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Sabathani’s Community Energy Project: Building Resilience, Equity, and a Greener Future

Welcome to Sabathani Community Center’s Community Energy Project, a transformative initiative aimed at creating a resilient, equitable, and sustainable South Minneapolis. We believe in harnessing the power of community to address climate change, systemic inequalities, and poverty simultaneously. Join us on this journey towards a cleaner, greener, and more just future.

Our Vision: Environmental Justice, Resilience, and Racial Equity

In the face of climate-related emergencies, power outages, and natural disasters, our South Minneapolis community deserves a trusted haven. The Community Energy Project is a vital part of the broader 38th Street THRIVE Strategic Development Plan for the City of Minneapolis. It embodies our commitment to: 

  1. Resilience Hub: Establishing Sabathani as a Resilience Hub for the neighborhood, serving as a beacon of hope and support during times of crisis.
  2. Energy Efficiency: Renovating Sabathani’s physical building to become energy-efficient by replacing our outdated heating and cooling system with a renewable energy geothermal system. This eco-friendly upgrade reduces operating costs and pollution in our community. 
  3. Workforce Development: Providing a living laboratory and training center for geothermal and solar workforce training, ensuring job placement and empowering our community through green employment opportunities.
  4. Microgrid Technology: Implementing microgrid technology and battery backup storage, enabling Sabathani and its critical community services to remain operational to remain operational even during extended power outages.

Addressing Systemic Inequalities 

Our mission extends beyond environmental objectives; it’s about social justice. We are actively: 

  • Fighting Climate Change: By transitioning from 58-year-old polluting, fossil-fuel boilers to a geothermal HVAC system, we are taking tangible steps to reduce our carbon footprint and combat climate change. 
  • Resilience Hub for Equity: We are building a resilience hub in a community of color, addressing systemic inequalities and creating a blueprint for how climate and racial justice can go hand in hand. 
  • Green Job Opportunities: Our project turns Sabathani into an energy producer and a center for green job training, creating economic opportunities that uplift our community. 
  • Worst to First: We’re determined to transform our building from a zero Energy Star Rating to a symbol of environmental excellence, moving from worst to first in our energy-efficiency score. 

Featured in the Star Tribune

But, for Sabathani, the venture is not only about having a heating operation that makes economic sense…It could serve a 72-unit multifamily housing project planned at the site. It also would help a clean energy job training program. Geothermal would also reduce emissions from the building in an area with high asthma rates, another draw for an organization with a desire to take environmental justice measures and to address climate change. ‘We care and we want to make a difference and this is our way of doing that,’ Redd said….” 

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How You Can Help

Our funding proposal is currently under review in the Minnesota state legislature: House File 3949 and Senate File 3607. Please contact your legislators and express your support for Sabathani’s Community Energy Project. 

Links to legislators: 

Thank you for joining us on this transformative journey toward a more equitable, resilient, and climate-just South Minneapolis!