This week Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavey sent a bill to both the State House and Senate asking for the legislature to approve a set timeline for increasing the use of renewable energy in the state’s railbelt.
Jay Barrett spoke with Chris Rose of REAP, the Renewable Energy Alaska Project about RPFs, or renewable portfolio standards.
Rose: 30 states have these types of Standards which require utilities to get to a certain percentage of renewable electricity by certain date or pay a compliance penalty the legislation that the governor introduced would require the rail belt. utilities to get to 20% renewable by 2025 30% by 30 20 30 55% by 2035 and 80% by 2040 To give you some context we're really close to 20% right now. So the first gate in 2025 should not be too big of a left the next gate then in 2030 would be 30% So moving it up into the 10%
KBBI: Do you feel confident that the resources are there for meeting the timeline?
Rose: Oh, absolutely. I don't use any doubt. The resources are there. We have vast wind solar and hydro resources geothermal resources could be tapped into there's been exploration over across coconut at Mount spur that's going to re-resume this coming summer. Geothermals are great renewable resource because it's base load power and the national individuality lab just did a study and Cook Inlet and found that there's approximately 30 gigawatts of tidal power capacity there that to give you some sense of how much power that is. That's that's roughly 50 times. The entire amount of power that the region uses right now. So there's a tremendous amount of renewable resources. And of course we're seeing technology evolved wind and solar today are very competitive and evolved vastly over the last couple decades, but things like title resources are going to continue to evolve commercialize and it's very likely that we'll have commercial tied to power technology within the next 10 years, which is within The timeline of the renewable portfolio standard the governor's introduced does it give you know official impetus to these things then say well find the money for the projects or is there money included in these bills what this bill would do is incentivize independent properties of wind and solar and so on to gravitate toward the rail belt because they would see 18 years of renewable electricity activity in the region and they would compete with each other to offer power purchase agreements or contracts to the local utilities. And so the utilities don't actually have to spend the dime to do any of this if they were to buy electricity from wind and solar producers who would take the project risk to build those projects and then sell electricity back into the grid.
KBBI: I'm from out in Dillingham, so I always think about what projects in the rail belt might mean for out in the Bush, you know, as far as follow-on technology or projects.
Rose: It's a very good question, you know and I've heard from several operators of renewable projects in real Alaska that if the rail belt actually had a stronger renewable energy industry that would provide support for Rural Alaska. In other words people ought to be or no more Dillingham could potentially call on people in Anchorage or Fairbanks to help them rather than calling on somebody outside of the state. The other thing that an RPS can do for Rural Alaska is keep utility prices and the rail belt from continuing to escalate. Well the power cost Equalization program or pce is based on How much power costs in Juno Fairbanks and Anchorage? So as the cost of power goes up and Anchorage in Fairbanks people in real Alaska actually get less of a subsidy and of course with renewable energy. There are no fuel prices. So 80% renewable is going to be a very stable price and we believe even one that would be lower than today's gas-fired prizes. Which would we be looking for down in Juneau this session then how should we follow this? Well, there are two bills because it's the governor's bill is introduced on both sides at the same time House Bill 301 and Senate Bill 179. Senate Bill 179 got two committees here referral the labor and commerce and finance committee and Hospital 301 got three house energy committee House labor and Commerce Committee and house finance committee. We are looking to get a hearing and the house energy committee first. So people can be following that on the State legislature's website House Bill 301 in the house energy committee.
Though the stepped goals seem aggressive, HEA board member Erin McKittrick of Seldovia said the co-op’s own goals are even higher in the short term, with 50 percent renewables in place by 2025. But that’s where HEA’s plan currently stops, while the governor’s plan extends to 2040.
