News and Events

EnergyScoreCards Minnesota Launches Multifamily Energy Benchmarking Pilot Funded by Xcel Energy and Minnesota Housing

EnergyScoreCards™ announces the launch of EnergyScoreCards Minnesota, a two-year effort to implement energy and water benchmarking at hundreds of multifamily buildings in Minnesota to demonstrate that engaging owners, property managers and tenants in managing energy use can measurably reduce utility spending, energy and water consumption and carbon emissions.

The project is a partnership between Minnesota Housing, Minnesota Green Communities, University of Minnesota Center for Sustainable Building Research (CSBR), the Center for Energy and Environment (CEE), and EnergyScoreCards - an innovative online energy management tool for multifamily buildings - and is jointly funded by Xcel Energy and Minnesota Housing.

EnergyScoreCards Minnesota is funded by Minnesota Housing and an Emerging Technologies Grant from Xcel Energy. Minnesota Housing funding will focus on the Corridor of Opportunity in the Central Corridor transit line. Multifamily rental property owners and managers can learn more at www.energyscorecardsmn.com.

Upcoming Events

Past News and Events

May 2010
Minnesota Green Communities Wins MEI Environmental Initiative Award

Minnesota Green Communities was announced as the winner of a prestigious MEI Environmental Initiative Award in the green building, development, and land use category on May 27, 2010.  The annual program honors projects that have achieved extraordinary outcomes for Minnesota's environment by harnessing the power of partnership. Click here to learn more.

December 2011
Engaging Residents in Sustainable Living

Minnesota Green Communities sponsored a half-day seminar on engaging residents in green, affordable housing developments. The seminar, presented by Christie Manning, will provide you with tools to more effectively engage your residents, your staff, and yourselves in sustainable living and working.  It will also help you and your residents get the greatest return -- environmental and financial -- out of your green properties.  The seminar will include a presentation on how psychology can support sustainable living, and introduction and demonstration to Enterprise resident engagement tools, and discussions of how you can use these concepts and tools with residents in the properties you own and/or manage.

October 2011
Single Family Green Housing Rehab Training

Minnesota Green Communities, in partnership with TCC Land Bank, offered a training on single family green housing rehab. These model specs will be particularly helpful for developers, builders, and contractors working on rehabilitation through the statewide NSP foreclosure recovery programs.  Click here for more details. 

August 2011
Engaging Residents through the Psychology of Sustainable Behavior

Minnesota Green Communities offered this half-day seminar to help provide developers and property managers with the tools to more effectively engage your residents, your staff, and yourselves in sustainable living and working.  Click here for event details. 

August 2011
Green Networking Event
Presented by USGBC Minnesota
Twins vs. White Sox Baseball Game

The 1st Annual Green Building Cross-Industry Networking Event will engage target audiences to collaborate in this first cross-industry event bringing together key leaders from the design, technology, manufacturing, building, facilities management, and other organizations under one roof, The Budweiser Deck. 

February 2011
2011 Energy Design Conference & Expo
Duluth, Minnesota

The Energy Design Conference & Expo delivered a diverse selection of quality seminars and workshops to a variety of building, housing, and environmental professionals. Click here to view conference session presentations and learn more.

November 2010
Homes for All 2010
Saint Paul RiverCentre

Homes for All featured a keynote address by HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, dynamic workshop sessions (including a MN Green Communities session), a special reception, and more. Click here to view conference session presentations and learn more.

April 2010
Green and Healthy Property Management Strategies
Ellen Tohn, Tohn Environmental Strategies
Hosted by the Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership
April 27, 8:30 to 4:00 p.m.
Mankato, Minnesota
Click here for more details.

February 2010
Single Family Green Housing Rehab Training: Tuesday, February 2, 2010, 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Radisson Hotel and Conference Center, Plymouth, Minnesota.
Click here for more details. 

December 2009
Demonstration Project Ripley Gardens wins competitive Home Depot Foundation award.  Read more here and here.

April 2009
Minnesota Green Communities and partners Enterprise and Minnesota Housing recently commissioned a set of Single Family Housing (1-4 unit) Green Rehab Specifications. On April 2, Armand Magnelli led a day-long training on the specifications.

April 2009
Lessons from early Green Communities projects are now available. A presentation on findings of healthy housing can be found here, and findings on the incremental costs and benefits can be found here (look for "Gone Green: So What?").

The Wellstone was highlighted by funder AFL CIO-Housing Investment Trust (HIT). The HIT financed a $4.1 million FHA-insured construction/permanent loan under HUD’s Section 221 (d) (4) program securitized with a GNMA mortgage-backed security.

