A state program designed to ensure that rural Alaska communities have an adequate supply of home-heating fuel is headed into its second successful year, the state reported in a press release.

The Fuel Watch program is an initiative of Gov. Sean Parnell that was implemented by the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development through its Division of Community and Regional Affairs.

Fuel Watch came about as a proactive approach to preventing the kind of seasonal hardship that fuel shortages caused in many rural communities in the winter and early spring of 2009.

To date, DCRA staff have made hundreds of phone calls to communities around the state to verify that fuel supplies are in order for the upcoming winter. In the program’s first year, DCRA staff made more than 1,500 phone calls and assisted 200 communities prior to the onset of winter. Alaska villages saw a significantly reduced number of fuel shortages than were experienced a year earlier.

“Fuel Watch is an excellent example of the proactive and supportive relationship our department strives to develop with communities throughout Alaska. Working to prevent another crisis situation is a much better use of state resources than responding to an actual crisis,” said Susan Bell, commissioner of the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. “Alaskans will be better prepared this winter because of the dedication of Division of Community and Regional Affairs staff.”

DCRA officials are also working with fuel delivery companies and rural communities to identify where assistance may be needed. Communities with limited financial resources are being encouraged to apply for financing through state loan programs.

“Ensuring that rural families stay warm in the winter is part of our division’s mission to promote healthy and safe communities,” said DCRA Director Tara Jollie. “It is not too early to start thinking about the coming winter. When we take steps to avoid an emergency, it is a win-win situation for everyone involved.”

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

Last week as part of Vice President Biden’s announcement of 200,000 homes weatherized under the Recovery act, we asked you to send us your questions and comments about the weatherization process. Today, we’re following up with answers experts from the Department’s Weatherization and Intergovernmental Program:

1) From edmooney via Twitter: @Energy Besides caulking, what are the best values in weatherization for the Northeast region. #weatherization

Nationwide, the energy-efficient retrofits that consistently provide the best return on investment involve sealing gaps in the building envelope which allows conditioned air – either heated or cooled – to escape the interior of the home. States in the Northeast region, which on average have an exceptionally high number of heating degree days each season, are particularly susceptible to energy loss through poor air sealing of the building envelope.

These gaps in the building envelope can include joints between materials, gaps around doors and windows, and penetrations for piping, wiring, and ducts. A blower door test can be used identify these gaps and measure the aggregate degree of air infiltration into your home. Retrofit measures such as caulking, weather stripping, gaskets, and duct sealing can be used to seal these gaps and improve the energy efficiency of your home.

Continue reading: Response to Weatherization Questions

A plan to transfer Fairbanks Natural Gas LLC from private to public ownership and truck liquefied natural gas to Fairbanks from the North Slope is doomed, according to an Alaska Gasline Port Authority board member.

Board member Merrick Peirce wrote in an e-mail that the assumption behind the $250 million business deal — that crude oil prices will continue to rise — is flawed because more crude oil production is coming online in Iraq, increasing the world’s supply.

In interviews, other port authority board members defended the plan and refuted Peirce’s claims. They said the proposal, to be financed with bonds, provides the best possibility of quickly lowering energy prices in Fairbanks.

Decades of talk about building a natural gas pipeline have yet to produce results. “We have not given up on the pipeline,” said Dave Cobb, Valdez Councilman and vice chairman of the port authority governing board. “That is still our No. 1 priority, but you have to do something in the interim.”

The port authority is a partnership between the Fairbanks borough and the city of Valdez that was created to build a gas pipeline to Valdez. Peirce offered his criticism in an e-mail to the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly, which tonight considers a resolution to accept the authority’s proposed purchase of Fairbanks Natural Gas. The assembly also will consider an ordinance that would require a public vote to broaden the port authority’s mission statement before it goes ahead with the trucking plan.

Continue reading: Criticism mounts for call to truck liquefied natural gas to Fairbanks

Fort Yukon could turn to wood-fired power to ease its reliance on diesel fuel. Tanana could install wind turbines and start using half as much fuel within a few years.

The Alaska Energy Authority published those scenarios and about 200 more, including cost estimates, this week. The report comes less than a month after the Legislature set, as official state policy, the target of using wind turbines, hydroelectric dams and other renewable projects for at least half Alaska’s electricity by 2025.

“This gives you the pathway to get there,” said Steve Haagenson, director of the authority.

The agency released the report, an “energy pathway,” to coincide with a three-day rural energy conference in Fairbanks that ended Thursday.

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Willie Hensley said this morning that Alaska, particularly its energy-starved rural communities, should think about bracing for tough times.

Oil development and federal financial aid have left Alaska with great per capita wealth. They’ve declined in recent years, and Hensley, an icon in modern Alaska Native history, told an energy conference that Alaskans should “reconfigure our value system” to escape from dependence on aid and major development projects.

Such federal support, Hensley told roughly 400 people at the downtown Westmark Fairbanks Hotel, once meant major subsidies for power plants so villages could electrify their homes and public buildings. But Hensley said he expects Alaska may need to rely more on ingenuity and resourcefulness if it expects future improvements to the quality of life here.

“It has been nothing short of phenomenal to see the kinds of programs and services and facilities and infrastructure that we now enjoy,” Hensley said. “The big question is, is it sustainable?”

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Skepticism about climate change is going mainstream, and that is worrying. One-third of Americans now say global warming doesn’t exist — triple the percentage of three years ago.

This defiance of science isn’t just harmful for the environment. It’s also distracting us from growing threats to US national security. Actual — not theoretical — effects of climate change are turning the Arctic into a potential military flash point.Expected melting of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean means greatly expanded access to increasingly scarce fossil fuels. It also means tensions over Arctic real estate. What the Middle East was to the second half of the 20th century, the Arctic could be to the first half of the 21st. Because America has been so slow to wake up to climate change, it’s lagging behind in protecting its Arctic interests.

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Houses in Quinhagak battered by decades of fierce wet winds might soon be replaced by a new model that hearkens back to traditional Native sod houses.

At a meeting last week, village leaders in the Southwest Alaska community accepted a preliminary plan for an energy-efficient home that could be a prototype for other houses in the village.

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In terms of punctuation marks, Railbelt natural gas supplies are a bit of question mark, and fuel prices in the Bush are a big exclamation point. So, it’s safe to assume Alaska’s electricity producers and consumers would appreciate a little stability. At least one company wants to transform Alaska’s geothermal resource into a reliable source of electricity, and is hoping for a way around an oddball state law that taxes hot water pulled from state land.

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President Obama moved on Wednesday to bolster the nation’s production of corn-based ethanol and other alternative liquid fuels and ordered the rapid development of technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal.

The president is trying to expand the portfolio of American energy sources to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, a factor in global warming, and spur advances in alternative technologies. Last week he expressed support in his State of the Union address for increased generation of nuclear power and offshore drilling for oil and gas.

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