Sharing Energy Experiences Across Isolated Regions

From cooperative-led utilities in Alaska to solar systems across the Caribbean, remote and isolated communities are pioneering innovative solutions to their energy challenges. A common thread ties these regions together as they work in parallel to achieve energy resilience and independence despite geographic and economic constraints.

A simple idea — that geographically distant and isolated communities, even on opposite sides of the world, face similar challenges around energy cost and workforce constraints; and that their solutions could be shared and strengthened through connection and partnerships — is what sparked RMI and the Alaska Center for Energy and Power to create the Energy Leadership Accelerator (ELA) program.

“We wanted to test this hypothesis that islanded communities share things in common,” Annalise Klein, program architect at the Alaska Center of Energy Power and cocreator of the ELA program, explained: “Even if you’re from geographical extremes, such as the Arctic circle or the equator, we thought that between tight-knit communities, extreme weather conditions, shipping delays, tourism industries, and connection to culture, that there would be some interesting collaboration, and we’ve already seen that.”

The ELA program, launched in January 2025, brought 20 leaders from remote, islanded communities across Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, as well as Tribal communities from the continental United States, to Alaska to learn from each other’s shared experiences.

Designed as a cross‑regional leadership network, the ELA combined virtual learning, targeted leadership and emerging technology training, and a hands‑on Alaska Leadership Lab featuring site visits to energy projects in Fairbanks, Kotzebue, and Cordova. By investing in energy leaders rooted in their own communities and building a network of dispersed innovative thinkers, the program aimed to accelerate local renewable energy solutions and strengthen regional workforces and resilience in the face of environmental and logistical challenges.

Energy parallels from the Caribbean to the Arctic

Geographic isolation inherently presents challenges to both energy access and affordability. Shiquoi Isaac, an ELA fellow from St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, works as the energy solutions program manager at the Virgin Islands Housing Finance Authority. Living on an island, Isaac has experienced these challenges firsthand. Though it was his first time in Alaska, 5,000 miles away from his home, he immediately noticed similarities between the remote energy systems in Alaska and his own.

Much like these Alaskan communities, the local authority in St. Thomas is responsible for generating all the island’s electricity. These communities face comparable challenges with limited accessibility and high energy costs, but during his visit to Alaska, Isaac witnessed how innovative and strategic resource use, along with the utilization of emerging technology, has effectively adapted these towns to their unique remote conditions.

As Isaac has experienced on his island, living in such a remote location means that ferry schedules, flight delays, or canceled barge shipments can determine whether a project moves forward or stalls for months. These logistical constraints make long-term planning complex and expensive, with critical equipment or materials sometimes delayed by entire seasons. Despite their distance from one another, the ELA fellows described remarkably similar realities — highlighting how their isolation shapes both their energy infrastructure and the leadership strategies required to maintain them.

When touring Alaska, Edgar Oscar Ruiz, an ELA fellow from the small island of Vieques just off Puerto Rico, was struck by the scale of some of the communities he visited, and how even towns smaller than his own were successfully running on self-contained microgrids. As the executive director and cofounder of Community Through Colors, an organization that brings disaster relief and preparedness to remote, isolated communities, Ruiz has helped deploy emergency-resilient solar systems across 10 Caribbean Islands. He also faces the harsh reality of the high cost of shipping materials to a remote island.

Ruiz quickly discovered that these Alaskan communities are faced with similar challenges to his own island in the Caribbean. Their isolation complicates logistics and project implementation in the same way. As he put it, “It’s not just dealing with solar and batteries, it’s dealing with solar and batteries at the Arctic Circle.” For Ruiz, the challenge of shipping materials to his small island makes certain projects too expensive to develop. Joining ELA has allowed him to see how others have navigated similar barriers.

Cordova's clean conversion

Tucked between the Chugach Mountains and the mouth of the Copper River lies Cordova, a coastal town only accessible by boat or plane. It sits on the eastern edge of the Prince William Sound and is home to a thriving fishing industry that has long sustained both its economy and culture.

Twenty-five years ago, Cordova was reliant on imported diesel fuel for power. This was a costly and logistically complex situation, since diesel had to be barged in to meet both everyday needs and the steep seasonal peaks driven by the fishing industry. This all changed around the turn of the century when federal and state support paved the way for a hydroelectric power plant. Cordova exists within a temperate rainforest and is among the rainiest communities in Alaska. Faced with an annual precipitation of about 150 inches and around 125 days of rainfall each year, they live with an abundance of water — a natural resource that has become central to their shift from imported diesel to reliable, renewable hydropower.

The Cordova Electric Cooperative (CEC), a member-owned, nonprofit electric utility that serves the entire community of Cordova, is the only provider of electricity in town. Under the supervisor of Clay Koplin, former mayor of Cordova with a background in electrical engineering, CEC operates three generation facilities to power Cordova. This includes two hydroelectric plants (Power Creek at 6 MW and Humpback Creek at 1.25 MW), and a 10.8 MW diesel-fired plant for peak and backup supply. Since the installation of their second hydropower facility, Cordova now operates with 80 percent of their annual power needs coming from renewable hydro production at only 20 percent of CEC’s production costs. The diesel fuel they use in the wintertime when the rivers freeze delivers the additional 20 percent of energy needs but represents 80 percent of CEC’s power production costs. The shift to renewables significantly dropped energy costs by 20 percent to their customers, and has saved the community over $50 million in imported diesel fuel costs since its integration.

To ensure year-round reliability, all 78 miles of Cordova’s power lines have been buried underground — a strategic priority championed by Koplin. In a region battered by coastal storms, frequent rainfall, and the occasional earthquake, underground distribution is a critical safeguard against service disruption. Even with their year-round inclement and unpredictable weather, Cordova set a record for reliability last year with only 23 minutes of outage time per customer, including planned outages.

