The City of Elk River was selected to participate in the Climate Smart Municipalities partnership for 2016-2018. This partnership is between the state of Minnesota and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Five Minnesota cities (Elk River, Morris, Warren, Duluth, and Rochester) have been paired up with NRW cities (Iserloh, Saerbeck, Arnsberg, Munster, and Siegen) to collaborate on energy-smart and sustainable projects. In July of 2016, the Minnesota delegation traveled to NRW to visit the partner cities and tour a number of facilities such as solar installation, wind turbines, district heating plants, natural gas plants, and sustainable building projects.
Elk River is partnered with Iserlohn, a community of around 90,000 in population located in the middle of NRW. Iserlohn is currently working on a district heating expansion and increasing “e-mobility” (electric vehicles and bikes) transportation in the community. These are both projects that Elk River is currently pursing as well. The two communities plan to collaborate together and support each other’s projects.
During Elk River’s visit to Iserlohn, they discussed the Konzeptpapier VideoContest. This was a project that Iserlohn city staff completed in 2012 to garner interest in climate smart and clean energy from the community. This document is in German but would be useful for Elk River to copy as a competition for our community. Students will translate these materials for Elk River, so they can use them as a model to develop a similar program.
Project Overview Poster
City Outcomes
As a part of the City of Elk River’s German partnership in Climate-Smart Municipalities, translation is a necessary step to move forward on projects. The translation of these materials from our German city partner will allow Elk River to conduct a video contest geared toward K-12 students to promote sustainability and climate change efforts.
Read the final student report delivered to the local gov/community partner.
Sustainable Communities Partnership Contact Info
University Faculty Contact
Susanne Wagner
German
smwagner@stthomas.edu
6519625174
Local Government / Community Contact
Kristin Mroz
Enviornmental Technician