Allison Archambault promotes clean-energy innovations that build climate resilience
Allison Archambault, A03, president of EarthSpark International, defines the most resilient electricity grids as those that "serve the needs of the community with local power. That's where the conversations should begin.” Illustration: Joel Kimmel
What would it take to make clean, affordable, reliable energy available everywhere? Allison Archambault, A03, believes the answer lies in focusing on the local.
Small electrical grids called microgrids can tap into local energy supplies, such as solar panels. Microgrids can function within larger power grids but can also work independently when needed, offering greater resilience in the face of climate change. They are critical in the U.S. and around the world, she says.
“All power systems should be clean, efficient, and smart,” says Archambault, president of EarthSpark International, a nonprofit making strides toward solving energy poverty. The group, based in Washington, D.C., has developed two town-sized, solar-powered microgrids in rural Haiti and aims to launch 22 more there within five years. The projects build not only poles and wires but also what Archambault calls “the human element of infrastructure” by directly benefiting local livelihoods and advancing gender equity.
“We empower communities to meet their own energy needs,” says Archambault, who elaborates on her passion for curbing climate change in her TEDx talk, “Moving to ‘Electric Everything’ is Possible.”
“As we define the ideal energy sources, the most resilient electricity grids will be ones that serve the needs of the community with local power,” she says. “That's where the conversations should begin.”
Archambault joined EarthSpark International 14 years ago and has contributed to significant success for its community-led philosophy. Milestones include a technology spin-off, SparkMeter, that now offers smart metering solutions in 30 countries, and EarthSpark's Feminist Electrification approach, which supports gender equity and won a United Nations Momentum for Change award in 2018.
In Haiti’s progress, she sees lessons that can guide the push for clean, affordable energy around the world.
Early Victory
Archambault arrived at Tufts from Toledo, Ohio, with plans to study anthropology. But one day, after listening to a National Public Radio story about climate change while jogging, a “clarion alarm bell went off in my mind,” she says. “I realized, in that moment, that climate change is really important.”
Her first opportunity to make a difference came with a student job at the Tufts Climate Initiative, founded to help the university reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. Her project: testing the feasibility of a cost-saving technology called Vending Miser. The device, through motion detection, deactivated vending machine lights when students were not around and conserved energy needed to chill the drinks.
“We metered the energy consumption and saw that it saved a lot of electricity, and Tufts went on to scale up the pilot,” she says. Tufts installed 90 of the devices in 2001, which earned a shout-out from Massachusetts as a “best practice” in campus sustainability projects.
Archambault ended up focusing her studies on economics and international relations, and credits two Tufts mentors with jumpstarting her climate-centric career: Sarah Hammond Creighton, EG90, former director of Campus Sustainability, who supported the Vending Miser project, and William Moomaw, professor emeritus of International Environmental Policy at The Fletcher School, who let Archambault enroll in one of his classes. (“That was really cool; I was a lowly undergraduate!” she recalls). Moomaw later advised her on her senior thesis, which focused on rural solar electrification in Mali.
“I’ve been fortunate to have brilliant leaders support me—real doers doing real work,” she says.
Factoring in Household Energy
In Haiti, reliable electricity is hard to come by. It is estimated that about one-quarter of Haiti’s population has access to electricity; those who live off the grid often use dirty and inefficient energy sources, such as kerosene and candles for light and diesel generator sets for power (if and when diesel is available and affordable and the equipment is working). Cooking over charcoal or wood fires releases climate-warming emissions and is bad for the people breathing the smoke, says Archambault.
Building town-sized solar-powered grids for rural communities, EarthSpark is working to integrate clean electric cooking into the microgrid business model. “Our sustainable development goal is access for electricity and access to clean cooking,” she says. Traditionally, those two operations have been siloed, and “that’s one of my major pet peeves,” she says. “If we’re building infrastructure to meet people's actual energy needs, that should include the cooking that is happening every day in nearly every home.”
Building a Resilient Future
As the impact of climate change is felt around the world, from more frequent wildfires to crippling hurricanes and flooding, local, renewable electrical systems that can operate independently offer a pathway to greater resilience, says Archambault.
This is not a new idea. She takes inspiration from Amory Lovins, who founded the Rocky Mountain Institute in the 1980s. “When he talked about the future of the electricity grid, he talked about netted, islandable microgrids, or interconnected power systems that could be islanded; they could operate on their own if they needed to,” she says. “These electricity systems are, by extension, more resilient” because they can continue to provide electricity in their area even when the larger grid experiences outages due to disruptions such as natural disasters.
The model is already gaining traction in the United States, she notes, pointing to the example of a tribal resilience hub in California. “The United States is starting to come around to the fact that local energy systems make sense in the context of extreme weather events,” she says.
Joy in What is Possible
Archambault knows that advancing access to energy takes time, money, and perseverance. In Haiti, she has been working for nearly 15 years to put together EarthSpark’s $46 million microgrid scale-up project with partners at the local, national, and international level. The effort is backed by the Green Climate Fund, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank. At the same time, civil unrest and gang activity in Haiti have caused fuel shortages and created acute insecurity, she says.
Still, she is optimistic.“There are many people in Haiti who are working very hard in very challenging environments to move things forward,” she says.“Progress is possible even in the face of great challenges.”
As she looks ahead, she is recharged by the progress she sees unfolding.
“I derive great joy in proving what is possible,” she says. “It’s invigorating to work on important problems, alongside phenomenal colleagues who are brilliant and kind. There’s a thrill in working together with communities in Haiti to build new systems that in some ways set an example for the rest of the world to follow.”
