Web 57DHYAFZZFLZKFB August 16 2026 Alaska like Texas has fossil fuel wealth but parts are energy poor

Alaska like Texas has fossil fuel wealth but parts are energy poor

Texas in contrast to Alaska includes much Wind Power in their energy portfolio

Parts of Alaska are dramatically bereft of access to basic home heating energy

Which is available in the lower Forty Eight States. But Texas has been hard hit

By Climate-Change-caused flooding and other disasters which exposed a weak

Energy grid.  But the statewide energy grid of Alaska is even more inadequate

The legislatures in each of these two states allocates funds for infrastructure

Where debate focuses on opening a new fossil fuel natural gas pipeline.

Solar and Wind Energy both on land and offshore is the long Term answer

Ending wood burning for home heating, ending air pollution, is an immediate answer.

One rational answer is powering a smart electric grid extending to all rural areas

But the legislature fights wood burning regulation statewide despite local projects

For installing solar panels and wind turbines locally. Can Alaska eventually sign on to wind power

Abandoning their short term profit from a dwindling supply of fossil fuels, which pollute the air?

Can even Texas which profits both from fossil fuels and wind power today move away from their

Air pollution contribution which fuels the climate change that makes Texas vulnerable to climate

Disasters? Is Alaska now taking suggestions from the observers from the lower Forty Eight?

Not likely in Two Thousand Twenty Six especially during campaigns before the November midterms!

The conditions in a community with Hot Springs in rural Alaska far from a reliable energy grid

Are dire and population in a tiny Hamlet is declining for many reasons, starting with transporting in

Needed fossil fuels not even produced in Alaska! The high cost of living in rural Alaska is an issue in

every race including for one Alaska Senate Seat and for Alaska Governor. The area around some Hot Springs sits One Hundred Fifty Five miles west of Fairbanks at the edge of the remote, rural interior of Alaska.    State lawmakers in Juneau, about Eight Hundred Eighty Five miles south of the Hot Springs

area community, have spent months fighting over a proposed Eight Hundred mile natural gas pipeline from the North Slope to the “Railbelt” around Anchorage, where most Alaskans live. But that project would do nothing for farther-flung communities!    People near the Hot Springs hold three or four jobs, and during long winters, gather at the tribal hall. Many still haul water from the community well and shower and do laundry at the town “washeteria.” A local pilot first generated electricity with a diesel generator for his home and hangar in the late Nineteen Seventies before gradually extending power lines through town. In Nineteen Eighty One when one woman wanted lights at her house a mile from the center of town, she had to buy the poles and dig the holes herself. Like most rural Alaska communities, the Hot Springs Hamlet is powered by a microgrid, with two diesel generators maintained by a staff of two, who also answer late-night outage calls and clear fallen trees after storms. Only one works full time. Even with a state subsidy, electricity in the Hot Springs Area is among the most expensive in the country. A few years ago, the household of the woman used around Seven Hundred kilowatt-hours of electricity a month, shy of the national average. Now, she tries to stay below Three Hundred kilowatt-hours a month, enough to bring her bill down to Three Hundred or even Two Hundred Fifty Dollars. In the winter, the woman cooks on a wood stove. Her extreme conservation requires real sacrifice in a place that sees only a few hours of twilight in winter and where wolves recently carried off a family dog. The woman replaced the incandescent lightbulbs with LEDs, installed motion sensors and switched appliances from electricity to propane. She is teaching her grandchildren to turn off the lights and decide what they want before opening the refrigerator. But no amount of conservation can solve the problem that the woman and tens of thousands of other Alaskans are facing. Business owners have it even worse. Alaska is rich

 in oil is in the middle of an energy crisis worsened by a war on the other side of the planet. More than

One Hundred Ninety rural communities in Alaska depend on diesel for electricity and heat.

Alaska pumps more than Four Hundred Thousand barrels of crude oil a day, but much of the diesel burned in remote villages comes from crude drilled and refined in other parts of the world.

Higher global oil prices boost state revenue, but also drive up energy, heating and transportation costs. Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates would like Alaska to move decisively using their considerable profits from fossil fuels toward transitioning to wind power both on and offshore, building

 a reliable grid from clean energy to all rural areas, which it has the funds to build. That requires change.