Murkowski, Stevens promote renewable energy construction funds

Hoping to increase funding for renewable energy power projects, Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens, both Republicans, have succeeded in attaching an amendment to comprehensive energy legislation in the U.S. Senate that would provide federal grants to help utilities build renewable energy projects. The amendment creates a grant program that will provide up to 50-50 federal matching grants for construction of wind, geothermal and ocean energy projects nationwide and small hydroelectric projects exclusively in Alaska.

If Congress allocated a quarter of the budget proposed for renewable energy research and development next year toward construction of new plants, the grant program would provide $800 million for renewable energy construction, according to Murkowski. Projects in Alaska that could benefit include the Fire Island wind farm in Anchorage, Chena Hot Springs geothermal project near Fairbanks, and several geothermal, biomass, ocean energy and small hydro projects statewide.

The grant program, open to all types of utilities, states and local governments and Native American tribes and Alaska Native corporations, would supplement the current federal Production Tax Credit, which encourages renewable energy development by cutting taxes on electricity up to 1.9 cents per kilowatt.

—Rose Ragsdale