Alaska Energy Authority: Focused on Renewables, Minimizes Gas & Coal

September 17, 2024

The Alaska Energy Authority’s mission statement declares its role is to reduce the cost of energy to Alaskans, and “strive to diversify Alaska’s energy portfolio – increasing resiliency, reliability and redundancy.”

The AEA has taken in almost half a billion dollars in federal funding from recent legislation, including the Inflation Reduction Act.  Some of those dollars are being used to build solar and wind installations in rural Alaska. While a few of the projects make sense and help lower energy costs for villages and their residents, many are never going to return the start-up costs in their project lifecycles.

AEA has taken the lead in upgrading the Railbelt interties (between Fairbanks and the Kenai Peninsula) to allow for more integration by Independent Power Producers (IPPs) – essentially for-profit wind and solar project owners, whose profits would leave the state in most cases.  Huge amounts of money – over $200 million – is to be spent, all while adding in risk of grid failure due to technological or performance shortfalls from the IPP integrations.

The AEA’s focus on spending federal dollars from GRIP (Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships) and various 45Q subsidies for many of its projects places pressure for AEA and others to acquire continued funding for maintenance and upkeep.  AEA’s desire to build “resiliency and redundancy” into the grid, however, overlooks the true lack of “reliability” from wind and solar, especially given Alaska’s dark, cold winters, and the risks associated with counting on IPPs to perform, when making profit – not powering and heating Alaskan homes and businesses – is their ultimate goal.

AEA would be better off focusing efforts and dollars on building out infrastructure that would get Alaska’s vast coal and natural gas reserves developed.  It wouldn’t need the for-profit, Alaska-money-leeching IPPs if the centuries of coal and gas supplies were available.  It wouldn’t need to count on federal dollars and continued grift to cover Alaska’s power needs if it helped solve the stigma of bringing Alaska’s traditional energy to market.

Ultimately, the Alaska Energy Authority is missing the boat on its focus on renewables.  A course correction can only help Alaska move forward with a sustainable, reliable, cost-effective power solution.  Let’s hope its focus changes before it is too late.