Minnesota Green Communities awarded $155,000 to green projects in 2008. Minnesota Green Communities continues to be the largest green building program in Minnesota, with 497 units completed, 908 under construction, and another 1,645 under development. This year, Family Housing Fund and Greater Minnesota Housing Fund staff reviewed 78 proposals, including multifamily (31), single family (37), and rehabilitation (10) proposals. This is compared with 35 proposals last year. 30 proposals were in the metro area (as compared with 22 in 2007), and 43 from greater Minnesota (as compared with 13 in 2007.) Some of the increase is a result of the new Minnesota Housing requirement that new single family projects must meet the Minnesota Overlay to the Green Communities Criteria.

2008 Minnesota Green Communities grant awards include:

Feature article "It’s Getting Easier to Be Green", Thief River Falls Times, showcases success of Minnesota Green Communities. (April, 2008)
Click here to download .pdf

"A Short History of Greenness", Minnesota Real Estate Journal (May, 2008)
Click here to download .pdf

Minnesota Green Communities Announces 2007 Grants
November 2007
Inclusive of both affordable and market-rate housing, Minnesota Green Communities is now the largest green building program in Minnesota, with 190 units completed, 423 under construction, and another 1,223 under development. Demonstrating the growing interest in building and designing green, and indicative of major policy changes at the state level, there was a significant increase in the number of applications for Minnesota Green Communities funding in 2007. In 2007, the Family Housing Fund and Greater Minnesota Housing Fund staff reviewed 35 proposals, 22 from the metro area (as compared with 11 in 2006), and 13 from greater Minnesota (as compared with eight in 2006). The following nine green projects were selected for grant funding throughout Minnesota in 2007:

Green by Design - May 2007
Greater Minnesota Housing Fund and the Family Housing Fund convened the second annual statewide Minnesota Green Communities conference on green building, Green by Design 2007. This conference provided expert training and education to nearly 350 (up from 200 in 2006) housing developers, builders, architects, contractors, city planners, policymakers, and other professionals concerned with creating sustainable housing and communities in Minnesota. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. inspired and motivated audience members with his powerful keynote luncheon address that was as much a call to action as a speech. Due to a medical emergency, scheduled health keynote speaker Xavier Bonnefoy was unable to attend. Fortunately, Ellen Tohn of Tohn Environmental Strategies, a national expert in housing-based environmental threats (and a scheduled presenter for Day Two), was able to step in for Bonnefoy, and provide a compelling speech on the strong connections between housing and health.

Green by Design offered a rich assortment of more than 20 different technical and policy sessions by local and national experts on a wide range of green building and design topics, including energy efficiency, stormwater management, green building products, urban and rural design, global warming, and health and housing. On more than a few occasions, workshop sessions left standing room only. At the end of the workday, many attendees stayed for a “Green Happy Hour” for an opportunity to network with other conference participants and staff, discuss topics of interest from the day’s workshops, share details on plans for new housing developments, and to get to know their colleagues from around the state. The transit-friendly location appealed to a number of attendees with over two dozen arriving on bicycle, bus, or light rail. For more session descriptions and presentations, and more details, click here.

Green by Design - November 2006
Minnesota Green Communities hosted three day-long trainings on state-of-the-art green building practices for developers, builders, architects, policy makers, and funders working in greater Minnesota. The trainings focused on how to create affordable, healthy, and energy efficient homes in sustainable communities, highlighting the unique opportunities and challenges of green building in greater Minnesota. Topics of special emphasis included increasing local energy self-reliance, healthy homes, protecting local water quality, sustainable development planning, and natural resource preservation.

Green by Design - April, 2006
Minnesota Green Communities hosted a pioneering two-day training on green building practices by local and national experts. With rising housing and energy costs, the interest in creating sustainable, energy-efficient affordable housing is at a new high. The training included detailed technical information on the Green Communities Criteria™, and highlighted several Minnesota-specific case studies. Additionally, Minnesota Green Communities announced funding for another round of demonstration projects in coordination with Minnesota Housing's 2006 Super RFP.

Renewable Energy: Solar and Affordable Housing – An Event with Chris LaForge
February 2007
Minnesota Green Communities, along with LISC, Minnesota Housing Partnership, Minneapolis Consortium of Community Developers, and Minnesota Pollution Control Agency sponsored a workshop with solar expert Chris LaForge of Great Northern Solar. The workshop provided an introduction to solar uses in affordable housing, utilizing slides of solar installations, and providing plenty of interactive question and answer time. The crowd was at capacity, and the project received substantial positive feedback about the quality of the Minnesota Green Communities’ events.

Prior to the workshop, Minnesota Green Communities hosted a private lunch with LaForge and the development teams from Viking Terrace and The Wellstone, two demonstration projects with solar applications. During lunch, teams were able to review documents and receive expert technical assistance on their specific projects.