Green up your laundry room with cleaner, healthier products. Check out this interactive guide.

As an Alaska Native veteran, I want to see our country expand our clean energy sources. It will help our planet and our state, it will help Alaska’s Native peoples and it will help our national defense.

I am 69 years old. In my lifetime I have seen many changes connected to global warming. A big part of where I grew up has permafrost. The small village where my mother was born has sunk in and is now part of a large lake. I saw the old village of Kasigluk begin sinking in my short lifetime. The island where my maternal grandparents lived is mostly gone. A new Kasigluk was created almost a mile downriver from the old village. A new school, federally funded houses, post office and airport had to be built at a high cost.

The warming has affected the fall white fish runs on the Johnson River not far from Bethel. People there rarely fish for them anymore. The black fish creeks are almost nonexistent because of the changing river channels due to warming. The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta has been invaded by beaver, which dam up the many small tundra creeks, disrupting the black fish runs.

Newtok, where my maternal grandmother’s family is from, and the village of Shishmaref need to be relocated at great cost due to erosion. Our elders link the erosion to changing weather due to warming. The melting of the permafrost also increases the cost of constructing homes and public buildings.

In rural villages, the cost of fuel to heat homes is high. So is the cost of electricity, which comes from expensive diesel fuel.

Continue reading: Clean energy can lessen Native suffering

The success of an innovative new home in Anaktuvuk Pass – which uses a wind power, solar panels and design features of traditional Nunamiut sod housing – is changing the way houses will be designed and built on the North Slope.

“This is a huge leap forward – I hope it has tremendous impact,” said Daryl Kooley, of the Tagiugmiullu Nunamiullu Housing Authority.

The house used just 87 gallons of heating fuel from November to June. Other homes typically use about 100 gallons of fuel per month.

It also cost a lot less to build – just $220,000, compared to a normal three-bedroom home in Anaktuvuk Pass, which runs upwards of $570,000.

The house was the prototype in an effort to find ways of building better, more cost-effective houses in rural Alaska, which “grew out of the fact that estimates for new housing were so extraordinary,” Kooley said. A modest, three-bedroom home in Nuiqsut constructed in the usual way, for example, can cost over $1 million to build.

That is a real problem in North Slope villages, which suffer over-crowded, crumbling homes in desperate need of replacement. To find a solution, TNHA teamed up with the Cold Climate Housing Research Center, a nonprofit that works on developing housing designs for the circumpolar north.

“We are going to have diminishing financial resources for building in rural Alaska given the economic reality of the U.S. So how can we together address the high cost of housing? We can do that together so the future is a little brighter for these communities,” said CCHRC president and CEO Jack Hebert.

The Anaktuvuk Pass prototype house was the first structure built as part of CCHRC’s Sustainable Northern Communities project, a program begun in 2008 to engineer housing solutions for rural northern communities.

Continue reading: Taking the chill out of Arctic Homes

When it comes to saving energy, many Americans seem to get it — and at the same time they don’t get it at all.

That’s the takeaway from a new study by researchers from Columbia University, Ohio State University and Carnegie Mellon University who found that people are far more likely to focus on switching off lights or unplugging appliances than on buying new bulbs or more efficient refrigerators. But people’s perceptions of the relative savings of various actions are significantly at variance with reality.

“Participants estimated that line-drying clothes saves more energy than changing the washer’s settings (the reverse is true) and estimated that a central air-conditioner uses only 1.3 times the energy of a room air-conditioner (in fact, it uses 3.5 times as much),” the researchers wrote.

Continue reading: Delusions Abound on Energy Savings, Study Says

Serve potluck dishes made from local foods. Invite a farm family, or arrange a visit to a local farm sometime.

Then, play old-fashioned outdoor games and sing folk songs and modern tunes about gardens and farms and saving the Earth. Play board games like Earthopoly, Wild Seed Game, Harvest Time, Farmopoly and Gardenopoly. Make your own Environmental Jeopardy game, with everyone contributing questions, or download Earth Day Network’s free version. Check out, rent, or buy a DVD appropriate for all ages. Green Planet Films, a nonprofit organization that promotes environmental education through film, is one of the best sources we’ve found.

For themes, search “eco dinners” or “green dinners” on the Internet and then choose a specific topic for links to discussion questions or guides. (Or browse around on The Daily Green!)

Additional sources of nature and environmental DVDs: Bullfrog Films and the Sierra Club.

More from The Daily Green: Host a Farm-to-Table Potluck Dinner

If Alaskans aren’t at a crossroads politically, we’re drawing close. Most all candidates running for statewide offices this year have given due time to talk about the state’s energy future, since we’ve been living off of our energy past for so long and change is coming. A dwindling flow of oil down the pipeline makes it impossible to ignore. It’s the way the state pays for much of what it does, so it impacts nearly everyone. Two of the five questions posed to candidates by Alaska Newspapers Inc. deal directly with energy and how we acquire it.

We also asked them about other issues important to rural Alaskans: subsistence, fisheries, jobs. Every candidate running for the U.S. House, U.S. Senate, governor’s office and lieutenant governor’s office was sent the same questions. Below are answers from those who responded.

Continue reading: Finding energy at the ballot box

A Southeast Alaska hydropower plant is closer to completion. A $9 million Alaska Energy Authority grant is the final piece of the funding puzzle for the Prince of Wales Island’s Reynolds Creek project.

Listen online: Southeast Hydropower Plant Approaches Completion

Amid the heavy equipment and industrial setting of the Golden Heart Utilities wastewater treatment plant, it’s easy to spot the nearby garden filled with squash, tomatoes and corn.

The lush plot runs along one side of the South Fairbanks facility and gives employees an opportunity to collect an armful of fresh produce on their way home. But the garden is more than a food source or a summer pastime — it proves a point about the soil it’s growing in.

The crops are planted in fresh compost, made on site from biosolids collected at the wastewater facility. The big cabbages are growing in 100 percent Golden Heart Utilities compost.

“The only thing mixed in there is sweat,” said Sylvia Brees, an administrative assistant for Utility Services of Alaska and “master weeder” of the garden.

As Brees proved, the compost can be the foundation of an impressive harvest. It’s the first year of planting a full garden, part of an experiment to show exactly what can be done with the abundant compost material.

The Cooperative Extension Service has a variety of videos and online lessons available for people looking to preserve newly harvested fish or game.

Extension is offering DVDs and online information about canning basics for fish and meat. The lessons combine written, audio and video information, and are available at www.uaf.edu/ces/preservingalaskasbounty. The series was developed by district agents and staff, and DVDs also include using Alaska’s wild berries, pickling, drying foods, making sausage, jerky, jams and jellies. Online lessons cover many of the same topics, along with assembling a can sealer, making sauerkraut and infusing vinegar.

DVDs are available for $5 at extension office or by calling 877-520-5211. A variety of home food preservation publications can be downloaded at the website.

The electrics are coming! By the end of the year, at least six battery-powered vehicles will be on the U.S. market. The cars will finally go from revolving on show stands to dealer floors, and we’ll finally know if consumers mean it when they say in opinion polls that they’ll consider an EV for their next purchase. Most of these cars will charge in five or six hours on 220-volt home current, and overnight on 110. Fifteen-minute fast charging (480 volts) may be available at some public stations, maybe even at your favorite big-box store.

Here’s a rundown of the cars headed for showrooms, some from major manufacturers and others from ambitious startups. Four are battery-only cars, one is a plug-in hybrid and the sixth (the Chevrolet Volt) is a unique combination of the two.

Continue reading: 6 Hot New Electric Cars Soon to Hit Show Rooms