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| Chris Rose |
Chris Rose is founder and executive director of Renewable Energy Alaska Project (REAP). Rose founded the organization in 2004 after spending two years building a coalition of diverse stakeholders that intersected on energy. According to the REAP website, the organization's mission is to "facilitate the increased development of renewable energy in Alaska through collaboration, education, training, and advocacy. In the interview, Rose explains in detail how the organization's activities support the mission. In addition to work with the organization's stakeholders, REAP works closely with policymakers, schools, and the general public. This interview was conducted March 14, 2012, and has been edited for length and clarity.
Links to selected topicsREAP's goal is to increase the production of renewable energy in the state of Alaska AHPR: I'm here with Chris Rose, founder and executive director of
REAP (Renewable Energy Alaska Project). Chris, could you please tell the readers of
Alaska Health Policy Review a little bit about why you founded the organization and its purpose?
Rose: Sure. At the time that I started thinking about this heavily was post 9/11. I was a practicing attorney and mediator, and I realized that I wanted to take a little bit of a different tack with my career anyway, and I saw that everything that I really cared about -- foreign policy, the economy, the environment -- all intersected on energy. So I started poking around to see what alternatives there were to the status quo on energy, and realized -- pretty quickly -- that Alaska had tremendous renewable energy potential and resources. And also quickly realized that nobody was talking about them and nobody was trying to educate anybody about those alternative options.
So I founded REAP in 2004 after doing a lot of legwork with energy stakeholders around the state, asking them the hypothetical question, "If I were to create a renewable energy education and advocacy group, would you join?" And after two years of doing that, [we] got everybody in the same room. [I] thought as a mediator: Well, gosh, this might take five hours to come to consensus on this. But, to my surprise and delight, after fifteen minutes the various stakeholders agreed to form the group and we spent the next almost five hours working on the mission and the vision and the objectives that for the most part we're still working on today. That was back in 2004.
Our goal is to increase the production of renewable energy in the state of Alaska, period. And there are different reasons for different stakeholders for doing that, and we purposely don't have a particular reason ourselves because we think that all the reasons are important. We're a coalition. In 2004, at that first meeting, there were 16 organizations. There were electric utility companies, consumer groups, environmental groups, [and] Alaska Native organizations. Today, we have about 85 dues paying organizations from around the state -- and around the country. We have started to open up the market for renewable energy in the state of Alaska, and as a result, we have developers around the country who are now joining our effort to increase the production of renewable energy in the state as well as to promote our first fuel, which is energy efficiency.
So I founded REAP in 2004 after doing a lot of legwork with energy stakeholders around the state, asking them the hypothetical question, "If I were to create a renewable energy education and advocacy group, would you join?"
AHPR: How did you decide which stakeholders to contact originally?
Rose: Well, I thought it was really important to work with the electric utilities immediately because they have such a vested interest in energy and [they] have been providing electricity reliably for a long time to people in Alaska, and [I] certainly didn't want to do something that was going to upset anybody from the very beginning. So it made a lot of sense to me to go directly to them first, and see what they thought about the idea. I guess it would've been really easy for me to organize some environmental groups into saying this was a good idea, but I don't think that would've had much punch. It made a lot more sense to start with a wide range of stakeholders that would need to form consensus on different issues throughout the lifetime of the organizations, rather than just start with the choir.
I started out with groups that I thought would need the most time to speak with about this issue before they would understand why they would want to be part of it. So I started out with electric utilities. The rest of the groups really wanted to do it, I think, from the beginning. As did the utilities to their credit. At that first meeting there was really, as I said, very little hesitation about joining any group. But it took a lot of legwork. It was like two years' worth of going around, introducing myself, understanding what the interests were of different stakeholders, and working to get everybody in that room for the first time. So, most of the work was done before we got together.
Back to selected topics listREAP's diverse group of organizations means more credibility among policymakers AHPR: That's impressive.
Rose: Well, it's from my mediation background, I guess, that I felt I needed to do that ground work first. I also think that working with state -- and then later, federal agencies -- from the beginning, was important, because again, they're entities that had been and still are working in the energy realm and again, I didn't want to step on anyone's toes from the very beginning. I wanted to be very careful about moving forward, and to this day, I think, the organization is successful in part because we are very conscious of forming consensus.
