A quest to build renewable energy at the frozen top of the world

In Qaanaaq, Greenland, residents live between the gargantuan Greenland Ice Sheet and the frigid waters of Baffin Bay. QAANAAQ, Greenland — Out on the ice, Toku Oshima often says, “there is no time.” No calendar but the migrations of sea creatures. No clock but the cadence of the tides. She can hunt and fish the same way her parents did, and their parents before them: traveling by dog sled, sleeping in a wooden hut she built with her own hands.

To Oshima, the initiative is her “gift to the next generation” — an investment in Qaanaaq’s future that makes space for the traditions of its past. Oshima is something of an unofficial leader for the town. As a skilled craftswoman, trained electrician and one of few women with a hunter’s license, she commands respect from men and women alike.To Qaanaaq’s children, she is “Aunt Toku” — provider of sweets, fishing trips and sewing lessons. She shows them how to identify cracks in the ice and predict the weather.

“Our numbers have become very few,” said Sofus Alataq, a union member. Most young adults in Qaanaaq seek jobs in town, or else move south to work in one of Greenland’s larger, more accessible communities. Some residents have been forced to kill their sled dogs when they could no longer afford to feed them.

“But then I thought, ‘What a cop-out. You’re an engineer,’” Albert recalled. “‘They’re not asking you to help them invent the next thin film solar panels — they want practical things.’” “You can’t just plunk something down and say, ‘Here’s what we use where we live,’” Albert said. “You have to really, really listen to their needs.”It was by sitting with residents in their homes that the team identified one of their first targets: the houses themselves. Most were built using kits crafted for Danish, not Greenlandic, weather — making them “absolute sieves for energy,” Albert said.

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