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Lawmakers start work on energy plan The House and Senate Energy Committees are looking to craft an energy policy, say effort builds off recent state energy document Eric Lidji Petroleum News
The spike in oil prices last year prompted calls for a statewide energy policy.
The Palin administration unveiled its first stab at the issue in January with an inventory of supplies, demand and resources. Now, two legislative committees are tackling the issue.
In a joint hearing on Feb. 10, the House and Senate Special Committees on Energy heard about how other states have tackled energy policy, and looked at where Alaska stands.
It’s part of a larger effort to collect information about energy in Alaska, according to Sen. Lesil McGuire, an Anchorage Republican and chair of the Senate Energy Committee.
“Today marks the first day of that journey,” McGuire said.
The policy will cover the energy needs of both urban and rural Alaska, according to Rep. Charisse Millett, an Anchorage Republican and co-chair of the House Energy Committee.
On Feb. 7 and Feb. 8, the House Energy Committee took a weekend trip to Kotzebue and Nome to visit wind farms in the region and hear from locals facing expensive energy.
At the Feb. 10 hearing, Kate Marks, energy program director for the National Conference of State Legislatures, told the committees about recent energy policies in other states.
Marks said the first step for any state is to develop a “guiding policy.”
“It’s not specific,” Marks said. “You have guiding, over-arching goals that allow some flexibility as Alaska’s energy needs change, and then legislation or executive orders can provide the specificity.”
The committees also heard from Chris Rose, executive director of the Renewable Alaska Energy Project, who tried to give a snapshot of the challenges facing the diverse state.
“I think it boils down to: Who’s going to do what where?” Rose said. “Because you may not be able to get a private company to go out into some village that’s 400 miles from Anchorage: Maybe the only entity that is going to actually do anything for the people there is the village or the local tribal government.”
Palin “invites” participation Thinking along similar lines, the Palin administration released a 245-page document in January outlining the energy needs of the state and the available technologies to meet those needs.
It also included an account of the energy costs in every community across the state, and an inventory of how available alternative technologies could be used to lower those costs.
But the document did not set out a plan or policy for lowering costs, which frustrated some lawmakers. State Energy Coordinator Steve Haagenson, who crafted the document with staff at the Alaska Energy Authority, called it a “first step” and a “living document.”
Millet sees the committees’ work as the “next step,” so to speak.
“No one person can accomplish this,” Millett told Petroleum News on Feb. 12.
At a press conference on Feb. 11, Gov. Sarah Palin welcomed the committee’s work.
“We invite their participation,” Palin said. “We invite more of their ideas and plans that can be included and added to Steve’s comprehensive energy plan.”
The joint committees will hear next from Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
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