Consensus means different things to different people. We're not an organization that, even though we have a 21-member board of directors, votes on a lot of issues. For us to have 11 to 10 votes on issues is not a victory. For us to have 19 or 20 of the 21 organizations pretty solidly behind an idea is a victory in terms of moving an idea forward. And because our organization is so diverse, I think we have a lot more creditability in places like Juneau, or Washington D.C. when it comes to offering ideas because we have vetted those ideas. We've vetted those ideas pretty vigorously for as long as it has taken to get to that consensus, and sometimes an idea will take one or two years before the group feels like it's something that we'd want to offer to a legislator, let's say. Sometimes the idea moves along faster than that. But, over the course of the last eight years, I think we've had a tremendous amount of success in helping to get ideas into the hopper, that have resulted in some real changes.
I didn't want to step on anyone's toes from the very beginning. I wanted to be very careful about moving forward, and to this day, I think, the organization is successful in part because we are very conscious of forming consensus.
We wrote the first draft of the legislation that became the
Renewable Energy Grant Fund, which has now given more than $200 million to over two hundred projects around the state. We wrote the first draft of the
Emerging Energy Technology Fund legislation, which is a grant fund also administered by the
Alaska Energy Authority, to give grant money to emerging technologies or applications of new technologies in Alaska. We've been a primary advocate for the super increased funding for the existing weatherization and rebate program that
Alaska Housing Finance Corporation administers.
From the 1980s up through 2008, when we really started getting involved, there was something like $200 million that had cumulatively been appropriated for those programs, and in 2008 we got $360 million in one year. And we've gotten $160 million or so, $150 million, since then. So a total of $512 million since 2008 [that] we've been able to see the legislature appropriate for weatherization and rebates. That really shows that they now understand that energy efficiency is the first fuel.
I was privileged to be asked by the co-chairs of the
House Energy Special Committee in 2009 to join a special group of about 12 stakeholders who wrote a bill that eventually passed, only about nine months later in the spring of 2010 --
House Bill 306 -- which is a declaration of energy policy for the state of Alaska. Included in that bill is a non-codified goal to get 50 percent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and to decrease our per capita energy use by 15 percent by 2020.
In that same year
Senate Bill 220 also passed, which among other things passed the Emerging Energy Technology Fund, and set a mandate to retrofit 25 percent of the public buildings in the state of Alaska -- energy retrofit them -- and it created a $250 million revolving fund to finance that. Just this past spring
Senate Bill 25 was passed, that created a $125 million revolving loan fund for renewable energy projects.
So if you add up the revolving loan funds and the grant programs, it's been a tremendous amount of the legislature putting money where their mouth is on energy efficiency and renewable energy in the state of Alaska. And if you look at it nationwide, on a per capita basis, we're investing more than any other state in the country now.
Back to selected topics listThis is not a competition between renewables and fossil fuel AHPR: You're really effective.
Rose: Thank you. I think that it's not just me at all -- it's the coalition. It is the fact that we are organized in such a way that again, when we go to Juneau, I think people [understand] that we are representing a very diverse coalition of people who really thought hard about the idea. I think it's much easier for a policymaker to feel comfortable in moving the idea forward when they know most, if not all, of the stakeholders that could be affected by the idea, have been included in the process of vetting it.
It just makes sense for us to keep dollars in the state of Alaska rather than export them for energy. And I think very early on, it was realized by everybody that this is not a competition between renewables and fossil fuel, and that despite the fact that the state gets about 90 percent of its revenues from oil and gas, the state can continue to do that for a long time, and having renewable energy for the citizens of the state is not going to impact the worldwide market for oil and gas.
In fact, I was able to join a policy tour that included twelve legislators a year ago to Norway where that was very starkly demonstrated that an oil and gas country -- Norway -- is 98 percent renewable electricity and hydro. And so what they're doing is keeping the prices flat with the non-fuel resources, like hydro, for their own people, and they're monetizing the oil, excuse me, their gas mostly, for the state's benefit. I think that as fossil fuel prices have continued to climb, which is something that we anticipated, that I've anticipated since I started REAP, it just makes the case stronger for non-fuel resources like renewables.
