Alaska’s new energy czar seeks answers on costs

KYLE VON BOSE

March 20, 2008 at 9:51AM AKST

Rising fuel costs are placing a tremendous drain on Alaska’s economy. As prices rise, more Alaskans are being forced to choose whether to buy food or fuel.

However, good news may be on the horizon.

New state energy czar Steven Haagenson, after decades with the Golden Valley Electric Association, says there are solutions to Alaska’s energy crisis, but it will be up to Alaskans to see them through.

Haagenson retired in November after 32 years with Golden Valley, seven of those as president and CEO. On March 5, Gov. Sarah Palin appointed him to serve as energy coordinator and executive director of Alaska Energy Authority, ending his short-lived retirement.

While the appointment of a retired CEO into government may seem like business as usual, it was clear from speaking with Haagenson that he has a true passion for helping Alaska end high energy costs and its dependence on oil.

Haagenson said he is looking forward to working with communities to research viable alternative sources of energy. But he said the state isn’t just going to swoop in and solve everyone’s energy problems.

Haagenson thinks the best way to see alternative energy sources come to life is through low-profit models or locally owned co-ops or partnerships. That way Alaska’s future alternative energy facilities will remain in the hands of Alaskans: creating jobs, boosting local economies and allowing Alaska to sell its greatly desired oil for primo prices.

"We want to go green, we want to go sustainable and we want to look at the cheapest fuel you can responsibly use to provide energy to Alaska," Haagenson said. "That maximizes the best of both worlds, because we get cheaper fuel and the state gets the maximum income."

While Haagenson’s ideas for self-sustained energy may sound a little ideological – especially coming from a man at his first day on the job – Haagenson is speaking from experience.

As head of the electricity co-op, Haagenson heard first hand from people who couldn’t afford to pay their energy bills. He realized that it would only be a matter of time before rising energy costs would begin to consume the majority of Alaskans’ disposable income.

Two years ago, a group called the Interior Issues Council, a subcommittee of the Fairbanks Economic Development Corp., determined that the price of energy was the second-highest concern among Interior Alaska residents.

Responding to those concerns, Haagenson volunteered to chair a cost-of-energy committee. The committee immediately began looking at ways Interior Alaska could lower its energy prices. The group quickly became recognized as a think tank for alternative energy.

"I love this group, they are really diverse," Haagenson said. "They were environmentalists, engineers, doctors, professors and just general people with a passion for energy."

The first and most obvious recommendation it made was to conserve energy. The second was to look into two alternative forms of energy: wind and the possibility of trucking or piping liquefied natural gas to Fairbanks, straight from the North Slope.

The committee’s recommendations reverberated with North Star Borough Mayor Jim Whitaker, who asked the group to research ways to lower energy costs, while simultaneously looking into the region’s growing air-quality issues.

Haagenson and the group mapped out the energy logistics of the Interior and then began looking into new technologies that could take the place of the existing energy sources: coal, natural gas, diesel fuel and so forth.

What they settled on was a process of gasifying biomass, a technology that produces syn-gas, which is put through the Fischer-Tropsch process, used to create synthetic petroleum, to create multiple types of clean-burning fuel.

The biomass itself is wood: willows, poplar and aspen. The trees can be grown in a five-year rotation. The process is considered carbon dioxide neutral, because the carbon released from burning the trees are be absorbed by the rotation of the planted trees awaiting production.

The byproduct is a non-leachable ash, which can be safely buried.

These are the types of discussions and projects Haagenson says he wants to prompt throughout all of Alaska. He wants the Alaska Energy Authority to be a catalyst for providing communities with the information they need to lower their fuel costs.

"I’d like to do my part, in my retirement, to help the economy of Alaska," Haagenson said. "I’d like to go out and engage everyone in Alaska to have these open discussions about what fuels are available to them and match it with the type of fuels they need and see if we can lower their energy costs."

Kyle von Bose can be reached at (907) 348-2438 or toll free at (800) 770-9830, ext. 438.

 

On the Web

The cost of energy committee’s Fairbanks energy strategic business plan at investfairbanks.com/documents/FairbanksEnergy2.pdf.