Solving rural energy problems: a cooperative approach.

• Author: Bohi, Heidi
• Position: NATIVE BUSINESS: SPECIAL SECTION

When the price of oil peaked at $147.30 per barrel two summers ago, the expression "village energy crisis" circulated through rural communities along the Gulf of Alaska with the same intensity that the Aleutian current rips through the chain during the late fall season.

Industry experts attributed the price increase to factors ranging from a decline in petroleum reserves to Middle East tensions and oil price speculation. Diesel prices in Bush Alaska climbed to $7 a gallon and electricity to more than 50 cents per kilowatt-hour--the two primary sources of energy in these rural areas--and utility bills averaged $7,000 to $10,000 for the winter season. To Alaskans in the villages, analyzing the source of their plight was pointless as they watched 40 percent of their annual income go toward their energy bills, compared to 4 percent for the average urban Alaskan's household.

Few decision makers can say with any certainty how many years it will take for communities to have energy infrastructure in place that will measurably improve this. What is accepted as fact is that if the generation, delivery and management of energy in rural Alaska does not change, these communities and cultures will perish.

"If we're going to survive in rural Alaska, we need to control our energy destiny," said Larry Cotter, Aleutian Pribilof Islands Community Development Association (APICDA) CEO. "Otherwise people will not be able to afford to live and work there. Throughout rural Alaska people are moving out of the villages, partly because of the high cost of fuel and energy. We need to reverse this one factor that seems to be forcing people out of small communities and into the cities."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

THE A TEAM

As is the case with most challenges facing rural Alaska--social, political, environmental, economic--organizing as a regional presence is the most pragmatic approach to fixing anything. So when 15 communities stretching from Nelson Lagoon to Adak (and encompassing the Pribilof Islands) realized the overwhelming challenge of trying to independently resolve energy issues ranging from delivery and storage challenges to increasing efficiencies and renewable alternatives, they inventoried their common concerns and as a unified group are now cooperatively taking on a lofty goal: to develop an energy plan that will ultimately result in an 85 percent reduction in the consumption of fossil fuel.

Known as the "A Team," six organizations comprise the group that...