People here focus on more immediate, practical issues—but that’s why renewable energy is winning. It makes economic sense. The microgrid technology has been proven, and costs are coming down. One important lesson for the Lower 48 is the need for political will. None of this transformation would exist without significant government investment, and the current fiscal crisis has brought many plans to a halt. For the transition to continue, Alaska’s legislators will need to get fully on board.
Though the state has weathered economic downturns before, it hasn’t had to do so with billions of dollars of infrastructure fixes necessitated by melting permafrost. It hasn’t done so while ocean acidification threatens its fishing industry. And it hasn’t done so at a time when renewable energy sources can outcompete oil. “Renewables are growing,” Mathiasson says. “I think the grassroots level is strong enough; the people want a cleaner energy source, and they want to see a better future.”
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…Construction of a few wind turbines in Arctic villages won’t stop climate change and can’t undo much of the damage the fossil fuel economy has already done here. But the transition to renewables and microgrids like Buckland’s can provide local economies a measure of control.
Energy ownership is crucial to the just transition I came to the Arctic to explore. And this is where Alaska Native tribes are particularly well-positioned to benefit.
Alaska’s tribal system is unique. Tribes were organized into 13 for-profit corporations under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, an effort to resolve ownership disputes over 44 million acres of land. Tribal corporations, like any other, invest and pass profits on to their shareholders—in this case, tribal members.
Though ANCSA resolved bitter land disputes in a way that empowered Native groups, some criticize it for encouraging tribal corporations to develop resources for profit. “Sometimes living and thriving on your land is best accomplished without developing the land. But what is your cash economy in rural Alaska if you don’t develop your land?” said Elisabeth Balster Dabney, executive director of the Northern Alaska Environmental Center, which promotes conservation and sustainable resource stewardship in interior and Arctic Alaska. As resource extraction can damage the land on which indigenous cultures depend, tribal leaders looking to bolster their economies face difficult decisions.
Buckland falls within the NANA Regional Corporation, which owns the only hotel in Kotzebue and has investments ranging from an oil company in the Gulf of Mexico to the town’s grocery store. Profits from these ventures are paid to Inupiaq members as a dividend, as are those generated by the energy co-op. This model localizes economic investment and keeps cash in the community.
“The only sustainable future is harvesting energy as close to home as you can,” Mathiasson says. “By harvesting energy locally, you’re also creating a local workforce, and that money stays in the communities instead of being part of the diesel fuel equation.”
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Buckland Mayor Tim Gavin’s collection of ancient tools, found in the crumbling banks of the Buckland River, tells the story of the people who have inhabited the tundra for millennia.
That’s not to say these small renewable grids are sizeable employers. Buckland sent two workers to Anchorage for training on the new systems and as line technicians to handle outages and other issues.
Buckland, Deering, and Kotzebue will add solar arrays and new batteries in 2018. The towns can then run almost entirely on renewables for half the year, and supplement with wind power year round. As these systems expand throughout the region, more technical positions will become available, with preference for local hires. The North Slope oil industry, in contrast, hires nearly 40 percent of its workforce from outside the state.
For most people, a better future is about economics.
Fisheries built towns up and down the coast, and the Klondike gold rush brought tens of thousands of eager prospectors, but nothing transformed Alaska like the oil industry. The state’s first oil well was drilled in 1902, and at the peak in 1988, oil companies pumped 2 million barrels of crude a day. When the oil money was flowing, it built Alaska’s schools, hospitals, roads, and bridges and established the Alaska Permanent Fund—the world’s only universal basic income program.
Now that the price of oil has plummeted, that money no longer fills the state treasury. And though industry investors are seeing profits decline, it is state residents who must live with the long-term effects. “The oil companies are not committed to the long haul, and Native people are paying the price as their hunting and fishing get destroyed,” says Enei Begaye, a Navajo woman who directs the indigenous rights advocacy group Native Movement in Fairbanks.
“Oil companies like to push the narrative that Alaskans want more oil development, but that’s not true.”
In the past when the economy slumped, state lawmakers responded by calling to expand drilling, to get oil flowing through the pipeline again. But the latest bust even has conservative residents doubting the economic strategy of “drill, baby, drill.”
“The oil companies like to push the narrative that Alaskans want more oil development, but that’s not true,” Begaye says. “Nothing will replace the oil money,” and never again will the state see such profits. “If we just think about how much money we can make, we’re missing out on what an economy can be.”
The question I brought to the Arctic was whether this oil low point, coupled with the effects of climate change in a state proud of its wild beauty, is enough to tip the scale toward a new way of thinking.
Only a few of those I spoke to had even heard of the “just transition” movement. People here focus on more immediate, practical issues—but that’s why renewable energy is winning. It makes economic sense. The microgrid technology has been proven, and costs are coming down.
One important lesson for the Lower 48 is the need for political will. None of this transformation would exist without significant government investment, and the current fiscal crisis has brought many plans to a halt. For the transition to continue, Alaska’s legislators will need to get fully on board.
Though the state has weathered economic downturns before, it hasn’t had to do so with billions of dollars of infrastructure fixes necessitated by melting permafrost. It hasn’t done so while ocean acidification threatens its fishing industry. And it hasn’t done so at a time when renewable energy sources can outcompete oil.
“Renewables are growing,” Mathiasson says. “I think the grassroots level is strong enough; the people want a cleaner energy source, and they want to see a better future.”
