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GRAND FORKS — Dr. Bethany Klemetsrud, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at UND, views the Tribal Energy Sovereignty Initiative as a natural extension of her work, passion, and background.

"My research focuses a lot on environmental sustainability and turning waste into energy and fuel," she said. "... And one of the things that I have been wanting to do with my research is try to involve more tribal community members."

The Tribal Energy Sovereignty Initiative is an interdisciplinary, community-focused, multi-university project working to find "sustainable reliable and efficient engineering practices infrastructures and solutions to the gaps in tribal energy. It also aims to "support educational opportunities to train tribal members, improve tribal workforce, and expand technical capacity to implement innovative energy sources," according to a press release from the office of Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.

The Initiative recently received a four-year, $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation, issued by the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. The money will be used partly to research the different renewable energy technologies, and the rest will be invested in supporting and building engineering education programs in tribal colleges.

"Tribal nations really want to divest from fossil fuels. They want to be a part of renewable energy," Klemetsrud said. "However, there are a lot of technology gaps. There is a lot of missing information, and there is a lack of investments, things like that, and so that is what our research is trying to address."

Including the tribal colleges is what Klemetsrud, who grew up on the White Earth Reservation, thinks will make this project more than just researching different forms of renewable energy.

"A lot of times what happens when research universities work with tribal colleges is we come in with a research agenda like 'This is what we are going to do, and this is what is best for Tribal Nations.' That is a really paternalistic approach," she said. "It is an approach that does not honor that Tribal colleges are the experts at educating Native students … so one of the goals that I had for this project was that we were going to center their expertise and center their knowledge."

The Initiative is a partnership between UND, North Dakota State University, Kansas State University, Haskell Indian Nations University, Turtle Mountain Community College, Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College, and the Tribal Research Network Group.

"We have an outline of what research we would like to do," Klemetsrud said. "But the research that actually happens within the Tribal Nations and what energy solutions they are looking for is really going to come from the tribal communities themselves."

Among UND, NDSU, and KSU, three different engineering divisions are involved in the research. There are also three different methods of renewable energy being researched: microgrids, photovoltaic-thermal energy and Klemetsrud's specialty, converting waste materials into energy or fuel.

The research aims to create a reliable, renewable, and sustainable power system accessible to those living in tribal communities.

"Being able to have renewable energy is important, but also that it is an affordable renewable energy source," Klemetsrud said. "If it is going to be more expensive than what they are paying for heating or electricity right now, then that is not really a sustainable solution."

While energy sovereignty is the research goal, the support for engineering programs at tribal colleges excites Klement the most.

"The big lofty goal is that, if this research goes well, we would be able to implement it within the tribal nations," she said. "Then we would have trained Native engineers from their own communities to work on these projects."