’t shine all the time and the wind doesn’t blow all the time. So what are we gonna do about that?

But we’ve also been partnering with firms like Evergreen Energy. We can, we were one of three that were part of a program that they run of it, that to do a carbon neutrality study, a climate action study. And so we were primarily working with Evergreen Energy, which is one of the lead district heating energy companies in Minnesota to basically explore what other options do we have for meeting our thermal load? So obviously a big elephant in the room is how do we not freeze to death in Minnesota? You know, we’re an extreme climate, both warm and cold. A lot of our energy usage is obviously in heating. And so we’re exploring options around that.

So just example of like, what’s bubbling up like this meeting this, this afternoon, literally I’m, we’re, we’re meeting with a, a geothermal firm that’s completed basically another study. So after the Evergreen report happened now, we’ve worked with Otter Tail Power and another company to basically do a geothermal study for the campus. We’ve been inspired by what Carlton did, right. You know, after 111 years, they cut the cord with natural gas this past year. And so the Morris campus is exploring the potential for geothermal on campus. We have a biomas gasification plant on campus, but the goal, right, I think we share and understand is the goal is to not burn things, you know, is to live off the sun. The goal is to live off the sun in real time. That is our goal. We know that that’s the goal. And so we’re trying to pursue projects that explore that. And, and so that means things like how can we get to next generation district heating at our campus using low quality thermal, you know, low quality hot water, so that that’s in progress right now.

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You know, the interesting part, Germans don’t get to use whatever they want. And, and so when we meet with Saerbeck Germany, the amount of energy a German household uses is probably a third of what American household uses, but energy is super cheap here. And so then people don’t really feel that pinch, although natural gas this winter is gonna be an eye opener for a lot of people that are gonna see their bills go up. But at the same time, they use a third of what we use, but they pay three times what we pay. And so we’re probably spending the same amount of money for energy when you look at it that way. But you know, just to convince Otter Tail Power. And we actually had to convince ’em to switch out all of our street lights in the city of Morris to LEDs, took a little bit of persuasion and then again, there’s rules and regulation. They can’t just go, literally couldn’t just go out and buy LED street lights without getting it approved by the public utilities commission and the state of Minnesota and then the pricing on it.

But, but that alone, the amount of energy that we wound up saving just lighting street lights. And then if you start factoring it down, all of the city buildings have been converted twice. You know, cuz initially we had the old fluorescent lights and then we converted them to the TA8s I think they were. And now we’re LED in all of our buildings. So we’ve seen a tremendous amount of energy reduction just in simple things that you can do like that. But the next step is to really, to try to focus on the businesses, the public.

The one thing, I said that before, but a lot of times when you’re looking at these issues, whether they’re energy or their waste, you know, we think of the entire community. But in some cases, if you focus on the big users, it makes it much easier to understand and to try to figure out how to get those reductions down, like organic waste. You don’t have to get it from every single household. If you can get it from the businesses and the institutions you’re gonna get most of it cuz that’s where it’s generated. So that’s kind of what we look at with energy reduction, but that’s kind of the point we’re at right now is how, how do we try all this stuff and then report it back so that everybody can see and understand what we’re trying to do. We said it in the beginning, when we first started, we just started jumping in and yeah, we’re gonna do LED lights. We’re gonna, you know, we have electric car chargers around in the back of city hall and we leased electric hybrid vehicles and stuff like that. Those are easy things to do. But then what does it all mean in the big picture as you start throwing it together and, and then you you’ll find out really quick that you gotta have your power provider at the table with you to help try to figure out some of these answers and they wanna see.

I mean, one of the, just really quick, one of the most interesting things I saw was sitting in a Otter Tail Power meeting. When a banker asked a question: why would you limit the amount of energy you’re providing to people when you’re selling energy? And the answer, because they control water heaters to limit peak usage, and the answer was the investment in peak power production is greater than what we want it to be. So the easiest thing for us to do is to limit the amount of power we sell. So they’re focusing their resources on what’s the most efficient and economical system to have in place. Well, most people don’t really understand that at their level yet or even businesses. But that’s what we’re trying to do is get people to understand what they’re using, how they’re using it and making those energy efficiency decisions.

And so what we asked people to do is coming out of that strategic planning meeting was essentially to ratify the goals that they had established for themselves and think about those goals’ roles. So one of the things that we’ve been doing is we’ve, we’ve had university of Minnesota Morris student interns have worked a lot with the city, the school, the campus to basically do some of the measurement work that you’re talking about. And so we have more reporting work to put out into the public that shows what some of those gains have looked like as well as, so some of the challenges of just getting good metering data. And so we are trying to tackle all of those things at once. And students are playing the role in helping us to do some of that data collection as well and getting the right access to the right meters and the software to basically do those collections.

And so then the next step was just do projects. And that’s one thing we’ve really learned from our climate smart municipalities partners in our cities is this, they all say, do projects. You know, what projects are you doing? What projects are you doing? And that’s been that really sun in it’s just like, you know, grab some of the well hanging fruit and then start it. And, and that can even just be in relationship building and assessment and getting people together.

And then, you know, and the last thing I say is, you know, we need meet, basically meet our team to check in, in that relationship building. And sometimes, you know, we razz each other and it’s like, you know, what progress did we make this week? Well, not as much, sometimes we make more, but, but it helps us keep our friendships going. And we’re a diverse group. We don’t all agree. And we’re not all politically on the same spectrum either, but we share, we share big ideas and goals about wanting to create resilience and wealth and build local wealth and rural communities and to be a model rural community. And obviously every community is a community within a community. So it’s not of just rural obviously, but that’s, that’s what we’re trying to do here in Morris is to be our best model community.