Youth Lead the Push for Better Buildings in St. Louis Park
Excelsior Blvd and Grand Way at night. Photo Credit: City of St. Louis Park
Students in St. Louis Park urged the city to get serious about sustainability. Today, the city is leading the way for the rest of Minnesota on energy efficiency.
St. Louis Park’s journey to improving the buildings in their city took a major leap forward in 2018 when the city adopted its Climate Action Plan. Spurred by the demands of young residents to take action on climate, the plan was designed as a path forward for residents, businesses and the city to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with the ultimate goal of reaching carbon neutrality by 2040.
From the start, energy efficiency played an important role in the city’s action plan. Working with students, the city’s Environment and Sustainability Commission identified seven midterm goals to reach by 2030. Four of these goals center on reducing energy consumption in existing buildings and constructing better, more efficient buildings for the city’s future.
“The climate crisis will have a huge impact on our future,” student Lukas Wrede wrote to the city in 2018. “An inadequate response now will cause dangerous economic and environmental disruptions, many of which are already being felt around the globe.”
First-of-its-Kind
Westwood Hills Nature Center is a 160-acre natural area featuring marsh, woods and restored prairie. Photo Credit: City of St. Louis Park
One of the goals included in the Climate Action Plan requires all of the city’s buildings to be “net-zero” by 2030 – meaning they must produce as much energy as they consume. With the goal of leading by example, St. Louis Park opened the first commercial, net-zero energy-designed building in the state of Minnesota in 2020. The new interpretive center at the Westwood Hills Nature Center is a 13,565-square-foot environmental learning center built to serve as a community space, with public classrooms and an exhibit area located on a nature reserve.
The building utilizes passive design to maximize its energy efficiency. To start, the center is oriented east-west in order to capture the greatest amount of sunlight and to utilize north-south winds for natural ventilation. A geothermal heating and cooling system allows the building to be heated without natural gas, greatly reducing the carbon dependence of the facility. To complete the project, a 150-kilowatt solar array was installed to power the geothermal system and provide the center with the rest of the energy it needs to operate.
