Makah Tribe Partners With Pacific Northwest National Laboratory To Pursue Energy Sovereignty

March 5, 2024 by Sarah Meehan

This blog post is part of NREL’s series of community spotlights for the Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project (ETIPP).

ETIPP is managed by NREL and draws on a network of national laboratories and regional partners organizations to provide technical assistance to island and remote communities to help improve their energy resilience.

Situated at the northwestern tip of Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, the Makah Tribe frequently experiences power outages that last from multiple hours to several days. Community members rely on individual diesel generators for backup power, and the Tribe’s remoteness adds to its energy challenges.

The Makah Tribe joined ETIPP in 2022 to learn how renewable energy technologies could support its long-term energy sovereignty goals, and foster energy resilience during short-term power outages and extended emergency events. Through ETIPP, the tribe is working with researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to create a strategic energy plan and evaluate the potential for generating energy from solar, wind, biomass, and marine resources.

“We very much value our resources and believe candidly not just in our land but also in the ocean,” said community member Benjamin Maxson. “The Makah Tribe is a community of Native Americans who have great culture and great value for the resources that we’ve been given. And so in that, we want to harness clean energy to protect … the community, the culture, and the value of the Makah Tribe.”

The ETIPP research team has visited the tribe multiple times and conducted analyses to gauge the viability of the different resources, their generation potential, how they will meet future demand as well as how they support overall energy resilience and independence.

“It's not just a question of, ‘Where are there good opportunities for solar?’ or ‘How can we meet this energy goal?’” said PNNL researcher Laura Nelson. “But also thinking about these things in the context of ‘How can renewable energy advance tribal sovereignty and meet some of these other governance and resilience goals that they have at the same time?’”

The strategic energy plan will outline the tribe’s values and vision for energy sovereignty, help inform and support decision-making for future development projects, and support future applications for funding renewable energy projects.

“They're really forward thinking in terms of climate change and also risk from long-term outages if there were to be a major earthquake and tsunami,” said PNNL researcher Katie Arkema. “They're thinking about local energy goals within the context of these larger-scale natural disasters, and that supports an approach that is more tailored to their cultural, economic, and social independence and perspective.”

Although the Makah Tribe’s long-term aims are to achieve energy sovereignty for years and decades, the strategic plan the community is developing through ETIPP will help it map out what it would take to achieve energy independence for 1 year.

“I would hope that going through this process has kind of helped them get to a point where they feel like they can be centering the renewable energy planning that we've discussed when it comes to the new tribal housing and infrastructure developments,” Nelson said. “And … paved the path to achieve some of the more challenging energy goals that they've laid out for themselves.”

Maxson said the ETIPP partnership has been essential to the tribe’s energy planning.

“It’s given us a start, and it’s helping us process through a middle so that maybe we can get to the end goal,” he said.

For more community spotlights and achievements, see ETIPP’s 2023 Annual Report.