Project Spotlight: Alaska Energyshed
The Alaska Energyshed project is a collaboration between Launch Alaska and the Alaska Municipal League, with regional support provided by Southeast Conference and DeerStone Consulting. Major funding support is provided by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) under the Water Power Technologies Office.
The Alaska Energyshed will identify at least three clean energy projects between Northwest and Southeast Alaska, and aim to secure a combined $10 million in public and private funding for the projects, as well as any appropriate tax credits, subsidies, debt financing, and other financial and technical resources.
By combining individual projects into a larger, single effort, the goal is to reduce development costs, accelerate the process, attract more interest in the projects, and leverage diverse funding and technical resources. By creating larger projects within and across regions, we hope to show that this process can be used more broadly to support clean energy development across Alaska.
The Alaska Energyshed process will include detailed data collection of existing community energy infrastructure, incorporating local knowledge and economic analysis to ensure the projects are valuable and worth pursuing. To accomplish this, the project will:
Select 12 participating communities, with six in Northwest Alaska and six in Southeast Alaska.
Complete an inventory of existing local power infrastructure by project personnel on the ground using a combination of forms, drones, and LiDAR in the participating communities.
Deploy universally accessible digital tools to share data, collected in the participating communities, and facilitate discussion and evaluation.
Identify energy projects in the 12 participating communities, consolidating for evaluation and eventual selection of the best value projects.
Prioritize and design projects based on community input and feedback.
Secure project funding for a minimum of three projects
The project will take approximately three years, from May 2023 to August 2026.