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AEA seeking legal team for FERC permit
The Alaska Energy Authority is looking for a legal team to help it license a large hydroelectric power project with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
AEA is looking for legal counsel with at least 10 years of experience licensing hydroelectric projects before FERC and navigating the federal laws around large energy projects, as well as a firm with offices in both Washington, D.C., and on the West Coast.
AEA is taking proposals through June 17.
Although the state has been studying large hydroelectric projects for decades, the most recent push dates back to a Regional Integrated Resources Plan, a February 2010 proposal for how Alaska should move ahead on energy policy decisions in the Railbelt.
Project selected last year That plan recommended that the state consider developing a large hydroelectric project, and last November AEA chose a hydroelectric project on the Susitna River about 184 river miles upstream of the mouth of the river on the south side of the Alaska Range.
By supplying roughly half of the power needs in the Railbelt, the $4.5 billion project would help the state meet its self-imposed goal of generating half its power from renewable sources by 2025. The proposed Susitna hydroelectric plant is a scaled down version of a project investigated in the 1980s that faltered in the face of low oil prices.
AEA already owns a hydroelectric project at Bradley Lake that supplies power to the Railbelt, but lost the authority to develop similar projects when it merged its board of directors with that of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority in 1993.
The Legislature recently passed a bill allowing AEA to buy or build power projects, as well as to maintain and operate those projects. The bill also specifically allows AEA to acquire a Susitna hydroelectric project through “construction, purchase, gift or lease.”
—Eric Lidji
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