Our partners, from hot and cold climates, work with our research team to support creation of Solar Commons legal, economic, and governance tools and the Living Labs to co-create and test them.
Bois Forte Food Sovereignty Group
Bois Forte Food Sovereignty Group (BFFSG) is the beneficiary of the Northland Solar Commons in rural Minnesota and is comprised of Anishinaabeg Ikweg (Indigenous Women) leading a Food Sovereignty movement in rural northeast Minnesota under the banner of Harvest Nation. Harvest Nation is a vertical aeroponic farm that makes healthy living a viable option in communities challenged by location, climate, and economic constraints.
Commons Strategy Group
The Commons Strategies Group (CSG) is a partnership to help advance the commons in diverse settings—both in theory and practice. Working on four continents, CSG catalyzes and assists commons-based projects, activism, research and public education. CSG is assisting the Solar Commons Project research team work with general principles of commoning in designing SC governance.
The Dunbar Pavilion
An African American Arts and Culture Center in Tucson, Arizona, increasing awareness and understanding of the historic and cultural impact of people of African descent. As the first US Solar Commons host, Dunbar is our pioneering partner in proving the concept of Solar Commoning as an infrastructure for mutual aid in urban areas. Our ongoing partnership will benefit the design of future Solar Commoning in Arizona and the United States.
Greenway Solar Services
Greenway designs, builds, and maintains state-of-the-art solar generation systems and contributed to the largest rooftop community solar garden in Minneapolis. Greenway has been a partner of the Solar Commons Project in the US DoE Solar In Your Community Challenge and remains our partner in North Minneapolis and Southern Minnesota.
Heliene, Inc.
Heliene, Inc., Minnesota’s only solar manufacturing factory innovates for local businesses on the Iron Range to support workforce development in a clean energy economy: Heliene plans to host a 500kW Solar Commons array that brings 20 years of economic support to the Northland Solar Commons Trust which funds entrepreneurial skill-building for local, healthy food pathways among indigenous and other communities on the Iron Range.
Henson Efron Law Firm
A Minneapolis-based law firm with expertise in trust and business law and a pro-bono portfolio of community engagement. Thanks to Henson Efron, Solar Commons researchers have had a long-term, constant partner innovating trust law to realize Solar Commons community trust ownership in the US.
The John B. Wright Elementary School
The John B. Wright Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona is a central meeting place of Tucson’s Garden District Neighborhood which the beneficiary site of our first US Solar Commons. The Garden District has twice as many Black or African American residents than the rest of Tucson, a large Hispanic or Latino population and also hosts Tucson’s International Alliance for Refugee Communities which assists new US refugees adjust to life in the US. Wright Elementary School serves all these community members and is the schoolyard site of the Solar Commons Mural by Karlito Espinosa.
Lake Superior Living Labs Network
The Lake Superior Living Labs Network (LSLLN) innovates at the nexus of water and land, climate and energy, and individual and community well-being in the Lake Superior watershed. The second Solar Commons Project in the US, the Northland Solar Commons, is one of the “living labs” in the LSLLN consortium of university-community partnerships that use living labs to co-create, build, and study regenerative systems solutions across national boundaries in this Great Lakes region. Thanks to the generosity of the Canadian government, LSLLN hosts workshops, symposiums, and living lab research projects allowing faculty, students, and community partners to work together sharing regenerative system-solutions to common social-ecological problems in the Lake Superior Basin.
Minnesota Renewable Energy Society
The Minnesota Renewable Energy Society (MRES) is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the use of, and engaging in the advocacy for, renewable energies in Minnesota through education and the demonstration of practical applications. MRES was a team member with the Solar Commons Project throughout the US Department of Energy Solar In Your Community Challenge 2018-2019.
Pilar Thomas
Pilar is a partner at Quarles & Brady, LLP at the Tucson Office and a member of the firm’s Energy, Environment & Natural Resources Practice Group. Her practice focuses on tribal renewable energy project development and finance, tribal economic development, federal Indian Law, and natural resource development. Pilar was the Arizona lawyer for the Tucson Solar Commons Project and author of Solar Commons and the Solar “Trust” Model: Applications to Tribes in Arizona and Minnesota (2019). This paper was funded by the US Department of Energy and guides the Solar Commons Project’s work with tribes in Minnesota and Arizona.
Rocky Mountain Institute
Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) is an independent, nonpartisan nonprofit co-founded in 1982 by Amory Lovins, RMI’s chairman emeritus and chief scientist. RMI’s global reach and reputation carries its mission to transform global energy use to create a clean, prosperous, and secure low-carbon future. RMI engages businesses, communities, and institutions to accelerate the adoption of market-based solutions that cost-effectively shift from fossil fuels to efficient renewables. RMI employs rigorous research, analysis, and systems thinking to develop breakthrough insights in collaboration with diverse partnerships—in business, government, academia, nonprofits, philanthropy, and defense—to accelerate and scale solutions. Part of the US DoE 2018 Solar In Your Community Challenge, RMI completed two analyses of the Solar Commons Project: The Solar Commons Financial Model and The Solar Commons Scalability Analysis.
University of Arizona School of Art
Faculty and students in the University of Arizona (U of A) School of Art work with Solar Commons researchers to create public art that teaches across generations how the mutualism of the natural world and nature commoning informs the right relationships of the Solar Commons gift economy: U of A School of Art researchers assisted in creating the process and realizing the outcomes for how a Solar Commons beneficiary community holds its “deed of equitable trust” to the sun’s common wealth through public art. U of A artists are also co-creators of the Solar Commons Game. These artists are members of the SCP research team, engaging in ongoing research to prototype, test, and produce the Solar Commons Game, a key SCP community education tool.
University of Colorado Boulder Media Enterprise Design Lab
University of Colorado Boulder Media Enterprise Design Lab (MedLab) is a think tank for community ownership and governance in media organizations, assisting the Solar Commons legal team in understanding the contribution of digital design in creating infrastructures for good governance in the Solar Commons community trust ownership model.
University of Minnesota Duluth Center for Social Research
The University of Minnesoda Duluth (UMD) Center for Social Research (CSR) is led by Professor Kathryn Milun, founder and director of the Solar Commons Project. The Center advances place-based interdisciplinary research across the UMD campus bringing attention to the role of the social sciences, especially anthropology, in the work of a just energy transition and climate justice in the Northland region. CSR is also the home of the Duluth Hub of the Lake Superior Living Labs Network. Faculty, students, and community partners focusing on energy and climate justice at UMD contribute to a variety of research projects supported at the Center.
Vermont Law School Energy Clinic
Vermont Law School Energy Clinic (VLSEC) has been a key partner in early Solar Commons Project legal research including that which contributed to the US Solar In Your Community Challenge.