The four advantages of renewable energy that we emphasize are, first of all, stably-priced, certain-priced energy. Because once you put the capital into build a wind project, or a hydro project, or a solar project, or a geothermal project, or any of the renewables, you have some certainty of what that electricity or heat is going to cost you, because there is no fuel involved, and you don't have to anticipate what fuel is going to cost over the 20-, 30-, 40-, 50-, 100-year life of the project. So it's stably priced. Number two is local. The benefits are local. The jobs are local. You're not exporting dollars. I just came from Sitka yesterday, where we're estimating in the city of Sitka that they're now exporting, just from the city of Sitka, about $30 million a year out of that small economy to import gas, gasoline, and diesel fuel. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money for a small community. Local fuel that's renewable, that's right there already.
Another big advantage, of course, is that it's clean, you don't have some of the impacts that you have with burning fossil fuel, and I think even more important to many people is you're not going to have the regulatory expense that will someday be associated with using fossil fuels in the United States. It's already more expensive to do that in some states under state law, but the closer we get to any kind of carbon regulation, the closer we get to more expensive use of fossil fuel. And fourth, it's inexhaustible. These resources are inexhaustible. Oil and gas has been very kind to Alaska and [it has] allowed us to build our economy. In fact, oil has really built our civilization as we know it over the past 150 years, [but] it is a finite resource. And people can argue with me about whether it's going to completely go away in 50 years or 100 years, but that's beside the point. It is a finite resource and eventually it will be gone.
And investors like certainty. ... The certainty that comes with renewable energy is something that I think people are beginning to realize more and more has a real financial impact for society.
So, the investments that you make in infrastructure associated with oil and gas are relatively short-term. The investments that you make in renewables can last for centuries. You will, as time goes on, improve technologies, optimize technologies, replace technologies with better ones, but the basics of getting your electricity and/or your heat from a renewable source remain the same. Wind is not going to stop blowing, the tides will not stop moving and so on, so, it allows [us] to try and plan further ahead, because you have a much greater anticipation of what's going to happen.
Right now, for instance, in Cook Inlet, the supply contracts that the utility companies have been operating on to make electricity are expiring in just a year and a half, in 2014. So, it's a whole new era that's opening up and it's very uncertain and the utility companies don't know what it's going to cost them to buy natural gas to generate electricity. With renewables you've got certainty. You may have a little bit higher upfront cost, but you have no fuel costs over a lifetime of the project, and there's a huge benefit to that.
And investors like certainty. If you're a banker, you will give someone maybe a little better interest rate if you're pretty certain they're going to pay you back. So the financial industry already understands that certainty is worth something in dollars. The certainty that comes with renewable energy is something that I think people are beginning to realize more and more has a real financial impact for society.
Back to selected topics listIt's faster and cheaper to save a unit of energy than it is to generate a unit of energy AHPR: I think you used the term, "first fuel" and I'm not familiar with that term. Could you explain that to me?
Rose: Yes, it is a term that we in the community of people who are concerned about energy efficiency and conservation are beginning to use to describe exactly what energy efficiency and conservation are, relative to all the generation options. I think it's real easy for people to get excited, including me, about sexy, fancy, new generation technologies. Everyone wants to talk about wind turbines and geothermal projects, and for that matter, fossil fuel projects, generation projects.
The idea of a "first fuel" is that it's always faster and cheaper to
save the unit of energy, whether it's a BTU or kilowatt-hour, than it is to
generate that BTU or that kilowatt-hour. No matter what generation technology you're using, whether it's renewable or fossil, it's always more expensive to make the unit of energy than it is to find a way to conserve it or to just not use it because you have a more efficient device that is running on the BTUs or running on the fuel that you're using. So, first fuel is meant to describe that it should be our first choice.
In places like California that actually have legislated it, they have what is called a "loading order." So the
California Energy Commission, the regulatory commission there, looks at requests by utility companies to do things, and decides whether or not the utility company has done enough to save energy before they give permission to generate energy. And they usually want the utility company to generate renewables before they generate fossil fuel. [There is] a bill that passed a couple years ago by the California legislature [
SB 1368 (2006)]-- a very well-known law now -- that basically is saying, "We're not going to allow any electricity into the state of California that has a carbon footprint that is greater than natural gas firepower." In other words, you can't import coal-fired power into California any more. You can import naturally gas-fired power.
