Alaska's Rich in Renewable Resources — and Has Great Reasons To Want To Use Them

I mentioned earlier that I’m on my way to Portland, OR for the day, and I happen to be flying on Alaska Airlines.  I just leafed through the in-flight magazine, expecting to see plenty of ads for arctic cruises and fishing expeditions, photos of bears, and other enticements to come to the destinations the airline serves.  Yes, there was plenty of all that.

But there was also a long and well-written piece on renewable energy of all types.  Many of the conditions that determine a region’s suitability for clean energy exist in spades up there – including extremely expensive electricity from fossil sources – as high as $0.50 per kWh in rural areas.  One thinks of Alaska as rich in hydrocarbons, and it is, but most of its infrastructure is set up to export those resources, not to deliver them internally.  And, while solar is a challenge at that latitude, Alaska is extremely rich in hydro: it has incredible tides, and more rivers than you can shake a stick at.

The elderly gentleman sitting next to me noticed me checking out the article and asked if I’d ever gotten up there.  When I admitted that I hadn’t, he smiled sadly before responding, “I’d do it soon, if I were you – before all the glaciers are all gone.”  A sad reminder of the real imperative to move to renewable energy.