Published Nov 15, 2023 by Josh Reed

It seems only fitting that Alaska’s premier women’s college basketball tournament features one of the state’s greatest female athletes ever to grace the hardwood.

That is exactly what will happen Saturday night at the Alaska Airlines Center when Anchorage’s Alissa Pili and Division I powerhouse University of Utah take on her hometown team, University of Alaska Anchorage, in the Great Alaska Shootout.

“It’s super exciting and something I’ve been looking forward to,” Pili said. “Just to come home to everyone I grew up with and my family and people who maybe couldn’t come out and see me play (in college). A bunch of people have been talking about it, so it should be fun.”

To come back to where it all started for her will be a “full circle moment” said Pili after everything she has accomplished since leaving the state. She was named Pac-12 Freshman of the Year following her 2019-20 season at USC and Pac-12 Player of the Year as well as earning First Team All-Conference and AP Second-Team All-American honors as a junior for the 2022-2023 season.



Alissa knows how difficult it is for young Alaska athletes to get exposure and set themselves up to pursue their dreams of competing at the collegiate level due to the remote geographical location of the state to the Lower 48. However, she hopes that her journey can inspire the younger generation to not give up because it’s living proof of what is possible.

Published Nov 15, 2023

As part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced over $444 million to support sixteen selected projects across twelve states that will fight climate change by bolstering the nation’s carbon management industry. The projects, funded by the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, will expand carbon dioxide (CO2) storage infrastructure needed to significantly and responsibly reduce CO2 emissions from industrial operations and power plants, as well as from legacy emissions in the atmosphere. Large-scale, responsible deployment of carbon management technologies is crucial to meeting the Administration’s ambitious climate goal of achieving a net-zero emissions economy by 2050. 

To achieve net-zero emissions by midcentury, the United States will need to capture, transport, and permanently store hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide each year. This will require a concerted effort to build out the infrastructure to store large quantities of carbon dioxide in geologic storage facilities. The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to ensuring that carbon management projects are designed, built, and operated safely and responsibly, and in a way that reflects the best science and responds to the needs and inputs of local communities. 

Carbon Storage Validation and Testing Project Selections

Sixteen projects were selected for negotiation to support the development of new and expanded large-scale, commercial carbon storage projects, each with the capacity to securely store 50 or more million metric tons of carbon dioxide over a 30-year period. All projects will support the Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise (CarbonSAFE) Initiative, managed by DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM).

• University of Alaska Fairbanks (Fairbanks, AK) will evaluate the suitability of a CO2 storage complex for storing power plant emissions in the northern Cook Inlet Basin of south-central Alaska.