The thing about energy policy is that, for better or worse, it's a lot of state policy. Our federal government has very little policy in this area, which is too bad, given that so many decisions revolve around energy. In the 1990s, Congress passed the Production Tax Credit to try to level the playing field between the heavily subsidized oil, gas, coal, and nuclear industries and the renewables industries, because all of those industries are still very heavily subsidized by the United States government through tax breaks and in a number of different ways, but renewables hadn't been. The Production Tax Credit was meant to level that playing field.
The thing about energy policy is that, for better or worse, it's a lot of state policy. Our federal government has very little policy in this area, which is too bad, given that so many decisions revolve around energy.
Unfortunately, the PTC as it is known, Production Tax Credit, has only been authorized by Congress throughout that entire time period for one or two years at a time, which means it's created a very stop, start, stop, start mentality for everybody who's involved in the industry. As we speak, the PTC for wind is set to expire at the end of this year, December 31. We've seen a lot of years where it's gone down to the wire and Congress finally reauthorizes it at the last minute, but what happens in the meantime is there is chaos in the industry because there's no certainty.
We're looking at possibly losing between 30,000 and 40,000 jobs in the wind industry alone in the United States, right now, because the PTC looks like it's going to expire and not be reauthorized, at least for any length of time that would give the industry the certainty that -- let's say, Europe has. Europe has policies like advanced feed-in tariffs, that guarantee a price to the producers of renewable energies for twenty years, so a lot more certainty, a lot more investment capital going into it in that kind of policy environment. So, as a result, states have led the way with policy. And 29 states now, plus the District of Columbia, have mandates to produce a certain amount of renewable electricity.
Those mandates vary in the percentage of electricity that has to come from renewables, and the time period in which it has to get done, as well as the penalties for not doing so. And, the 50 percent goal that I referenced, that Alaska has, is just that -- it's a goal. It's not a renewable portfolio standard or a mandate like the 29 states have.
AHPR: Do you have any sense of what the reluctance is to extend those tax credits over a longer period of time?
Rose: Well, of course, a lot of it is just politics. I think there [has been] a lot of bi-partisan support for it in past years, and some years what I have understood is that it was used as bargaining chip, that everyone knew it was going to get passed and it was used as bargaining chip in a much larger package of legislation that needed to get passed. People would withhold the PTC unless they got what they wanted.
I think this time, at this moment when we're waiting for a reauthorization, it's less that than it is election year politics and just a symptom of the general gridlock that we've had in Congress over the last several years. It's really unfortunate because our country is falling behind in this area, and energy is the lifeblood of any economy -- it impacts human health, it impacts the ability of an economy to track investment. I mean, if I have $400 million dollars burning a hole in my pocket and I'm going to build a manufacturing plant somewhere, I am going to go someplace that the energy prices are either low and/or stable.
And that comes with renewable power. It doesn't come with a place that relies on fossil fuels. You can move it around the planet on big tankers. As liquefied natural gas has become more important and more common, now natural gas is becoming more of a world commodity, too. So, we have a state that produces a lot of oil and gas, and Alaska has absolute zero control over the price of it. So abundant energy does not equal affordable energy.
Back to selected topics listInvestment in renewables is not a green thing; it is the logical thing AHPR: Absolutely. We all know that here in Alaska.
Rose: Well, I am not so certain. I think there are a lot of people who don't get that yet.
AHPR: No? OK, you may be right.
Rose: And that's part of the problem. I think that we're in a state that has so much energy that a lot of people take for granted that it's going to be there and it's going to be cheap. And that's not the case anymore.
AHPR: That was really interesting, thank you. You've already addressed my next question, but in case you want to expand on the answer: What are some of REAP's major accomplishments?
Rose: Well, I think that raising awareness about both renewable energy and energy efficiency has been a major accomplishment and we've done that a number of ways. As I've mentioned, I think we've done a pretty good job of educating policymakers who have then legislated programs, and more importantly appropriated dollars to run those programs, that make more renewable energy projects and more energy efficiency upgrades possible. So that has been one thing.
