To address talent development opportunities and inequities, the U.S. Department of Energy Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Hydropower Foundation (HF) kicked off a three-year partnership in Spring 2021 with Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF) to facilitate regional collaboration and best practices in talent development and stakeholder engagement, using water power as the test case. The intent that a replicable model emerges from this work that can be implemented in multiple regions and across all clean energy technologies.

The expertise of CE’s Clean Energy Fellows played a critical role in the facilitation of this talent ecosystem project, using their place-based knowledge and partnership networks to catalyze collaboration between stakeholders and amplify best practices. A key outcome of this work was the development of a Water Power Implementation Toolkit by CE’s Water Power Cohort of Clean Energy Fellows. This mini library of resources features tools that are a mixture of existing, modified existing, and newly developed classroom curricular resources. Lessons are presented to allow for teachers to mix and modify their preferred sequence of activities for their unique grade level. By engaging with a combination of these resources, students will build understanding of foundational scientific content and use real science and engineering practices to address a critical question: How can humans creatively harness all types of water power and marine renewable energy sources to create a sustainable, zero-emission future?

The Clean Energy Fellows: Water Power cohort was comprised of educators from across the Pacific Northwest that shared the common passion of developing high-quality STEM tools for their students to explore career-connected topics in next generation hydropower and marine renewable energy technologies. Over the course of a year, these teacher experts collaborated across grade bands to design a cohesive storyline of essential questions spanning K-12, identifying and developing the most effective tools to engage students with this storyline as they progressed along their STEM learning journey. Through a process of gap analysis, content selection, implementation, and refinement, Clean Energy Fellows produced a set of tools that will continue to grow and evolve with the landscape of technology and career pathways around it.

These educators, in collaboration with the CE team and industry partners, addressed a number of challenges throughout the curriculum development cycle. Educators identified a number of existing gaps that were emphasized in their work to customize new tools. These focus areas included Tribal history and storylines, advanced hydropower and fish passage technologies, energy and environmental justice, and marine renewable energy discussion that reflected rapid advancements in technology. The Uncommon Dialogue, with its emphasis on the “Three R’s” (Rehabilitation, Retrofit, and Removal) of next generation hydropower management, was a central guiding framework in how educators approached providing their students with real-world challenges and accurate depictions of the complex systems-oriented solutions involved in energy development.

While most of these tools are custom projects built by these educator leaders, the Toolkit features curriculum developed by CE’s partners and the broader network of STEM education experts. Many of these resources were modified to reflect the place-based contexts for students of these Clean Energy Fellows or to more effectively fit within a broader unit. Partners with curriculum featured include NEED, Kidwind, the Center of Excellence for Clean Energy, the Foundation for Water and Energy Education (FWEE), and Teach Engineering. CE’s projects, and the broader movement for equitable clean energy education as a whole, would not be successful without the immense and growing number of curricular tools built by passionate experts like these.

CE and its Clean Energy Fellows used an NGSS Storyline framework to organize this set of curriculum, aligning a bundle of individual lesson plans and activities with grade-band-specific essential questions that address a big-picture challenge. Storylines ensure that students can identify why they are engaged in particular science activities, pointing to a distinct question that will involve developing proficiency in content and practices from multiple angles. The Water Power Implementation Toolkit Storyline uses one overarching K-12 question, with elementary, middle, and high school grades using a series of smaller age-appropriate questions to build toward this high-level theme.

K-12 Essential Question: How can humans creatively harness all types of water power and marine renewable energy sources to create a sustainable, zero-emission future?

Elementary Essential Question #1: What is energy?

Elementary Essential Question #2: How can renewable energy resources work to create energy?

Elementary Essential Question #3: How does water carry energy?

Elementary Essential Question #4: What are the impacts of water power on the environment?

Elementary Essential Question #5: How can humans combine water power and other renewable energy resources to meet the needs of a community?

Middle School Essential Question #1: How is the power of water converted into electricity?

Middle School Essential Question #2: What role does water power play in meeting the energy needs of my community?

Middle School Essential Question #3: What are the environmental and community impacts of water power?

Middle School Essential Question #4: What role to the 3 R’s (Rehabilitation, Retrofit, and Removal) have in evaluating water power in a community?

High School Essential Question #1: How is energy converted from water power into usable energy in the power grid?

High School Essential Question #2: How can we measure and mitigate water power’s impacts for healthy communities?

High School Essential Question #3: How can humans creatively harness water power on land and sea to create a reliable renewables-powered electric grid in the future?