Star Tribune
The massive, centralized systems that keep the Twin Cities comfy
Below the downtown streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul is the key to keeping the Twin Cities comfortable on the year’s hottest and coldest days.
Most people aren’t aware of them, but the centralized district energy systems that span both downtowns heat and cool hundreds of buildings and homes year round — including major structures ranging from the State Capitol, to U.S. Bank Stadium to the IDS Tower.
“The honest truth is, 95% of people or more don’t have any idea what we do or that we even exist,” said Jacob Graff, regional general manager for Cordia Energy, which heats and cools about 100 buildings across downtown Minneapolis.
Ken Smith, president and CEO of District Energy St. Paul, said his facility also operates in relative obscurity, although many residents are familiar with the plume the site gives off along Kellogg Avenue on cold days.
“It’s water vapor,” Smith said, noting the system gets about half its energy from burning tree waste. “The colder it is, the more you see it.”
How it works
Central facilities create steam or hot water and chilled water that’s sent to customers through insulated underground pipes in a closed loop. Satellite locations help with demand.
Buildings and homes use that energy for their heating and cooling needs. When the water is no longer at a useful temperature, it returns to the plants through the piping loop.
Both systems use a process called combined heat and power generation that burns fuel, such as wood chips or natural gas, to power turbines, boilers and water chillers.
How the systems differ
In St. Paul, District Energy and its subsidiary Ever-Green Energy operate the largest hot water heating system in North America, spanning more than 200 buildings. Tree waste is the primary fuel, but natural gas also creates steam that powers a turbine and makes electricity.
About two-thirds of that electricity is sold to Xcel Energy. The remainder helps power the system. Residual, lower-pressure steam makes hot water for heating.
In Minneapolis, Cordia Energy operates a steam centralized heating system. Its biggest plant is in the heart of downtown, encircled by a parking ramp.
Cordia also uses a combined heat and power system with natural gas as the primary fuel. Boilers create heat to produce steam and hot water and run compressors that chill water.
Why are these systems there?
Advocates for district energy systems say they are more efficient than individual heating and cooling systems. They almost never go offline because there is so much redundancy built into the plants.
“The thing about district energy is you need to be there, all the time,” Graff said, noting that even brief outages are noticed. “It can be 20 minutes, once every 20 years, but they are going to remember those 20 minutes.”
District energy plants have been around more than a century and are growing in popularity. Colleges like the University of Minnesota, hospitals like Hennepin County Medical Center and big cities from New York to San Francisco use them.
When they were built
Minneapolis’ system dates to the early 1970s and was built to heat and cool the IDS Center, the city’s tallest building. Over the past 50 years the system has grown with the city and now stretches from Target Field to U.S. Bank Stadium.
St. Paul’s system rose out of an old steam heating site that was slated for closure in the late 1970s. Instead, then Mayor George Latimer and city officials looked to Swedish engineer Hans Nyman to create a hot-water central heating system they hoped would be a national model.
Biomass and the HERC
The Minnesota Legislature made some policy and spending decisions this year that will affect district energy systems in both cities.
St. Paul District Energy received $16 million in grants to burn ash trees removed because of the emerald ash borer. Policy changes will help the site keep selling excess power to Xcel.
“If we were not taking this wood waste, it would have to be open burned,” Smith said.
Changes in state law mean the Hennepin County Energy Recovery Center (HERC), which burns trash to create electricity and steam, will no longer be considered a green energy provider after 2040. Cordia buys steam from the HERC, and Hennepin County officials are looking at plans to close the facility before 2040.
Environmental challenges
District energy systems are efficient, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have emissions. The St. Paul facility burns about 240,000 tons of tree waste a year. The Minneapolis plant is one of Hennepin County’s largest users of natural gas.
But system leaders say their emissions are significantly lower than if each customer was heating and cooling their own building. Both systems aim to be carbon free by 2050.
To get there, Smith said district energy will need to tap into a mix of clean energy sources, something that’s not feasible for individual customers. “I can deploy a lot more technologies and techniques than an individual building,” he said.
It’s already happening. St. Paul provides carbon-neutral cooling to all of its customers through renewable energy credits and uses solar to heat some of its water.
Minneapolis also is exploring cleaner energy sources and constantly looking for ways to be more efficient. “Every project we do has a piece of it that’s improving our efficiency,” Graff said.
