Pivots: Energy Leadership Accelerator

The Energy Leadership Accelerator (ELA) will advance the national health, prosperity and welfare of remote, islanded, and underserved communities at the front line of climate impacts by convening and empowering rural energy practitioners to integrate emerging clean energy technologies into their microgrids. Remote and islanded (non-grid-connected) regions rely on delivered diesel fuel for power generation, leaving them vulnerable to expensive market fluctuations and supply chain disruptions.

Furthermore, these regions also face the most pressing scientific and societal challenges in adapting their energy infrastructure for climate resilience. While the technology exists for transitions away from fossil fuels, there is a disparity between the application and adoption of these technologies for remote, islanded communities on microgrids, and other high-income, grid-connected areas of the United States.

ELA provides the means, structure and opportunity to convene rural energy champions within a remote context to learn from and with one another in order to spearhead culturally and regionally appropriate solutions for energy infrastructure and workforce resiliency.

ELA will invest in local energy leaders in the design and implementation of community energy projects that adopt emerging renewable energy technologies such as solar and wind microgrids and battery energy storage systems, and build sustainable opportunities for the local workforce. Leveraging the successful knowledge sharing programs of the Alaska Center for Energy and Power and Rocky Mountain Institute, ELA provides cross-regional networking and leadership development for remote energy champions.

The project will focus on expanding the knowledge-sharing pedagogy beyond traditional technical and leadership training to incorporate Indigenous Ways of Knowing. A cohort of 24 trainees will be composed of junior participants with minimal project experience and senior participants with at least one successful community energy project implemented. In year one, the project will launch with virtual community building and 10 synchronous sessions delivering tailored content on project development, management, and renewable energy integration technology.

In year two, the cohort will convene for a two-week Alaska Leadership Lab to visit successful renewable energy projects in Fairbanks, Cordova, Kotzebue and other villages of the northwest Arctic, and learn from the innovative Alaskan energy champions who built them. The cohort will engage with community voices as well as speakers and facilitators from a diverse cross section of the energy sector.

Upon returning home, the project will conclude with executive coaching support to advance their regional energy project. ELA will target participants from Alaska and US states and territories in the Caribbean (Puerto Rico) and the Pacific (Hawaii, Guam, and American Samoa), and will focus on technical training, peer collaboration, and mentorship to advance projects and workforce readiness to implement renewable energy microgrids.

This project aligns with the NSF ExLENT Program, funded by the NSF TIP and EDU Directorates, as it seeks to support experiential learning opportunities for individuals from diverse professional and educational backgrounds to increase their interest in, and their access to, career pathways in emerging technology fields.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.