Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

Footprint Project assembles, deploys and maintains solar generators to displace fossil fuel generators and support community-led recovery during disaster power outages. We focus on empowering mutual aid networks and locally-based resilience groups by providing them with plug-and-play clean energy systems so they can serve their community. Our Solar Energy Rapid Response Team (SERRT) works to power donation drop sites, emergency command centers, first aid stations, refrigeration and medication storage, and any other electricity-dependent services for Community Resilience Hub Partners (CRHPs). Footprint Project not only reduces fossil fuel use, but also empowers underserved, front-line community groups to kick-start equitable, resilient recovery.

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Our project not only reduces fossil-fuel use after extreme weather disasters, but also empowers underserved, front-line community groups to kick-start equitable recovery. There is a lack of direct access to sustainable electricity when the grid goes down-- a basic problem that carries significant knock-on effects, disproportionately impacting already-underserved communities. In a glaring example of disaster injustice, after Hurricane Laura, more people died from carbon monoxide poisoning from fossil-fuel generators than from the storm surge itself. The current auxiliary power options available to climate-vulnerable and marginalized communities are dangerous, dirty, and only exacerbate the next extreme weather event bearing down on them. 

Unfortunately, frontline communities are made up of the most underrepresented communities in this country. With this in mind, Footprint has deployed solar equipment and provided clean energy to vulnerable communities all over the US, from the frontline communities of Puerto Rico to homeless persons encampments in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to wildfire affected communities in California. 

Therefore, we have seen many long-term opportunities that could come from addressing these challenges by providing mobile solar equipment and training local organizations in underserved communities, including: 
1. Improved access to life-saving electricity when the grid is down (particularly for medically-vulnerable populations in need of device charging, insulin storage etc). 
2. Reduced dependence on fossil-fuel generators after power outages. 
3. Improved local representation in the recovery process (through local control of electricity resources). 
4. Shared, community access to mobile solar for educational, cultural and empowerment events in between disaster response deployments. 
5. Workforce development for future employment opportunities in the green energy industry. 
6. Potential for locally-owned social enterprises to develop out of the rental of mobile solar equipment in between disasters. 

Our project‚ core focus is to fight environmental disaster injustice by providing marginalized community-groups with mobile solar gear and training them to use the equipment effectively during power outages. While our top priority is to improve local resilience to climate disasters, we fully expect and hope that our partners make their cache of mobile solar equipment available to any local organization that would otherwise need a gas generator. By training more partners to deploy and maintain the equipment, we hope to create a network of shared mobile solar resources that can be offered to any and all community partners in need of temporary electricity. 

In this way, our project not only reflects but energizes the full breadth of the environmental field. Footprint will encourage shared use of the equipment by developing open calendars for scheduling equipment use, and maintaining a map of all the mobile equipment available in the country. Whether our partnership organizations activate their mobile solar energy equipment to power disaster recovery, environmental advocacy events, tribal ceremonies, or educational workshops, our goal of displacing temporary gas generators is achieved for those that need it most.

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