Sustainable North

From the Anchorage Daily News on Sunday, February 8, 2009: Gov. Sarah Palin plans to introduce a bill calling for creating a joint corporation of the six Railbelt electric utilities. Palin says such an entity could unite a “fragmented group of rival utilities” and could save rate payers $40 million annually. The utilities are Fairbanks-based [...]

[Read more →]

From the Anchorage Daily News on Sunday, February 1, 2009: An effort to find new sources of renewable “small hydro” power for the Railbelt is running into opposition from advocates of another, equally noble environmental cause: protection of the mountain headwaters of the fish-rich Kenai River. Electric Association, working with a private consortium, is studying [...]

[Read more →]

From the Arctic Sounder on Thursday, January 29, 2009: State officials assessing hardships on the lower Yukon River area for a possible disaster declaration said they’ll push to create a fuel voucher that could help the poorest families. After two days of listening to crushing testimony from scores of residents in Emmonak and Kotlik, the [...]

[Read more →]

From the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner on Wednesday, January 28, 2009: Education leaders look to be sharpening their focus on energy research, a move spearheaded by tentative plans to build a 31,000-square-foot building dedicated to energy research — everything from wind and hydrogen to coal — at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The plan is on [...]

[Read more →]

From the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner on Wednesday, January 28, 2009: A document submitted as a state energy plan falls short of its mark, while renewable energy projects submitted for funding might go too far, legislators said. Members of the House Energy Committee, including Rep. Jay Ramras, R-Fairbanks, were critical of the Alaska Energy Authority’s state [...]

[Read more →]

  The State of Alaska has published its proposal for grant allocation from the Alaska Renewable Energy Fund. This money will fund the construction of a wide range of alternative energy projects throughout the state. The total proposed expenditure from the State of Alaska is $100 million, with a Federal match of approximately $300 million. [...]

[Read more →]

From the Anchorage Daily News, Wednesday, December 9, 2008: The Alaska Energy Authority has agreed to spend $20,000 to analyze whether energy-efficient wood boilers would be cheaper to use than heating oil for the roughly 50,000-square-foot school being built near Talkeetna. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough, which requested the study, has also chipped in $5,000. … Local [...]

[Read more →]

From adn.com on Friday, September 5, 2008: WASILLA — Backyard wind turbines are popping up around the Matanuska-Susitna Borough as energy prices rise and residents try to harness those notorious Valley winds.  Click here to read the whole article.

[Read more →]

From the Fairbanks Daily Newsminer July 19, 2008 Proponents of a plant that would make liquid fuels out of coal say such a facility could be the solution to high energy costs in Fairbanks and Interior villages. However, a financial specialist warned that private-sector financing will be hard to find without some government assistance, either [...]

[Read more →]

From the Fairbanks Daily Newsminer July 5, 2008 A group of Dillingham, Alaska, fishermen hoping to reduce gas costs for the Bristol Bay fleet are sketching plans to turn salmon waste into fuel. In Nunam Iqua in Western Alaska, a tiny utility hopes to spin power from the wind electric use will jump when a [...]

[Read more →]