The Great Plains Institute is a proud partner in a new initiative, the Sustainable Growth Coalition, a partnership of more than 25 businesses and organizations harnessing their expertise to advance the next frontier of corporate sustainability – the circular economy.
The Coalition includes well known global brands with headquarters in Minnesota such as: Target, Medtronic, Hormel Foods, General Mills, Ecolab, and Cargill and other members from utility, legal, engineering, health, and non-profit sectors. The Environmental Initiative convenes and manages the Coalition. A full list of members can be found on their website.
Where will the Coalition Focus its Efforts?
The Sustainable Growth Coalition has identified three priorities:
- Clean Energy – aggregate clean energy interest of members and work to develop tangible projects that increase access to renewable energy and modernization of the electric grid. GPI is uniquely positioned to provide technical and social expertise in this area because of our work at the community level on deployment of clean energy technologies through Metro CERT and GreenStep Cities and our work on regional transmission planning and electricity market initiatives.
- Convert Organic Waste Into Resources – manage organic waste collaboratively and turn it into valuable fuels and resources. GPI has been working to strengthen Minnesota’s position in growing and attracting advanced biofuel and biobased chemical projects through our work with the Bioeconomy Coalition of Minnesota. GPI also brings policy and development expertise foraccelerating biogas deployment.
- Green Grey Infrastructure – utilize green infrastructure, which is designed to mimic the natural water cycle, to be cost-effectively deployed in a way that better reflects the true costs of those services. GPI is looking forward to learning how this priority can be integrated or better reflected in new or existing projects, such as GreenStep Cities.
GPI recognizes the tremendous opportunity to work with this powerful group of partners to collectively put our shoulder to the wheel and to advance economically and environmentally sustainable projects.
