In Daylong Challenge, Students Design Small-Scale Renewable Fixes for Maine

Zumbrun planned the event throughout the fall semester, coordinating with academic departments, receiving feedback from students and faculty, and lining up guest speakers and judges.

The day began at 10 am with a presentation from Dan Burgess, acting commissioner of the Department of Energy Resources, who provided a broader context of Maine's energy plan, goals, and current obstacles. Karen Blakelock, climate and energy policy advisor for the Nature Conservancy in Maine, spoke about the components behind a strong renewable energy solution, and Bowdoin Professor of Economics Erik Nelson gave an overview of the complexities behind grids and utilities and what "greening a grid" looks like.

Blakelock and Nelson were both judges for the event, along with Fred Horch, co-founder of Spark Applied Efficiency, a local mechanical contracting firm with a focus on clean energy.

After the presentations concluded, students had three hours to work on designing a small-scale renewable energy solution. Groups were judged on components like feasibility, scalability, funding mechanisms, short-term versus long-term costs, justification to the public, and how they would get support from the public and policymakers.

"We were really trying to get people to think small scale-community or state level-but also to think about the scalability of it and have solutions that could be transferred to a different state," Zumbrun said.

Students had five minutes to present their ideas, which included creative approaches to heat pumps, home batteries, community batteries, kelp as insulation, and biogas systems using compost.

The winning solution involved state-subsidized household batteries, proposed by Annie Moore '26, Liam Mattox '29, Graham Reynolds '29, Adam Rublin '29, and Ethan Stolper '29. Zumbrun said she would be sending the top three winning proposals to Burgess and the Department of Energy Resources to see if the state has any interest in what the students devised.

The event concluded with a networking portion in which students spoke with Bowdoin alumni working in energy-related fields.

Emma Butterfield '26, an environmental studies and Hispanic studies coordinate major who participated in the event, said that as a Mainer, she enjoyed learning about Maine's energy landscape from the presenters. She also said she enjoyed the exercise because of its focus on collaboration.

"It was nice and comforting to see how many people were spending eight hours of their weekend not only participating in a challenge, but also putting time into environmental solutions," Butterfield said.

Zumbrun said she hopes the event continues after she graduates and is expanded beyond energy into other sectors.

"I think the bigger takeaway for me was just the value of having so many different people come together. I really enjoy seeing what people together create," she said. "I was blown away with all the solutions that everybody came up with, and it was a good testament to what happens when you get smart people in a room together."