Climate Action Plan Project Page

The West Central Initiative (WCI) serves the west central Minnesota counties of Becker, Clay, Douglas, Grant, Otter Tail, Pope, Stevens, Traverse, and Wilkin and White Earth Nation. This region is known as the Minnesota Economic Development Region 4.

WCI believes that a healthy, sustainable planet is one where all people belong and can live together in peace and prosperity. To that end, WCI aligns and activates their work around climate change. In support of these goals, WCI embarked on a process to create a Climate Action Plan for west central Minnesota. The plan identifies climate mitigation and adaptation goals, strategies and actions through 2030. The planning process was highly collaborative and facilitated by paleBLUEdot LLC over a 14 month period. The plan was developed through two phases:

Phase one began in June 2022 with distribution of a Climate Action Survey open to every resident of west central Minnesota. The survey assisted in defining climate-related issues of relevance and concern to the people in our region. In addition to information gathered from the survey, paleBLUEdot compiled area-specific data on energy use and emissions, infrastructure, natural resources, transportation, and potential renewable energy sources. These documents can be found under “Baseline Documents” to the right.

Phase two started in December 2022 and comprised of a collaborative planning process with 24 community members, elected officials, county, and municipal staff representatives from throughout the region. This collaborative planning process incorporated the public’s feedback from phase one and established climate action goals, strategies, and detailed actions to achieve those goals. The resulting plan can be found below.