OPINION: Renewables are key to addressing Alaska’s natural gas shortfall

In a June 8 editorial, the Anchorage Daily News editorial board took up the topic of the looming energy crisis in the Cook Inlet region. The board should get kudos for highlighting this critical issue and rightly noting that the coming natural gas shortfall has been known but largely ignored for years, and that the ripple effect of the higher energy prices that will result from imported LNG will be devastating to Alaska. However, in its prescription for a solution, the board made a serious error.

The editorial casually dismissed the potential that renewable energy has for getting us out of the mess we’re in. It asserted that rather than focusing on gas supply, the utilities have been putting too much effort into wind and solar projects. That statement doesn’t stand up to even the lightest scrutiny. The only two significant wind farms putting energy into the grid today are Fire Island and Eva Creek. These both came online in 2012, i.e. 12 years ago, and since then, no additional wind energy has been turned on. Similarly, the first utility-scale solar projects came online in 2018 and in the subsequent six years, only two small additional projects have been completed. Chugach Electric, the largest utility, has no utility-scale solar at all. I have to wonder how the editorial board reached the conclusion that the utilities have been “focused on renewables.”

The editorial went on to state: “Renewables should be part of the power mix in Alaska, but it’s a fantasy to expect them to come online in time to matter for the coming natural gas shortfall.” This statement made it clear that the editorial board is blissfully ignorant of the current realities of renewable energy, particularly solar, and what is currently happening in the rest of the U.S. and the rest of the world. In fact, solar, and to a lesser extent wind, may be the only energy source that can be deployed fast enough and at a large enough scale to head off large-scale imports of liquified natural gas at an affordable cost.

To get a sense of the potential of renewables, consider what is currently happening in Texas, the state with a fetish for fossil fuels. The Lone Star State has already surpassed California as the state with the most solar generation and Texas is adding 8 gigawatts of solar generation this year and another 12 gigawatts in 2025. This is in a state where gas costs about one-third of what local gas currently costs in Cook Inlet, but even so, solar power is still a lower-cost solution. Texas is not adding all this solar because they are a bunch of tree-hugging liberals, they are doing it because it’s cheap and reliable and solar can be deployed quickly. To store some of that solar energy, Texas is adding 6.5 gigawatts of battery storage this year alone and another 9 gigawatts by this time next year. Meanwhile, the cost of batteries is plummeting, down more than 50% in the last year, ensuring that the rate of battery deployment will be even higher in the future.

At this point I’m sure I will be informed that 1)Texas is a lot sunnier than Alaska, 2) we have long, dark, snowy winters in Alaska, and 3) a lot of gas is used to heat buildings, not generate electricity. This brilliant analysis misses this key point: In the near term, solar energy’s sole purpose is to slow down the rate at which we are burning through our precious remaining local gas reserves. This is the simplest, cheapest and quickest way to utilize solar energy. When the sun is shining, you put solar energy into the grid and turn down your gas-powered generation. When the sun stops shining, you ramp your gas-powered generation back up. The gas you don’t burn on a sunny May afternoon is still available to provide heat and power during a cold snap the following February. Or the February after that.

And even with Alaska’s modest sunshine, solar energy is still cheaper than the electricity currently being generated with gas. It’s a true no-brainer. If you want to take it a step further, you start installing short-duration energy storage, most likely lithium batteries. This storage allows you to store energy for hours or at most, a day or two, but it significantly expands the window when renewable energy can offset gas generation and so stretches out those local gas reserves even further. In the long term, 10-plus years down the road, you may be installing long-duration energy storage that will allow energy to be stored for weeks and months — or perhaps small modular reactors, fusion or tidal power will be providing our power. I don’t know what energy source will eventually power Alaska, and neither does anybody else. In the meantime, renewables buy us time and will keep the lights on without bankrupting us.

Sam Dennis is an engineer who formerly worked in oil and gas and now invests in renewable energy.

The views expressed here are the writer’s and are not necessarily endorsed by the Anchorage Daily News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)adn.com. Send submissions shorter than 200 words to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Read our full guidelines for letters and commentaries here.