We know the importance of keeping a commitment to sustainability, not just these 30 days during Earth Month, but all year long. Saint Paul RiverCentre and Xcel Energy Center strive to be a top green destination in the sports, entertainment and events industry, and we continually seek opportunities that reduce the environmental impact of our operations. 

Our programming is comprehensive, spanning a range of topics that have received recognition from around the globe. 

Our hope is that you can feel good about choosing us to host your event, where sustainability is weaved into the daily culture of what we do here at RiverCentre and our entire complex. We continually make efforts on multiple fronts to maintain sustainability best practices while seeking new opportunities to become even better stewards of our community.

Here are some highlights from the last year of our sustainability journey: 

We were recertified Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) Gold and Event Industry Council (EIC)/Sustainable Event Standards (SES) Gold.

We offset 1,300 tons of carbon dioxide in partnership with UPM Blandin Forestry, which is equal to the entire season of Minnesota Wild team air travel.

Our annual Adopt-a-River staff event collected 700 pounds of waste from the banks of the Mississippi River.

We produced over 5.4 million kilowatts per hour of energy by our Community Solar Garden subscription.

We had 406 tons of recyclable materials and 231 tons of compost, which was 61% of all our waste.

We now offset 100% of the non-renewable portion of our electricity through Windsource power, purchasing 7.9 million kilowatts per hour last year.

To celebrate our 25th anniversary, we partnered with the Minnesota DNR and planted 6,600 white spruce seedlings, representing every room booked in our venue in 2023.

We pride ourselves on continuing to be industry leaders in sustainability by focusing on initiatives that create positive impacts in the work we do throughout our campus. These efforts focus on the following areas: 

• Reducing waste with recycling and offering our on-site Green Teams to sort compost at events. They collected over 13,000 pounds of compost in three hours at the end of our biggest food show. 

• Conserve energy through solar power sources, LED lights, and partnering with windsource. Our upgrade of 300 exhibitional hall lights to LED resulted in an 81% energy reduction, and our roof solar thermal array is the largest of its kind in the upper Midwest. 

• Regularly review purchasing options for green products. On our campus, over 55 percent of office products, 76 percent of cleaning materials and 35 percent of cleaning equipment meet green standards, and all disposable products in our venues are 100% compostable. 

• Partner with our community to donate over 390 tons of food to local food shelves, offer sustainability training to each new employee, and operate a rooftop garden. 

• Offer our partners, team members, and visitors transportation options to help reduce environmental impacts by having eight electric vehicle car charging stations available in the RiverCentre Parking Ramp. 

Earth Day offers us a time to reflect on the important work we do and share our story. Our sustainability microsite shares the details on our positive impacts and can be visited here. Our commitment to sustainability is woven throughout our entire campus, in all departments, within our teams, and throughout our events each day. Whether you are a guest, or a client, looking for a Green partner to host your event, we’re ready to work with you! 

Check out our sustainability microsite to stay up to date with our initiatives and to learn more.