Alaska's energy potential

With a title including ”Alaska’s energy potential” I expected a lot more from Kelly Tshibaka’s recent opinion piece. All she seems concerned with is extracting materials to sell and ship Outside. To me, that means that the piece should have been titled “Throwing away Alaska’s Energy Potential.” The piece showed no understanding of Alaska. It is way more than the number of oil barrels off-loaded in Valdez! We have lots of untapped potential in sun, wind, water, plants and animals (including humans)! This is energy that is still to be recognized and utilized to its fullest.

Alaska Energy Authority (AEA) has already helped finance a solar farm near Willow. It recently expanded to 1.2 MW. According to AEA “the facility which will generate power to sell to MEA, is expected to produce enough power for 200 homes and offset two million pounds of CO2 each year.” Golden Valley Electric has a 563kw solar farm that came online in 2018 and power 71 homes. Eagle and Kaltag have photovoltaic projects and there is a solar thermal project in McKinley Village.

According to Wikipedia, wind power in Alaska has the potential to provide ALL of the state’s current electrical needs. Kodiak City is moving quickly in that direction. Their Pillar Mountain wind farm (4.5MW) has reportedly saved 3,000,000 gallons of diesel so far. There is a 25MW wind farm (Eva Creek Project) near Healy. The Anchorage area Fire Island farm has 11 turbines and generates enough power for 6500 homes annually.

The EPRI estimates Alaska’s tidal energy generation potential at 109,000GWh. Alaska could be setting the trend. Currently, the largest tidal generation plant is in South Korea which uses ten 25.4 MW submerged bulb turbines to generate 552.7 GWh annually. In France the La Rance tidal power plant has been operating since 1966. The plant uses 24 reversible bulb turbines for an annual power generation of 540GWh. The UK’s Swansea Bay project when completed could provide power to155,000 homes. The Anapolis Bay tidal project in the Bay of Fundy has been online since 1984. It uses single blade turbine technology and generates 50GWh annually to power 4,000 homes.

The Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI) estimates Alaska’s hydrokinetic (river or water flow) power at 78Gw annually. Smart hydro power uses the flow of any water to generate power. The stronger the flow, the more power can be generated without costly investments in dams or destruction of habitat. Igiugig, on the Kvichak River has been transitioning away from diesel to river-generated electricity, as reported by industry and Native publications. This year the village council hopes to install a second river generation unit so the village can get 90% of its power from the moving water. The council president AlexAnna Salmon explained that the diesel power plant costs $250,000 yearly for the 70 person village. The fuel farm holding 114,000 gallons is situated at the headwaters of the last largest salmon river in the world. “We would like clean renewable energy over diesel any day…. Our river has supplied all our Salmon and food for centuries. It’s our only drinking water and it has a lot of power….. Since time immemorial our people have survived inventing and adapting to new technologies then refining them to the highest efficiency. We perpetuate this way of life.”

As the people of Igiugig have shown, we don’t have to jeopardize our food security and sever our relationships with the rest of Nature to life “modern” lives. We don’t have to ruin the food security of others – say the Gwichin people in Alaska and Canada – in an ill-advised effort to provide fuel for our economy. We can maintain our relationships with the land and the living and still develop our full energy potential.

I encourage Tshibaka to learn more by connecting with the Alaska Center for Energy and Power. The center proclaims to be “dedicated to applied energy research and testing focused on lowering the cost of energy throughout Alaska and developing economic opportunities for the state, its residents and industries.” Keeping our electrical power production close to home is the best approach to that, as Igiugig has shown.

Seeing how quickly we can sell our energy potential to outsiders for the profit of a few is short-sighted to say the least. I hope Tshibaka gets more information from First Peoples and scientists before she speaks further of Alaska’s energy potential.

Sammy Taylor is a resident of Big Lake.