I think we've also begun to do the very heavy lifting of educating the average person about where their energy comes from, and we have a long way to go there. I think we are doing that through our public forums that are free, through our conferences, through our events like the
Renewable Energy Fair, through publications like the
Renewable Energy Atlas of Alaska, which we have published in collaboration with the Alaska Energy Authority since 2006 and have updated, I think, three or four times. We're in the process of updating it again. It's a book of maps that shows where the biomass is, where the tidal and wave [energy] is, where the hydro is, and so on. It's a very, very concise booklet that I think people like to look at because it's got a lot of pretty maps in it. We've distributed over 30,000 of those since 2006. I've walked into many legislative offices and seen it on the shelf or on the desk, so I know that people are using it and understanding that it is a resource, like anything else.
Except, like I said before, it's an inexhaustible resource. So I think we're opening people's eyes to this as a business opportunity, as an economic stabilizer. This is not a "green thing." This is a logical thing to do when your society is relying on fuels that have prices that are trending higher and higher, that you cannot stop from trending higher and higher. So, it is a logical businesslike thing to do, and I think that we've done a pretty good job of framing this issue as an economic issue, and not an environmental issue.
I think we've also begun to do the very heavy lifting of educating the average person about where their energy comes from, and we have a long way to go there.
AHPR: You mentioned public forums. What public forums do you have coming up?
Rose: October 10 is the next
public forum. They are always the second Wednesday of the month, and they are in fall, winter, and spring. The next one is about energy retrofitting of commercial buildings, the one in November will be about tidal energy, the one in December will be about energy policy, and that's as far as I can remember right now. They are at the Anchorage Museum. They are free. We really encourage people to come. We have expert speakers come, and we have plenty of time for Q&A at the end, so they're fun.
I think that the other big thing that we've been doing is bringing diverse people together and demystifying each other's interests, and getting people to sit in the same room. We've had 33 quarterly board meetings now, and some people have been at every single one of them. We've got a lot of really interested organizations [and] we've got a growing number of organizational members. I think it's just great to see people working together when they might disagree on a bunch of other stuff. We really keep focused on renewable energy and energy efficiency. We don't go off into the sidelines to talk about things that we don't agree on. We're very proactive on the things we do agree on. I think we've done a good job of keeping focused.
Back to selected topics listIncreasing emphasis on classroom education AHPR: How else does REAP promote policy that facilitates increased development of renewable energy in Alaska? You've talked about increasing awareness, educating policymakers, offering public forums, those types of things. Anything you'd want to add to that?
Rose: Yes, I think that the thing that we're really focused a lot more on and I think we'll continue to be more and more focused on in the future, is classroom education. I have done a lot of guest lecturing at college classes and even a couple of high school classes and so on, but that's pretty ad hoc. Over the last couple of years we've actually been more and more into classroom education. We've been working with the
National Renewable Energy Lab for many years on a program called "
Wind for Schools," and we work closely with the
Alaska Center for Energy and Power at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
We're the state facilitator for the national "Wind For Schools" program, which basically helps K-12 institutions put up a small wind turbine and then use math and science curricula to educate the students about what's happening with that wind turbine. It's a very functional, hands-on way to learn math and science that is related to something happening out in the schoolyard. And that's been fun. There is a lot of excitement about that, and part of that is the "
Kid Wind Challenge," where kids get to design their own wind turbines and they have a contest on which design works the best in a wind tunnel and so on.
Over the last year-and-a-half we've also been working with the Alaska Center for Energy and Power under a contract with Alaska Housing Finance Corporation to create a brand new curriculum called "
AK Energy Smart," which is an energy efficiency curriculum for K-12 kids. We were already in schools talking about wind anyway, [so] let's talk about energy efficiency while we're there. This curriculum is brand new. We're just beginning to promote it to teachers, and we would really like teachers who are interested in it to contact us to learn more.
As part of that experience working with [UAF] on discrete energy programs like "Wind for Schools" and "AK Energy Smart," REAP and Alaska Center for Energy and Power have realized that what we need here in the state is a network that links all of the energy education providers in the state.
We've begun to create what I think will eventually become its own non-profit called ANEE, the Alaska Network for Energy Education. That is an effort to understand what energy education programs exist in the state, first of all, on a K-12 through basis, on the workforce and vocational training basis, and at the university [level], and then to link them.
If the Chinese use as much oil per capita as Americans, they'd use every drop of oil produced on the planet today. There wouldn't be a drop of oil for North America, South America, Africa, Europe ...