The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
City Council members criticized MPD for their handling of the case, expressing outrage at the department’s inability to protect a resident “from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
The Moturis have reported to police at least 19 incidents of vandalism, property destruction, theft, harassment, hate speech and other verbal threats, including threats of assault, involving Sawchak since last fall — shorty after the couple moved in. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
Over the weekend, as frustration continued to boil over about the lack of a resolution in the case, several more council members released statements demanding that MPD move in to make an arrest.
“Our Chief of Police is hiding behind excuses, and our Mayor…is just hiding,” Council Member Emily Koski wrote on X.
Less than two hours later, from the scene of an unrelated fatal shooting at a homeless encampment, O’Hara acknowledged that his police force failed to protect Moturi and issued an apology.
A former tire store in Brooklyn Center has been repurposed into the state’s newest vehicle inspection station, where owners of salvage vehicles can get them examined to ensure they have been repaired with proper parts and are safe to drive.
The Department of Vehicle Services (DVS) signed a 10-year lease on the Big-O Tires building on Xerxes Avenue across from the former Brookdale Shopping Center. After spending several months retrofitting the shop, officials held a ribbon-cutting on Friday to mark its official opening.
Motorists who have bought salvage vehicles — those involved in crashes, damaged by weather or for any other reason declared a total loss by insurance companies — and had them repaired can bring them for a checkup at the new station. Under Minnesota law, motorists driving salvage vehicles must have them inspected to ensure their wheels are safe to drive and to renew their license tabs.
That has not been an easy task as the demand for salvage vehicles has ballooned in recent years, said Bob Jacobson, the commissioner of the Department of Public Safety. After the COVID-19 pandemic hit, salvage vehicles became popular since new and used car prices shot way up, and people found it cheaper to buy cars that needed major repairs, Jacobson said.
The DVS had only one metro area inspection station, on Starkey Street in St. Paul. And with just two bays for vehicles, availability was limited. By moving to Brooklyn Center and closing the St. Paul location, the DVS will have five bays, and each will be able to handle 18 vehicles a day. That is 90 vehicles on every weekday.
So far this year, the DVS has inspected more than 23,060 salvage vehicles across the state, which represents a 32% increase compared to the same 10-month period last year. In the past two weeks, inspectors in the Twin Cities have looked at 588 vehicles, DVS data shows.
Those numbers reflect the growing number of salvage vehicles on state roads and the need for more inspectors and longer hours at locations to verify vehicles were repaired using legal parts, said Greg Loper, director of the DVS Inspection Program.
Besides Brooklyn Center, which will be open 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on weekdays, the DVS operates eight other inspection sites across Minnesota. But most are overbooked and understaffed. That is changing.
Two men are dead and one woman was injured in a shooting at a homeless encampment in south Minneapolis on Sunday afternoon, police said. It was the second shooting at a Minneapolis encampment this weekend.
At about 2:20 p.m. Sunday, police responded to a reported shooting in the 4400 block of Snelling Avenue near the railroad tracks at the small encampment between Snelling and Hiawatha avenues. At the scene, officers found two men with fatal gunshot wounds, said Sgt. Garrett Parten Minneapolis Police spokesman. Responders rendered aid, but both men died at the scene.
A woman was found at the scene with life-threatening injuries and was taken to a local hospital where she was being treated Sunday night, he said. Police have yet to say whether the three were living at the encampment.
Officers detained three people, who Parten said have since been released after police found they were not believed to be involved in the shooting. No suspects had been identified as of 6:30 p.m. Sunday.
The shooting is the second at a southside homeless encampment this weekend. One man died and two were critically injured early Saturday at an encampment shooting near E. 21st Street and 15th Avenue S. On Sunday, the man was identified as Deven Leonard Caston, 31, according to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office.
“We don’t know if there’s a connection between this homeless encampment shooting and the one that occurred yesterday,” Parten said on Sunday. “That is a consideration of the investigation. We can’t rule it out.”
Ward 12 Council Member Aurin Chowdhury, who represents the area and lives nearby, was at the site of the shooting Sunday afternoon. She said officials need information about what happened to better understand how to address situations like this long-term.
“This is an absolute tragedy, and this type of violence should never occur within our city,” she said. “It really makes me think about how we need to look at this more systemically and not just take a whack-a-mole approach and expect the problem to go away.
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