While in Cordova, the ELA fellows had the opportunity to tour the CEC facilities with Koplin and learn about Cordova’s success in energy reliance and affordability. “It’s so important to see what others are doing, to see not only their successes but their failures as well,” Koplin explained. “We share a lot of the same challenges and opportunities, and a lot of the fellows are in a place that we were in 15–20 years ago, and I understand their frustrations. This has been a chance for me to share lessons that we’ve learned and showcase our community and what we’ve accomplished. We can learn a lot from each other.”

Through innovation and strategic resource use, CEC has become a model of how a small, isolated community can leverage strong leadership, a dedicated workforce, and sustainable planning to meet both present needs and future challenges.

The path to energy sovereignty

For many of the ELA fellows, their path to energy work was driven by necessity. While some grew up immersed in the field, either through family ties or an early passion for power systems, others arrived from different backgrounds, drawn in only recently as energy prices climb and the need to support their communities became more urgent. Their path to energy sovereignty reflects a broader movement to reclaim control over resources and build a sustainable and affordable future for their communities.

Energy sovereignty means having control over how, where, and why energy is being produced. For isolated and islanded communities, it means having the power to shape their own future rather than relying on distant utilities or volatile fuel markets. By producing energy locally, communities save money by reducing their dependency on imported fuels, stabilize their electricity costs, and keep that money circulating in the local economy. This creates jobs, strengthens the local workforce, and enables long-term planning that reflects the community’s values to preserve their culture.

Griffin Plush, an ELA fellow from Juneau, Alaska, works as the sustainable energy coordinator for the Alaska Municipal League. He learned early in life about the high cost of energy in remote areas. Growing up in Alaska, his family would face high heating bills each winter. He noted that once they added a heat pump to their home, they started saving money that they would have otherwise spent on propane fuel.

For Estelle Thomson, who joined ELA as a representative of the People of Paimiut in Southwestern Alaska, energy independence is a path to freedom. As a tribal leader from a displaced rural community, her entry into the energy space was born from necessity. Thomson didn’t have any specific expertise in energy, but as the president of the Native Village of Paimiut Traditional Council, a board member of the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, and a member of the Executive Council for the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, she has a lot of experience working with people. Although Thomson did not have a formal energy background, she was driven by a clear purpose to help her community keep their lights on, heat their homes, and preserve their way of life. “Energy independence, for a lot of us, means freedom,” she noted.

Thomson joined the ELA in recognition of the shared experiences among the other fellows, with the understanding that “much of the world experiences the same challenges, just in different climates or hemisphere.” The program’s strength, in her view, lies in bringing people together and creating a network rooted in empathy, local knowledge, and mutual respect.

The importance of energy sovereignty resonated throughout the ELA fellowship. Wayne Morgan, a fellow joining from the remote community of Aniak, Alaska, became focused on energy only two years ago in 2023, when the electricity rates in his town quadrupled in cost. He found that decision-making boards and commissions often lack adequate rural representation, and therefore fail to address the unique challenges faced by these rural communities.

While visiting Kotzebue, Morgan was inspired by the strong collaboration between the town and its utility to pursue a cooperative utility model. He witnessed how a small, remote community took ownership over their energy grid and created a sustainable and affordable system that benefits the customers and ratepayers. Faced with the hurdles of being remote, the Kotzebue Electric Association built local partnerships, trained a small but dedicated workforce, maximized available resources, utilized emerging technologies such as electric vehicles, and made strategic decisions that prioritized long-term reliability and community well-being over short-term fixes. Their model showed what’s possible when communities can lead their own energy future. Morgan found a similar system in Cordova, where the town, in partnership with their utility company, is now in complete control of their energy grid within their community.

Inspired by his visits to Kotzebue and Cordova, Morgan hopes to apply for funding to create a Tribal-owned utility that incorporates renewable energy systems for more reliable and affordable energy in Aniak, which is currently powered by expensive imported diesel fuel. Like many remote communities across Alaska and beyond, Aniak’s isolation magnifies the challenges of high energy costs and dependence on outside resources. Yet this same isolation is also what links these communities together, creating a shared thread of experience that underscores the value of connection, collaboration, and learning from each other’s solutions.

Isolation as a connecting thread

Isolation magnifies every risk: a delayed shipment, a single storm, or a policy shift can ripple across an entire community. For many of the fellows in the Energy Leadership Accelerator, that isolation sparked innovation. During visits to places like Cordova and Kotzebue, fellows saw how communities had taken control of their energy futures — not through massive outside investment, but through local leadership, collaboration, and strategic resource use.

From Cordova’s buried power lines to Kotzebue’s community-led decision-making, the strategies are different in form but grounded in the same need to build systems that work in the most remote of places. Seeing their own challenges reflected in the stories of others, and learning how communities from opposite ends of the map addressed those challenges, was transformative for the fellows.

“I was surprised to see people from the Caribbean, Hawaii, Alaska, and the lower 48 all relating to the same issues and really understanding them. We all face the same challenges,” said Jonathan Barcenas, ELA fellow from Bemidji, Minnesota. “After this experience, we feel like we’re one step closer to realizing our vision through this collective understanding. It really reinforces that we can change the status quo.”

The Energy Leadership Accelerator united energy leaders who, despite vast distances, face strikingly similar challenges. By connecting leaders with those tackling parallel barriers worldwide, the ELA program built a coalition committed to shared learning and energy sovereignty.

This sense of connection became one of the most powerful outcomes of the program. While each community is different, their solutions can move faster when the people doing the work can learn from one another.