We've got at least two goals. First of all, we want to make sure that the average person grows up learning where their energy comes from and the implications of the energy decisions they make, and second of all, to begin to create career paths for kids who might be interested in [the] energy field. So, we want to have some kind of segue between K-12 and vocational training and the same kind of segue between K-12 and university education, and even segue between vocational and university education.
We're creating a network so people are not doing things in a redundant manner, and people know what's going on around the state and we can start creating synergy. We can do a gap analysis of what's there and what we need and we can do research on what other states and countries have done, and not reinvent the wheel as we insert more curricula into the system. I think this is going to be something that we're going to be doing for many years to come: helping kids understand where energy comes from. And why it's important to really treat it as a very, very precious resource.
Here is an example. People think about the pyramids. Wow, the pyramids they got built, what a wonder of the world!. Well, actually, it was just a lot of people over a long period of time, and it took a lot of energy to do that and that energy was provided by the food that the people ate. The energy equivalent today, in fuels like gasoline that we take for granted, is just amazing. It's so dense. The energy equivalent in one gallon of gasoline is 500 hours of human labor.
Imagine having somebody come over to your house, and rake your yard for ten hours a day, for fifty straight Saturdays and then paying them four dollars at the end of the year and saying thank you very much. That's what we're paying for a gallon of gasoline today. And it is a very precious resource that is worth probably a lot more than that.
Another way to look at it: At $100 a barrel, and there are 42 gallons in a barrel, oil is 14.8 cents a cup. I am holding this cup of tea in my hand and I just paid a $1.75 a cup. If oil was as expensive as tea, let's say ten times more expensive -- $1.50 a cup -- it'd be $1,000 a barrel. We have nowhere to go but up as far as I'm concerned with oil prices. They'll go up and down, but they'll trend up. The day I was born there were 3 billion people on the planet, and now there's more than 7 [billion]. In my lifetime it's more than doubled.
We've got economies like India and China, Brazil, [and] Mexico that are industrializing very quickly. They all want to use the same kind of energy that we use. If the Chinese use as much oil per capita as Americans, they'd use every drop of oil produced on the planet today. There wouldn't be a drop of oil for North America, South America, Africa, Europe -- just the Chinese could use all the oil in the world if they used as much per capita as the United States does today. So, demand is clearly rising, supply is clearly finite, prices clearly are going to go up. That's why we need to hedge more with non-fuel resources, like renewables. And the societies that do that will be the most stable.
Back to selected topics listAlaskans are spending about $5.8 billion a year on energy AHPR: Puts things in perspective.
Rose: Some of these things certainly put things in perspective for me when I first learned them. Here's another one: Think of a pie chart -- a pie chart that represents the cost of a building over 40 years. When most people think of the cost of a building, they think of the cost of construction. Well, in fact, 11 percent of the cost of a building over 40 years is the cost of construction. Fifty percent of the cost of a building over 40 years is operations and maintenance, which is mostly utilities, which is mostly energy. So, if you spend a little bit more upfront to make your building far more energy efficient, you'll save so much money on the back end.
Not to mention creating a much better environment that's more productive for your workers, which is your biggest investment in the first place. The salaries that you pay your workers dwarfs the extra costs that you might incur to make your building super energy efficient. These are the kind of things we're trying to get out to the public to put in perspective how important this is, but people tend to look at relatively short time periods. And, one of the things that we have to get them to realize is that these are long-term decisions that have to be made at some point, and some group of humans is going to make them. But sometimes those decisions will have 50 or 100 year impacts.
The
Watana Dam that's being discussed right now on the Susitna River could produce electricity for the next 100 years. So if it happens, it's a 100-year decision. Those are the kind of things that we want people to understand perspective on. Also, the money, where are we spending our money? People say, "how can't we afford to do any of this stuff?" Right now, it's estimated that Alaskans are spending about $5.8 billion a year on energy. That means over the next ten years we're going to spend $58 billion on energy, whether the price goes up at all. Even if the price doesn't go up a penny, $58 billion. So, if you save 10 percent of that, which is totally doable, that's $6 billion right there over the next ten years that you could add to this economy.
What we're focused on is getting utility companies to do larger scale projects that benefit the entire community.
AHPR: So the question is not [so much] how can we afford it, but how can we
not afford it?
