Powering our future with clean electricity

Mark and Kate Hanson’s home in Roseville, Minnesota, has many special features – but one of the most exciting is their use of clean electricity for heating, cooling, keeping the lights on, and powering the family cars. For nearly 25 years, Fresh Energy has been working to transition to a clean energy system in the state. Increasingly we see that an “all-electric economy” – like the one modeled by Mark and Kate Hanson – may just be the answer.

188-2: Minnesota Sets Standard for Land Use on Solar Sites

Authored by agriculture leaders, a new law sends a clear signal to the solar industry regarding a preferred practice for use of land on solar sites. State-wide standard will meaningfully help Minnesota’s bees, monarchs, pheasants, and songbirds, by providing abundant, high-quality foraging habitat on solar sites.

Fresh Energy to partner with the Department of Energy on national solar workshop

Fresh Energy is proud to announce that it will partner with the U.S. Department of Energy to host a National Community Solar Partnership workshop in 2016. Building off of a National Community Solar Summit at the White House on November 17, the workshop will convene solar companies, nonprofits, and state and local community leaders who are working to expand community solar in the Midwest.

October 28 | Using Solar PV to Save Pollinators

In 2016 Minnesota is poised for a large solar bloom — likely more than 4,000 acres of ground-mounted solar will be built. That’s a piddling 0.01 percent of Minnesota’s 26.9 million acres of farmland and will generate less than two percent of the state’s electricity. But for bees, monarch butterflies, and all pollinators, it will provide a world of good.