Energy emergency

In Huntington's home village of Huslia, a recently hired teacher didn't last long enough to leave no child behind. The teacher checked prices for fuel and food, and took the next plane out.

So Huntington, a member of the Alaska Federation of Natives' energy work group, stepped in. "I teach because I know math and science," he said.

He knows hard numbers. "I just wrote a check for $950" for two barrels of heating oil. That's almost $9 a gallon. Heating bills like that have driven people to old technologies like wood and expensive gasoline has made subsistence hunting costlier.

High energy prices have hit all Alaskans but rural Alaska has been hit the hardest.

Percy Frisbee, tribal energy director for the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, offered a modest but encouraging outlook based on Southeast's rich resources -- hydro, wind, tidal. Building transmission lines might be part of long-term solutions, he said, but they'll take 5 to 15 years and cost millions of dollars.

If rural Alaska has to wait until that long-term help arrives, he said, "Our communities aren't gonna last."

Nonetheless, speakers at AFN saw hope ahead.

"Yeah, these are challenging times," Rep. Reggie Joule said. "But I see opportunity if we're willing to do the work to adapt." He pointed out that Alaska Natives have made tremendous adaptations before.

No question, high energy costs threaten Native cultures already battered and weakened by loss of language and elders' wisdom. They dim any hope for sustainable economic development in rural Alaska. Energy costs make it hard to fill existing jobs, by scaring off people like the short-time Huslia teacher.

Imported energy will always cost more in Alaska's remote areas -- that's just a fact of economic life. The state can't afford to, nor should it, commit to subsidize the price of rural fuels down to urban or Lower 48 levels. There's a limit to what the state can do to sustain rural communities.

However, much of rural Alaska had to buy a full winter's worth of fuel just as oil prices hit their peak of $140 a barrel. Those communities are stuck with six to eight months of high-priced gasoline and heating oil and generator fuel, until new supplies arrive in the spring. They get no benefit from today's falling oil prices. Some one-time state assistance may be appropriate.

In the longer term, creative financing and logistics arrangements, along with smart investments in alternatives, could do a great deal to help. The state might help communities arrange discounts on bulk fuel purchases, or use fuel futures contracts to avoid price spikes when buying a year's supplies for remote communities. Wind and solar already are at work in Kotzebue and Nome. Solar panels help power a washeteria in Arctic Village. A North Slope gas line might make propane available for shipment to Yukon River villages.

A mix of long- and short-term solutions already is at work in the state's enhanced weatherization and home energy assistance programs. Alaskans received $1,200 energy checks with their PFDs this fall. But, as Rep. Mary Nelson pointed out, a more equitable plan to lower all Alaskans' home heating costs by 40 percent was left on the table during the energy special session.

Rep. Woodie Salmon of Beaver said he thinks the old urban-rural divide is shrinking in the Legislature. That means prospects for pulling together on energy are a lot better in 2008 than they would have been in 1998.

There's no single, swift solution. But Alaska has the resources to do better by rural Alaskans.

BOTTOM LINE: The energy picture in village Alaska is grim -- but not hopeless.