Published Jan 23, 2024 by Yereth Rosen Alaska’s most populous corridor can generate most of its electricity through renewable energy, but would require significant upfront capital investment, a University of Alaska Fairbanks team said in a new report.
The report, issued last week by UAF’s Alaska Center for Energy and Power, found that by 2050 non-fossil energy can supply anywhere from 70% to 96% of the power needed to produce electricity along the Railbelt. The region comprises communities from Fairbanks in the Interior to Seward on the Kenai Peninsula, the corridor along the Alaska Railroad line that hold the vast majority of the state’s population.
The report compared four scenarios for power generation, from a continuation of the current heavy reliance on natural gas to varying blends of solar, wind, hydro, tidal and nuclear energy.
Under the business-as-usual scenario, with continued use of existing power plants, some new fossil fuel units and continued use of wind and solar energy at current rates, renewables would supply 11% of energy to generate electricity, and required capital investment would be $2.3 billion.
The other scenarios would require much more investment: $7.7 billion for a mix integrating tidal power, wind and solar to achieve 70% renewable energy; $10.1 billion for a mix of wind, solar and small modular nuclear reactions to achieve 96% zero-carbon generation; and $11.8 billion for a mixture of large-scale hydro, wind and solar projects to achieve 88% renewable energy.
Findings were presented Friday during a meeting of the state Senate Resources Committee.
One takeaway from the report is that wind and solar are consistently the cheapest forms of energy, but that they have quantity limits, said Jeremy VanderMeer, a research assistant professor at ACEP and one of the report authors.
For that reason, there is a need to mix in hydropower, continued fossil fuel use, batteries or some combination of those, VanderMeer told the committee.
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