US President Barack Obama waves after finishing his inauguration speech in Washington, DC, 21 January 2013. | AFP PHOTO/EMMANUEL DUNAND
Alaska seeks energy solutions as Obama goes green
In Fairbanks, Alaska, where nobody blinks at temperatures of -50C, Art Nash and Brent Sheets are more concerned about finding energy solutions for their local villages than following closely the nuances and the changes that go on within the Washington Beltway.
“In 1961, my father-in-law reminds me, for 60 days the temperature did not get above -50C,” Nash, an energy specialist of the Cooperative Extension Service (CES) at University of Alaska Fairbanks told New Europe by phone on 22 January, adding that in the summer, it can get up to 37C. “Certainly extreme weather in general,” he said. He was joined at his office by Sheets, a research manager for Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP).
“Most of the issues that we are dealing with are more about bringing the high cost of power in our villages down,” Sheets explained.
A day earlier, US President Barack Obama pledged during his inaugural address to tackle energy efficiency and create a greener America. Obama said in Washington on 21 January that, while the road toward a low-carbon economy may be difficult, the United States must take the lead in green initiatives.
"We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries, we must claim its promise," Obama said.
Obama last year opened doors for wind energy development in the United States.
Obama also vowed to respond to the threat of climate change, “knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations".
Sheets reminded that going green has been a priority for the Obama administration. “If you go back at the budgets of the US Department of Energy they really have been focused on the renewables technologies – solar and wind in particular,” he said.
Sheets explained, however, that most of the issues that they are dealing with in Alaska are more about bringing the high cost of power in the villages down than climate change. “Climate change is out there and it is an issue for us, but we are looking at green technologies like wind as an opportunity to lower the high cost of energy in our villages which is three or four times higher than in the rest of the United States. So our focus is more economic than it is on the climate although the climate is definitely important. It is about making life in the villages in Alaska an affordable place to live,” he told New Europe.
Nash, however, noted that Alaska is sensitive to climate change issues. “Being a polar state we have been put out there as kind of a barometer for different biological changes they are trying to research,” he said.
But Alaska residents have to deal with day-to-day energy issues. Sheets noted that in most of the villages right now there is no transmission system giving them electricity. They are not part of a grid system. Each community has a diesel generator and that diesel generator provides the overwhelming majority of electricity that community consumes so it’s very expensive, he said. “The question is what do you do to lower the cost of that diesel? One of the ways of doing that is by introducing wind systems and having wind turbines to generate that power. But bringing a wind turbine out to a community is also very expensive,” he said, adding that there is not heavy equipment like cranes necessarily to erect the wind turbine towers. “But overcoming those difficulties, the state has invested millions successfully in introducing turbines in many of the villages,” he said.
“The question is how you integrate an intermittent supply of power to a diesel-fed community. Because wind could be 50% of the community’s power sources but it’s intermittent - it goes back and forth,” Sheets said. “Getting the two systems to work together is a challenge.”
Nash said that ACEP is also looking at hot pockets for geothermal energy. “We also have debates going on within our state about pipelines for natural gas,” he said.
Commenting on Obama’s inauguration pledge to support alternative energy, Nash noted that “as far as the impetus to go through with these projects certainly Department of Energy Federal dollars do help, which are tied to the desires to some extent of the Obama administration. But a lot of the impetus is from the State of Alaska, seen as community development. We would probably be doing this anyway under anyone’s administration,” Nash said.
The state has to keep these communities alive. “When Brent talks about villages that have their power system based on a diesel generator, some of these communities maybe as large as couple of thousand people. But many of them will be under a 1,000. But they are people who want to stay where they are - if they can,” Nash said.
“Many of the tribes will go to Department of Energy and get assistance on different projects. But some of them – the Indian tribes and the Eskimo tribes – because they do have some capital themselves or they have a Co Op that will help them – they are going forward. And I don’t know that it really would matter to them as to what the President said in his speech or not about backing it in the next term as far as them having the motivation to do it,” Nash concluded. new europe on line
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