Feedback From Opinion Piece Shows We Have Lots of Work to Do

December 13, 2021

By Rick Whitbeck, Alaska State Director

I recently penned a piece for the Anchorage Daily News, noting that Southcentral Alaska residents and business owners should be thankful for the immense amounts of natural gas available to us in the region.

The comments I received online, as well as via email, show that the vast majority of respondents have a decent understanding of Alaska’s current energy mix, which is overwhelmingly based on traditional, fossil fuels throughout much of the state.

There were some interesting comments to be sure, suggesting a misguided approach regarding the need to accelerate a transition from traditional energy to ‘green’ sources. 

Our relatively low-cost natural gas solutions make it tough to use anything other than traditional sources presently. If there was a way for renewables to be anything other than a token percentage of our region’s energy solution presently, I’m sure companies would have made business decisions to invest in those solutions. 

The comments chiding me for wanting to utilize lower-cost, higher-reliability sources show we still have work to do at Power The Future, in order to educate more Alaskans about the jobs, revenues, opportunities and current solutions available to us in the Great Land.

As the calendar turns to 2022, you can be sure we’ll be doing just that.