Rose: I think that is the question, but you have to put that in perspective for people. That state [efficiency] goal is 15 percent by 2020. If we can save 15 percent of that $60 billion, and I unfortunately think it's going to be way more than the $60 billion because that $60 billion doesn't account for any kind of economic growth or increase in price. But if we can save 15 percent of say $100 billion over the next 8, 10 years, that's $15 billion we'll keep in this economy. [That's a] tremendous amount of money, [and] it has multiplier effects for our economy that are really important, especially in a place that is so heavily dependent on one source of revenue.
AHPR: You work with legislators, you educate them about energy policy, you help promote energy legislation and legislation that helps save energy in some way. You mentioned some incentives put into place by the Legislature. Are there others you want to mention or say more about?
Rose: Well, the $512 million I mentioned for the weatherization rebate program is a huge incentive because those are basically grants to individuals to go out and weatherize their homes. So that's a big incentive the state has provided. Communities and utility companies get incentives through the Renewable Energy Grant Fund and like I said, $200, $210 million has gone out since 2008 for that. But, this brings up a salient point, which is that REAP is focused on utility scale projects. We're not focused on creating incentives for individuals to put a solar panel or wind turbine in their yard. That is not what we're focused on.
What we're focused on is getting utility companies to do larger scale projects that benefit the entire community. There's better economies of scale with that and with limited staff capacity at REAP we can't do everything. So we have not, historically, been working for residential incentives. They do exist in other states. There are some residential incentives here. There is a limited net metering rule in the state of Alaska, which means there's a certain amount of electricity you can sell back into the grid if you are in a certain utility territory. But, that's about the only state incentive. Now, there are federal incentives for individuals. I believe the 30 percent tax credit for putting in solar, for instance, is still viable for another year or so at the federal level. And that's a federal tax credit.
Back to selected topics listThe magic wand question AHPR: What else do you think Alaska legislators can do? If you ...
Rose: Had a magic wand?
AHPR: Yes.
Rose: Well, this is Chris talking now, not REAP, OK? Because REAP has not come to consensus on this issue, but I find it ironic that we are such an energy state and don't have a department of energy. And my own personal belief is that a department of
domestic energy, and that is a key point -- not energy for export, but a department of domestic energy, could be beneficial for the coordination of all the different programs we've got and the establishment of an overall vision and policy for the state of Alaska because I think people get confused between projects and programs, and programs and policy. And there's actually a hierarchy.
Policy is at the top of the pyramid, programs are below that, and projects are below that. And some people confuse programs with policy. We're very happy that the Renewable Energy Grant Fund was passed and continues to be funded every year, but that's not a policy. It's implicit support for renewable energy, but it is not in anyway a mandate that anything happen. In fact, the appropriations for the Renewable Energy Grant Fund have to happen every year. And so again we're very happy, and excited, and grateful that the legislature just extended the Renewable Energy Grant Fund for ten years last spring, they just extended that program to 2023, but that does not bind any future legislature to funding it.
And so, with the kind of revenue system the state has, which is dependent on one industry, I think it's very difficult to create sustainable funding on a grant basis. However, the establishment of the $250 million revolving loan fund for public buildings and then the
ASSETS Fund that just got created last spring, $125 million for energy projects, those are great examples of sustainable funding mechanisms. Revolving loan funds that will go on in perpetuity, theoretically, to continue to support investment. Those are wonderful, and I think we're probably going to see more of that in the future. But what I think we still lack is a vision with teeth. The 15 percent goal is a goal. It has no teeth.
My own personal belief is that a department of domestic energy, and that is a key point -- not energy for export, but a department of domestic energy, could be beneficial for the coordination of all the different programs we've got and the establishment of an overall vision and policy for the state of Alaska.
We also need some consistent way of vetting energy projects. I like food analogies, so here's a food analogy: We have so many choices in Alaska, we have so many fossil fuels, and so many renewables that it's like the person standing at the buffet, trying to decide what to eat. It keeps happening that more ideas, and more really cool projects keep getting thrown out there, making it more difficult for the person standing at the buffet to make a choice. Sometimes the choice is made based on impulse of what tastes good instead of what's most nutritious for you. I really feel like the state needs a set of criteria that they can use to vet every project so there is some kind of consistent mechanism to compare project to project -- because there are so many different attributes to all of these different projects, some are renewable, some are not renewable, some are to bring resources to export, some are more geared toward domestic use. Right now, it's difficult to even compare them. But I think we really do need to focus on how Alaska, and Alaskans, are going to produce and consume energy.
