Gasoline prices in Alaska are above $5 per gallon. Heating oil delivery prices have topped $6. The long-term future of natural gas at any price is uncertain. And electricity prices that have already gone through the roof appear poised to ascend into orbit.

It’s not as if we didn’t see this coming. We did — more than 15 years ago, in fact.

The Alaska Legislature passed a nonbinding resolution in 2010 to increase the share of electricity from renewable energy to 50%. At the time, renewables accounted for about 21.5% of total generation, with roughly 21.2% from hydroelectric projects.

And now?

The key word is “nonbinding.” According to the Energy Information Administration, Alaska currently gets about 30% of its electricity from renewable sources. Do the math: That’s about 0.5% growth in renewable generation every year.

Compare that figure with Texas, another state well known for its oil and gas production. In 2010, the Lone Star State got about 8% of its electricity from renewables. By 2025, about 37% of its electricity was provided by renewable energy. Or we can compare it to the rest of the nation, where generation from renewable energy has more than doubled, from 10% in 2010 to 26% last year. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have created renewable portfolio standards that require utilities to generate a set amount of electricity from renewable sources by a specific date; Alaska is not among them.

The lack of progress in Alaska is even more galling since the state has long been a pioneer in developing renewable energy sources. The Gold Creek Power Plant, which still provides Juneau with backup power, was built in 1896 — less than two decades after the invention of the Pelton wheel made it possible to obtain electricity from rivers. Kotzebue emerged as an Arctic pioneer in wind energy in 1997 with the installation of three 66-kilowatt wind turbines. Dozens of off-grid Alaska villages are turning to solar energy during the long summer days to reduce their annual diesel fuel costs.

So why did the state fail so miserably at meeting its 2010 goal? Three reasons:

• Geology. Alaska is a huge state with a varied landscape. Hydropower might work well in Southeast, but it’s not easy to build dams in many parts of the drier and flatter Interior and North Slope. Wind is generally useful along the coast but encounters natural barriers as it moves inland. And solar is extremely efficient in cold climates and clear skies, which rules that source out for most of the state’s coastal communities. There is no one-size-fits-all-places solution.

• Demography. About three-fourths of the state’s electricity is consumed along the Railbelt, stretching from Fairbanks to Homer. The major communities in the Railbelt — Anchorage, Fairbanks, the Mat-Su, Homer and Seward — all developed separately. As a result, they all have different electric cooperatives providing power. Unlike the Lower 48, there is no independent system operator to ensure the smooth flow of electrons up and down the Railbelt. And we can’t forget that there are 200-plus off-road villages that are essentially operated on free-standing microgrids because they’re too remote to connect to a statewide system. Alaska cannot, and never will, have a single electric grid because of its population distribution.

• Politics. Alaska has historically been the home of the One Big Project. Think of the plan to use nuclear weapons to build a port at Cape Thompson; the proposal to create a Lake Erie-sized reservoir by damming the Yukon River; or a domed community for 40,000 people on the Knik Arm. Alaska politicians tend to swing for the fences, and with those swings come strikeouts. There’s also an unfortunate tendency to kick the can down the road until the next deus ex machina like World War II, the Cold War or the trans-Alaska pipeline appears — if one does. When it comes to energy, Alaska needs to punt on the idea of another megaproject savior.

It’s easy enough to hand-wave the current high energy prices, blame them on a misguided but temporary Middle East war and assume that a $44 billion gas pipeline will solve our energy problems. Given the tortured history of the Alaska LNG pipeline project, that’s a bit like Ahab waiting on the white whale to beach itself. But even if the pipeline is built on budget — some estimates have placed the cost at $70 billion — and completed by 2031, five years is a long time for most of the state’s population to sit in the cold and dark.

If Alaska is ever to become truly energy independent, lawmakers will need to realize that it will occur through a patchwork of sources, with different renewables of different sizes in different locations as the key element. Given its vast natural resources, the state should shift its focus from megaprojects to smaller, less costly efforts distributed throughout communities. The Alaskan economy — and the people who are suffering from ever-rising energy prices — can’t wait.

Frank Bass is a former investigative journalist and graduate student majoring in Arctic and northern studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, specializing in the history of renewable energy.

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