Climate Pollution Reduction Grant
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program is making billions of dollars available to fund local climate change solutions across the U.S. These grants are being awarded in two phases — planning and implementation.
In July 2023, the Environmental Protection Agency awarded the Met Council a $1 million planning grant. We are partnering with local governments and the region’s stakeholders across 11 of the 15 counties in the greater Twin Cities metropolitan area. This grant is an opportunity to build on the strong work of many local governments who have already adopted their own climate action plans. Together we will identify strategies that we can collaborate on to make a significant impact sooner.
The grant will allow us to better coordinate and align climate policy and action work across the region, and further align the region’s work with the state’s climate activities. A unified plan will help us prioritize strategies that offer the most benefit to those most impacted by climate change.
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Planning begins in community
We are using this funding to create a Climate Action Plan with partners across the 11-county region. Met Council members have identified leading on climate as one of our cross-cutting goals in our 2050 regional development guide, Imagine 2050.
This planning grant will help us expand on our engagement in ways we’ve never been able to before. We are increasing our capacity to reach communities whose voices historically have not been included in planning processes and who often bear the burden of the impacts of climate change.
About the Regional Climate Action Plan
The Met Council will lead the effort with our local government partners and regional stakeholders to develop the following element, centered on the voices of those most impacted by climate change in the region:
- Priority Climate Action Plan (PDF), including:
- Updates to our Twin Cities Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory
- Identification of GHG reduction strategies
- An analysis of benefits and co-benefits of the GHG strategies
- Preliminary analysis on roles and abilities to implement the strategies
- Comprehensive Climate Action Plan (due summer 2025)
- Updates to or expansion of items in the priority plan
- GHG emissions projections, including refinements to the GHG Strategy Planning Tool
- GHG targets
- Workforce analysis
- Plan for leveraging federal funds
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Check back here for future opportunities to provide feedback and share your ideas.