Hello Fresh Energy Family,
The 2024 election is behind us. Ahead of us is a new political landscape yet to be charted. At Fresh Energy, we have spent the past 48 hours ensuring our staff and their loved ones have the space and time they need to consider and hold what the election outcomes mean for them personally and for our crucial clean energy and climate policy work. I’m writing today to share some of what we have discussed.
On Thursday, our whole team gathered at the Minnesota Humanities Center in Saint Paul for a retreat focused on knitting our team even more closely together, exploring our own climate stories, and mapping out the goals that will guide our work over the next five years as we maintain Fresh Energy’s strong legacy of equitably driving down carbon emissions in our state. We are grounded by our recently Board-approved “Vision 2030: Fresh Energy’s Strategic Framework” which, more than ever, will be our organization’s guiding star for fighting the climate crisis in Minnesota. The strategies laid out in our Strategic Framework must be priorities, no matter what the political climate, and our team is already moving forward.
Looking back on the past two months, I am exceedingly proud of the nonpartisan Get Out the Vote efforts that Fresh Energy and our staff undertook to ensure that all Minnesotans had the information they needed to participate in our democratic process as they let their voices be heard through voting. A key part of this effort was helping to drive support for Minnesota’s constitutional amendment that extends the transfer of lottery proceeds to the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund until 2050. The ballot measure passed with 77% of Minnesota voters supporting it, thanks in part to our efforts reaching nearly 41,000 young Minnesotans via text in Duluth, Moorhead, and Mankato, and door knocking efforts to more than 200 homes.
Extending the life of this amendment is a win for Minnesota’s natural spaces and resources but it also reminds us of the critical contributions each of us can make through advocacy and the role of state action for the issues we know matter to a healthy and prosperous Minnesota. For more than three decades, Fresh Energy has been creating and advancing state-based laws, policies, and regulations for energy and climate. It’s who we are, and it is woven into our organizational DNA.
Fresh Energy’s credibility is its people. Our smart, talented, and committed team may change year to year, but the legacy of excellence lives on in each Fresh Energy team member. Our donors know it. Minnesota leaders know it. Our partners know it. And I believe it with my whole heart.
We are extremely proud to have a diverse staff, and I understand that many of our staff and those that we love – people of color, women, and LGBTQIA+ individuals – have and will continue to feel personally affected by much of the rhetoric and certain public policy proposals that have been part of the political discourse during this campaign season. But we must rise above negative rhetoric and politics that do not honor our beautiful diversity in Minnesota. As Fresh Energy’s leader, I strongly believe that by taking time, caring for each other, and grounding ourselves in the Mission and Core Values and Guiding Principles that brought us all to Fresh Energy, we will continue to move forward together, and do so with fresh resolve and intentionality.
As a public policy advocacy organization, our work is impacted by the results of partisan elections. However, as a nonpartisan 501c3 charitable organization, Fresh Energy’s obligation to pursue our mission is unchanged by the result of any election. I am confident in our ability to strategically adapt to new challenges as we advance our bold Vision 2030. Nothing will change our unwavering advocacy to decarbonize our economy and fight against climate change in Minnesota and around the world. In this moment, let’s embrace Minnesota’s role as the country’s North Star and let our light shine brightly for others to see, learn from, and use find their way forward.
You can count on Fresh Energy to make a way through our new political landscape as we are known to do – with thoughtful courage, unrelenting optimism, responsibility, and equity. As always, we will do it by leading with our hearts, which includes prioritizing support and care for each other and those who want to join us in this important work.
I hope each of us will come away from this week with a renewed commitment to Fresh Energy’s mission and to the cause of achieving equitable climate solutions. Your support in advancing those solutions is even more necessary today as it was yesterday, and I look forward to our continued partnership in this effort.
In partnership,
Brenda Cassellius
Chief Executive Officer