Powering Resilient Communities: A Holistic Approach to Food, Energy, and Water Security
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This course provides research-based and on-the-ground tools for community planners, grid designers, and business leaders to improve and implement stronger and more resilient renewable energy systems in Arctic communities. Through a framework combining renewable energy in microgrids, and Food, Energy, and Water (FEW) security and infrastructure, this course synthesizes concepts into a holistic approach to community planning, improvement, and resiliency.
- Learn about existing and emerging renewable energy sources and technologies and explore examples from Alaska, including solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and hydroelectric facilities.
- Examine underlying causes of food, energy, and water insecurity in Arctic, subarctic, and northern rural communities.
- Gain insights into Arctic and subarctic lifestyles, including the roles and impacts of wild harvests, plant-based foods, and health disparities.
- Learn about food, energy, and water security and analyze the interactions among food, energy, and water usage, for example: energy and water use in the production, transportation, and storage of food; energy usage in treating drinking water and wastewater for human health; water demands and fuel costs for electricity production; appropriate food systems, energy, and water resource usage and allocation; climate change impacts, fossil fuels and environmental impacts.
- Gain specialized expertise on a variety of Arctic energy issues affecting its residents and Indigenous peoples, from engineering to social science to traditional community knowledge.
- Learn the key concepts with practical, Alaska-focused examples.
- Use real wind and solar data and various analysis tools to make community energy assessments.
- Apply the FEW nexus approach to guide decisions about renewable energy alternatives.
- Learn from National Science Foundation-funded researchers and staff from a variety of disciplines at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of Alaska Anchorage, the University of Calgary, Stanford, and the private sector. Connections with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation, Award #1740075 INFEWS/T3: Coupling infrastructure improvements to food-energy-water system dynamics in small cold region communities: MicroFEWs.
المدربين
Bill Schnabel
Dr. Schnabel has a background in chemistry and environmental engineering and is a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Bill's areas of research include water quality, road construction, and renewable energy.
Daisy Huang
Dr. Huang is an associate professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and specializes in thermodynamics and thermal management; community usage of renewable energy; mechanics of snow; food, energy, and water security.
Erin Whitney
Dr. Whitney is a faculty member at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. Her research focuses on solar photovoltaics and hydrogen prospects in the Arctic, and she has led numerous projects examining renewable energy for Alaska's communities in a holistic context. Before returning home to Alaska, Dr. Whitney spent nearly a decade as a staff scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado.
Srijan Aggarwal
Dr. Aggarwal studies environmental biotechnology, efficient water/wastewater treatment and biofilm processes in environmental systems. He also specializes in computational modeling of atmospheric nanoparticle pollution and air-quality issues, along with water quality and treatment, air quality and pollution, environmental science, and oil spills.
Jennifer Schmidt
Dr. Schmidt is interested in the research and management of socio-ecological systems that help balance conservation efforts with the needs of society. Her research topics include human dimensions of subsistence and sport harvest, land use, ecosystem management, ecosystem services, climate change, and wildfire. She specializes in topics that require a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach, utilize biological and social data, and engage stakeholders to co-produce knowledge that can be used by a wide audience.
Chris Pike
Mr. Pike specializes in solar photovoltaic research at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, where he manages the Solar Test Site, advises Solarize campaigns across the state, and actively engages in research with varied stakeholders to better understand and responsibly advance solar technology in the Arctic.
Michelle Wilber
Ms. Wilber leads the Beneficial and Equitable Electrification initiative at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. The BEE initiative looks at the electrification of currently or previously non-electrified energy loads in Alaska, such as transportation and heating, in order to harness local, sustainable and cost-effective energy resources for all.
Henry Huntington
Dr. Huntington’s research activities include reviewing the regulation of subsistence hunting in northern Alaska, documenting traditional ecological knowledge of marine mammals, examining Iñupiat Eskimo and Inuit knowledge and use of sea ice, and assessing the impacts of climate change on Arctic communities and Arctic marine mammals. He has made long trips in the Arctic by dog team, open boat, and snowmobile.
Michele Chamberlin
Mr. Chamberlin, formerly of the Alaska Center for Energy and Power and now based in Europe, has focused on renewable energy integration into diesel-based microgrids and refined energy distribution models for food, energy and water-related infrastructure in remote Alaska communities.
Daniel Sambor
Dr. Sambor recently completed his Ph.D. at Stanford University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. His dissertation focused on the design and optimization of food, energy, and water infrastructure in islanded renewable microgrids, with much of his work taking place in Alaska and Canada.
Rich Wies, Jr.
Dr. Wies is an electrical engineer with a focus on renewable energy, distributed controls and energy management, and microgrid modeling and stability. He specializes in engineering challenges of renewable energy integration in remote islanded microgrids including standalone asynchronous renewable generation, energy distribution and storage optimization with high renewable energy penetration, stability of inverter-dominated grids, and assessment of renewable energy impacts on food, energy, and water system security in remote Alaska communities.
Gwen Holdmann
Gwen Holdmann is the founder and former director of the Alaska Center for Energy and Power and has worked as a design engineer and project manager at the only operating geothermal power plant in Alaska. Gwen lives in an off-grid home with her family and 35 dogs, using a combination of solar, wind, battery storage, diesel generation, and wood heat.
Christie Haupert
Christie Haupert spent a decade working as a project manager for the National Science Foundation's Arctic Research Support and Logistics Services Program. She coordinates the Solar Technologies Program, the Data Collection and Analysis Program, and emerging electric vehicle research efforts at the Alaska Center for Energy and Power.
