Climate Change – Samarth Agrawal

Volunteer, Sunrise Movement

Sunrise was my gateway to the youth-led climate justice movement. I have been an active volunteer since quarantine began, lobbying for sweeping new green legislation and trying to elect politicians I believed would stand for our climate. I have spent hours hearing the voice of my fellow citizens phone banking and texting voters across the country, learned what it takes to build a grassroots movement from Sunrise training programs, drafted letters to Massachusetts representatives for renewable energy and a decarbonized economy, and more. For the Which Side Are You On (WSAYO) campaign, I spread awareness by spearheading its meme campaign (most fun job ever) revealing corruption in our state house. It was my time in Sunrise that gave me the idea for Activalytics.

Research Paper on Decarbonizing Residential Heating

This summer, I wanted a taste of what actual scientific research was like. I spent June learning more about New England’s energy economy and where our emissions came from before narrowing down to residential heating, a pivotal unsolved decarbonization consideration where fossil fuels remain greatly entrenched. After spending July familiarizing myself with the common thermodynamics and machines behind heating, I specified my research question and began searching for mentors. Currently, I am creating a simulation on the implementation of different district heating networks, which offer increased flexibility, energy efficiency, demand management for renewable integration, and other benefits. Using different evaluative criteria, I hope to determine a recommendation for adoption for Boston.

What my mentor Dr. Chung and this process have taught me most is the necessity of patience. Accustomed to classes where difficult answers lie in a labelled textbook, I have been forced to learn to embrace uncertainty on the path to trying to add my own contribution. Things take longer than expected when there’s no set path, and I have thoroughly loved the immersion in this meaningful field.

Club Head, Groton Sustainability

While my activism and paper have felt grand in scope, Groton’s Sustainability Committee has reinforced that behind every big idea is the necessity of following through and getting your hands dirty. In my years on the Committee, I have organized recycling cross contamination projects, Flea Markets and book drives for recirculation, and our Green Move-In. These ideas weren’t really revolutionary, but required extensive management, logistical setup, and plain-old labor (tasked with redesigning our waste system, I have dug through many a trash can, euphemistically called “visual audits”) to get everyone working efficiently. I have also had to learn to work with and against administrative authority, with COVID sending waste management 10 years backward with disposable food plates.

We also analyzed the investments in Groton’s endowment fund and created a proposal to divest money from fossil fuels. We had several meetings with hesitant Trustees to nudge them towards implementing our proposals.

Our Climate New England

Activalytics and Sunrise connected me to Our Climate New England, a group working for carbon pricing and government transparency bills, as part of a Massachusetts legislator database project. We are working on creating a compiled data-sharing platform for the MassPowerForward Coalition, composed of over 200 environmental, community, business, and family groups. My job is to help gather data and turn a spreadsheet into a protected database web-tool so that groups in the coalition can collaborate more efficiently and receive profiles of the receptiveness of various legislators.

Solar iPAD Charger, Makerspace

I built a Solar iPad Charger as part of the Maker Space team in 8th grade. Applying design and engineering to a tangible problem I experienced every day at Fenn really got me interested in how science could affect my passion to help the environment. That cart, in use years later, is one of the first things I look for whenever I visit my old school. Another project I loved was spending months building wind and solar-powered electric cars and racing them.

System to Recycle Milk Bottles, FLL Robotics Project

Implemented a system at Stonybrook Middle School in Westford to make it very simple and easy for middle schoolers to recycle milk bottles. The simple system was effective and resulted in thousands of bottles being recycled each year.