Here's an example: the gas pipeline. If we were to build the gas pipeline to Chicago, and that's kind of an idea of the past now, I think people have moved on to different pipeline project ideas, but when that was being discussed, a friend of mine noted that we would run out of gas the same day Chicago did -- in forty to fifty years. So, how are Alaskans going to look at their resources? We have a pretty small population. The amount of natural gas on the North Slope could be a thousand years' worth of natural gas for Alaska's population. How are we going to conceive of that resource? How much are we going to save for ourselves? These are the kind of questions that a country would be asking that a state doesn't necessarily ask. We're so heavily dependent on one source of revenue, i.e. the oil and gas industry, mostly oil, that we almost, in the short term, have to monetize our natural gas to try and diversify our economy.
So when you ask: If I had a magic wand, what would I ask for? I'd ask for a consistent vetting process that includes true cost accounting of all the different costs and benefits of projects so that we can figure out a way to decide which projects we should endeavor to build and start doing it.
Back to selected topics listWe need to adapt to changes in climate and energy choices will be part of that adaptation AHPR: Do you see a connection between energy policies and public health policies? And if so, would you elaborate on the connection as you understand it?
Rose: Well, of course. I think all of these things are related in some way. Clearly, there are health impacts to burning fossil fuels. That is not what we're emphasizing. That is not why we're saying we should do more renewable energy, but it clearly would be a benefit to burn less fuel, both economically and environmentally, because it is clear that some of the burning of some of these fuels has detrimental health impacts. Mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants, although there's little coal-fired power in the state of Alaska, there is evidence that the mercury gets into fish, and fish gets into people. So, mercury gets into people. That's not good for public health.
Certainly, using cleaner fuels has some potential health benefits. Climate change, and all of the things that are coming along with it, are going to have tremendous impacts on human population. Whether you're talking severe drought which leads to less food, or you're talking about changes in animal populations that people subsist on, there are many, many, many changes going on.
The acidification of the ocean is one that probably concerns me the most. As more CO2 becomes sequestered in the ocean, there is more carbonic acid in the ocean, the pH is changing, and it becomes more acidic, and the bottom of the food chain -- things like pteropods -- are less able to form shells. Things like that are obviously of concern to the human population. How we connect the dots for people is sometimes the question.
There are so many things now that we rely on that are system-based that will be impacted by climate change, so that even if a person tells me that humans have nothing to do with it, I say, "Fine, it's happening, how are we going to do something about it?"
A lot of people want to resist that humans have anything to do with climate change. And I guess even if I were to grant them that that was the case, the last time there was any type of natural variation in the climate was well before we had all these very, very sophisticated systems that we rely on. You don't grow your own food.
There are so many things now that we rely on that are system-based that will be impacted by climate change so that even if a person tells me that humans have nothing to do with it, I say, "Fine, it's happening, how are we going to do something about it?" And using the precautionary principle, I'd go with 97 percent of what the world's scientists are saying, which is that fewer carbon emissions is probably going to mitigate the impacts of climate change. At this point, though, I think that climate change is an experiment that is going, it's happening, carbon that we released fifty years ago is just reaching the atmosphere and is still in the atmosphere.
So, we're in a situation where we have to start adapting. And our energy choices probably will be part of that adaption. If you go 200 miles south you're in Homer. If you go 200 miles that way [points to the ceiling], you're in outer space. Thinking about it that way gives people perspective.
AHPR: We've reached the end of my prepared questions. Is there anything you'd like to add to the readers of
Alaska Health Policy Review?
Rose: I'm very happy to get a chance to discuss this issue with your readers because I do believe there is a huge connection between energy policy, between health policy, between our health, the health of all of us and our economic future, too. I'd encourage anybody who wants to learn more to check out our website at
www.realaska.org, and to give us a call if they have questions, and or come to our events.
AHPR: Thank you Chris, I appreciate your time.
Rose: Thank you.
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ent of Health and Social Services and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium have teamed up to support a healthier Alaska through Healthy Alaskans 2020.