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Archive: Alaska Affordable Energy Strategy

This website is an archive of the various components of the Alaska Affordable Energy Strategy (AkAES) reports, model, code, and data. The goal of the archive is to preserve all of these various components in one location for long-term accessability and ensure they remain available for future updates as appropriate.

The official home of the AkAES reports was on the Alaska Energy Authority Policy Planning website. As of January 2021 that website and the associated content was not available after an overhaul of the AEA website content management system. The bulk of the overview and context setting content below is directly from the original Alaska Energy Authority Policy Planning AkAES website.

Alaska Affordable Energy Strategy Overview

The Alaska Energy Authority (AEA) was tasked in 2014 by the 28th Alaska Legislature to provide recommendations to improve the affordability of energy in areas of the state not serviced by the proposed natural gas pipeline (gasline). The Alaska Affordable Energy Strategy (AkAES) is the result of this effort.

The AkAES is a strategic plan to improve the methods by which the State works with non-Railbelt communities and utilities to identify, evaluate, develop and maintain cost-effective energy solutions. The strategy includes recommendations for policy, financing mechanisms, strengthened regulation and other administrative tools. The final report, submitted to the legislature on December 30, 2016, provides a high level summary of the AkAES research and reccomendations.

A longer, complementary report entitled AkAES Methodology, Findings, and Recommendations goes into greater detail. The report contains the backing documentation for the recommendations, laid out in a logical framework.

Chapter 1 provides an overview of the research and resources that were brought to bear for this project.

Chapters 2 and 3 describe how and why energy is less affordable in some areas of the state.

  • Chapter 2 describes baseline energy costs and consumption in communities across the AkAES study area. Socioeconomic characteristics, including population trends and other factors that affect communities’ ability to pay for infrastructure, are also discussed. Estimates for investment needed to maintain the current state of energy systems in communities over next 20 years is provided in this chapter.
  • Chapter 3 investigates the factors that drive the cost of energy in communities—for both electricity and heat. The chapter follows the supply chain from crude oil to consumption to understand which factors have the most sway over the total cost consumers pay for energy. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 describe and analyze factors that could help bring affordable energy to Alaska communities.

Chapter 4 explores the risks and barriers to project development, categorized by technology and phase. By planning for and mitigating these risks, communities’ and the State’s return on investment (ROI) can be increased.

Chapter 5 provides an overview and brief analysis of current and historical state energy programs to understand what has been effective to date in bringing affordable energy to communities.

Chapter 6 expands on the cost drivers in Chapter 3 to delve into infrastructure and non-infrastructure opportunities for reducing community energy costs.

Chapter 7 builds on the results of all previous chapters to propose a framework for statutory, regulatory and policy changes to bring more affordable energy to Alaska communities.

The entire report can be downloaded here:

Additional Reports

Report Title Report Author(s) Completion Data
Energy Efficiency Program Evaluation and Financing Needs Assessment Vermont Energy Investment Corporation; Cold Climate Housing Research Center July 2016
LNG Feasibility for Alaska Affordable Energy Strategy Communities Northern Economics July 2016
Documentation of Alaska-Specific Technology Development Needs in support of the Alaska Affordable Energy Strategy UAF Alaska Center for Energy & Power June 2016
Rural Utility Financial Analysis UAA Center for Economic Development October 2016
Fuel Transportation Improvement Report US Army Corps of Engineers, Alaska District October 2016
Barriers and Opportunities for Private Investment in Rural Alaska Energy Projects UAF Alaska Center for Energy & Power December 2016
Sustainable Utilities Study updates, utility structure analysis, and subsidy program analysis UAA Institute of Social & Economic Research January 2017
True Cost of Electricity & Bulk Fuel In Rural Alaska UAA Institute of Social & Economic Research October 2016
Energy Costs & Rural Alaska Out-migration UAA Institute of Social & Economic Research March 2017
Financial Benchmarking for Rural Alaska Electric Utilities UAA Center for Economic Development June 2017

Progress Reports

Presentations

some presentations have not been recovered for inclusion into archive

Afforable Energy Strategy Model

Improving Access to Decision-Critical Information

Strategies deployed to increase access to affordable energy must be tailored to the specific resources, needs and capacity of the community and/or utility they are intended to benefit. In order to analyze the cost-effectiveness of various infrastructure improvements in a given community, AEA developed the Alaska Affordable Energy Model (AAEM) with the assistance of Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA).

The Alaska Affordable Energy Model (AAEM) is a model designed by the Alaska Energy Authority (AEA) and built by the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ (UAF) Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA). The goal of the AAEM is to provide Alaska with a community energy model and project evaluation tool. It uses community and regional energy data, fuel data, and socio-economic data to:

  • estimate and forecast heating and electricity consumption by sector,
  • compare the ability of energy infrastructure project types (efficiency, renewable energy, fuel switching) to reduce the cost of energy in communities,
  • determine the capital investment needed and the resulting energy savings to communities.

Disclaimer: The results presented in the model results are generated from available data on population, consumption, generation, and information on a technologies analyzed. For some communities this information may be incomplete. If you have, or know of a source of data that could help improve the model please contact The Alaska Energy Authority.

Installing the model locally

A Windows package is offered for version 1.0.0 that installes the v1.0.0 model and model data. Installer and instructions can be found at installer wiki page.

Support or Contact

This is an archive of the work done by the Alaska Energy Authority and the various supporting report authors and made available for scholarship and research purposes only. Copyright ownership of this material is left with the original authors and may be governed by local, national, and/or international laws and regulations, and your use of such content is solely at your own risk. Limit your use of to noninfnging or fair use under copyright law.

We recommend starting with AEA as a first point of contact for questions about the report and content within.

If you have questions or want to help improve this archive of the AkAES feel free to let us know through our GitHub issue tracker.