Building solar to power disaster response

From providing access to emergency solar recharging at community spaces in Minneapolis following the killing of George Floyd earlier this year, to aiding recovery efforts following earthquakes in Puerto Rico, storms in Iowa, and now wildfires in California, the Footprint Project has stayed busy in 2020, with no shortage of crises demanding attention, care, and clean energy.

A nonprofit based in Minneapolis, Footprint Project provides sustainable solutions to communities in crisis by mobilizing distributed clean energy assets. We spoke with William Heegaard and Greta Goetz from the team to learn more about the organization and its work.

Footprint Project is working to green the disaster response industry by deploying mobile clean energy technology to communities in need across the U.S., and beyond. The organization works with partners to meet emergency power needs in the days and weeks following a crisis.

“We often work with community groups because these are the groups that can’t afford a diesel generator. We work together to determine a public site and set up clean energy access stations with cell phone chargers and a refrigerator for insulin, following a disaster,” said William Heegaard, founder and executive director of Footprint Project, who brings a background in both disaster response and sustainable development to this work.

Heegaard sees a need to shift power production in disaster response away from diesel generators and toward clean energy, but because firefighters and other first responders are typically trained to operate diesel generators, they can be hesitant to use new technologies.

“There’s a need to educate, and there’s a need to get clean energy equipment into first responders’ hands before a storm or disaster so they’re comfortable working with these technologies when the lights go out. If we can get first responders off of diesel, we can shift the whole response and recovery system. It’s a lot easier for a disaster-affected community to envision a future for their neighborhood if the emergency aid station down the street is being powered by a mobile solar microgrid,” noted Heegaard.

Each disaster and emergency the Footprint Project responds to, Heegaard explained, is unique, and it’s clear the need for clean energy in the aftermath is growing.

“Footprint is this conduit and connector to provide clean energy for communities in crisis and to help inspire them to build back greener, which is a really exciting role for us to play,” said Heegaard.

“In general, we want to be responding to energy needs from natural disasters as soon as we can after the power or grid goes down,” Goetz explained about the organization’s triage and intake process in the event of a disaster. When the team and their equipment arrives onsite, emergency energy needs are prioritized, powering essential services including communications, lighting, refrigerators, and sometimes an air conditioning unit to support first responders and the most vulnerable.

“It becomes a triage of needs and users,” said Heegaard, summarizing the disaster response process on how and to whom Footprint Project provides its equipment during a crisis.

One of the organization’s core partners is Rent Solar, a for-profit social enterprise also based in Minnesota, that Heegaard helps run. A general benefit corporation, Rent Solar develops the technology and solar trailers that the Footprint Project team then works to deploy for communities in crisis.

“We build the solar equipment, but building it is just half the battle. These efforts take a lot of volunteers to make a deployment of the equipment work at all. It really is a community effort,” said Heegaard.

The whole point, Heegaard explains, is that these mobile clean energy resources get deployed and used where they are needed most.

“If someone is doing something good for their community, we want to get them power when we’re not actively deploying our equipment in an emergency. There are mobile solar assets that we have available for community use,” Heegaard said. “That’s the whole reason we’re doing this. We want this equipment to be deployed and useful to partners, not sitting in a parking lot somewhere.”

“What was striking to me was how involved the community was, and how collaborative a process it was getting these projects in place. Everyone we worked with here in Minneapolis was so eager to help and so cooperative, which was really nice to see,” Goetz said.

Despite clear successes helping communities recover and build resilience, Goetz noted how this work can come with some challenges.

“In some instances, we’ve run into red tape with licenses and permitting in some locations to continue helping longer term, especially on an ongoing basis around issues like the encampments in Minneapolis. So right now, we’re waiting to hear back from partners to see how we can help more in some of those cases or as other needs come up,” she said.

“Anyone who has been able to flip the switch and see lights come on for a neighborhood in the dark, all without the fumes or noise of a gas generator, knows how mobile solar can change the game. It empowers folks to participate in and take charge of their own community’s recovery,” he said.

The Footprint Project team will continue to support the needs and recovery of the communities with which it works to help build a cleaner, more resilient energy system. As interest in their work grows, the organization continues to lend its expertise and regional network of partners and solar assets to those who need it most.

“Our goals for 2021 are to grow the pool of mobile solar equipment available for regional power outage response, and train professional and community first responders on this equipment. Our country needs thousands of mobile solar generators, with a network of trained, local technicians to dispatch and maintain them. This doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s been rewarding to develop the groundwork and build relationships with so many partners in this work. It’s been an amazing community of people to be a part of,” Heegaard said.