Sustainable North

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 energy plan [...]

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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.
 
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From the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, on Saturday, December 6, 2008:

In early winter 2008, Fairbanks [Alaska] has had some of the worst air quality ever recorded, according to Jim Conner, an air quality specialist for the Fairbanks North Star Borough.
“We exceeded (federal air quality) standards in October this year for the first time,” Conner said. “It [...]

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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 residents cooked [...]

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From the Fairbanks Daily News Miner, on Monday, December 8, 2008:
The Fairbanks North Star Borough will look to create a trade-in program to reduce the number of older, inefficient home-heating systems — think old wood stoves and outdoor boilers — borough Mayor Jim Whitaker said this week.
Outdoor, wood-fired furnaces and older indoor wood stoves, particularly [...]

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From the Christian Science Monitor on Monday, October 21, 2008:
Both traditional and pellet-burning wood stoves are in high demand as cold weather begins to grip the northern United States and Canada. Sales of wood stoves are up 55 percent so far this year over last, according to industry figures. And sales of wood pellet stoves [...]

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From the New York Times on Wednesday, October 1, 2008:
Making electricity from wood chips is trendy these days …
But here’s an interesting twist: many newly announced biomass plants will actually be running on old coal boilers. Xcel Energy, a big Midwestern utility, announced this week that it would spend up to $70 million to allow a [...]

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BY: Ilya Benesch, Cold Climate Housing Research Center
Energy Focus: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner October 2nd, 2008, Section A3
With winter on the horizon, the wood burning season is starting to gain momentum and all indications are that it will be the busiest in recent history. This brings up the topic of chimney safety. Since people in Fairbanks [...]

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From Sealaska Corporation (www.sealaska.org), dated September 11, 2008 and retrieved Tuesday, September 23, 2008:
Sealaska Corporation and Viking Lumber Inc. announced today that they have entered into a Letter of Intent (LOI) to examine an alternate energy supply enterprise utilizing wood waste for Southeast customers. Production facilities will be on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast, [...]

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On September 21, 2008, “AK,” an Alaska Public Radio Network statewide news and entertainment program, ran several features on heating and weatherizing the Alaskan home. Besides containing useful facts, the pieces highlights the challenges (and joys) of living in a cold climate. Listen to “Weatherization,” “Firewood Frenzy,” and “Firewood Health.”
Click here to listen to the [...]

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