**Title**: Energy in the North - Bill Schnabel
**Date**: October 16, 2024
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Bill Schnabel


00;00;00;28 - 00;00;04;10 [Bill Schnabel] We are going to produce engineers that that have a skill set that can work with communities and help community members figure out what are the best options and how do we as a community take care of this option

00;00;12;22 - 00;00;19;04 [Amanda Byrd] This week on Energy in the North, we speak with Bill Schnabel, the dean of Usf's College of Engineering and Mines. Bill and his team have developed a new energy resource engineering degree program at UAF. The degree will help Alaska transition towards more installed renewable energy. And I started the conversation by asking, Bill, why is it important that Alaska has engineers trained in the field of energy?

00;00;36;05 - 00;00;39;15 [Bill Schnabel] We need to have engineers who know how to work across the spectrum of energy sources. We have produced engineers for over 100 years at UAF. And over that time, we've developed engineers that are solving challenges for the state of Alaska. one of the next big challenges that we have is the energy transition. So we want to graduate engineers who understand conventional energy sources, understand how to work with petroleum in oil and gas and coal and those sorts of things as energy sources. But we also need engineers who understand how to work in renewables and recognize that, you know what renewables are replacing fossil fuels. We want to produce engineers who are nimble enough and who are somewhat generalists so that they are able to adapt to the changing conditions.

00;01;19;21 - 00;01;21;13 [Amanda Byrd] So Alaska has about 220 remote communities for microgrids, and I don't know, maybe 70 or 90 of them have renewable energy.

00;01;29;20 - 00;01;37;14 [Bill Schnabel] The communities that are moving into the renewables are ahead of the curve because in the end, we're going to be there working in some renewable fashion. Some of it is out of just being forward looking, recognizing that this is what's coming. Some of them are doing it out of necessity. If we have a resource that's available, such as a whole bunch of wind, and we're not using that, and instead we're relying on this finite resource, which is, you know, the fossil fuels which contribute to CO2 we're not maximizing our use of resources. One one challenge going forward is these many of these communities are hard to get to. They're small, so there's not a lot of people who know how to fix systems, know how to install systems and things like that. So part of what we're trying to do is, is produce engineers who are conversant in this area, who can work with others and help make sure that in communities where we are bringing in renewables, that we have the talent to operate them.

00;02;26;12 - 00;02;30;26 [Amanda Byrd] It's important when the systems are designed that there's buy in from the communities.

00;02;30;26 - 00;02;32;11 [Bill Schnabel] Engineers are generally designers of systems, What they're also doing in designing that system, they're really working with the community and helping to understand that, wow, actually this this is a community asset and people living here
are going to be the owners and operators of this. We are going to produce engineers that that have a skill set that can work with communities and help community members figure out what are the best options and how do we as a community take care of this option and and maximize it, optimize it?

00;03;02;08 - 00;03;06;16 [Amanda Byrd] This sounds like a really exciting career path for people from all backgrounds.

00;03;06;16 - 00;03;24;10 [Bill Schnabel] What we're hoping to do is by creating this program, by by specifying there is a need for this brand of engineering in the state, that we will bring in new people who wouldn't necessarily have gone to school in Alaska or maybe who wouldn't necessarily have gone to college at all. Maybe they decide, Wow, I want to be an engineer who's working in this industry. In the end, the state will benefit from not only having more engineers, but more diverse engineers, engineers with diverse backgrounds, women engineers, Alaska native engineers, people that came from different perspectives. That's how we'll increase our creative potential in the state.

00;03;46;02 - 00;03;54;12 [Amanda Byrd] Bill Schnabel is the dean of the College of Engineering and Mines at UAF. And I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep.