In rural Alaska, a village turns to solar and biomass energies to cut diesel and save money

Eric Huntington built his dream cabin nestled in the wilderness of central Alaska, eventually raising two daughters there. But over the years, he learned that living in this quiet, remote village came with a hefty cost.

Every year, the Huntington family spent about $7,000 on diesel to heat the cabin during bone-chilling winters, and a few years back, a power outage at the town's diesel plant left residents freezing in –45 C. When power finally returned hours later, water pipes had frozen, leaving about two dozen homes without running water for days.

"We just didn't open our door all morning until the lights came back on," said Huntington, a member of the local Louden Tribe.

In Galena, a sprawling village of 400 people on the banks of the Yukon River, a community built around a former military base is shifting to clean energy in an effort to reduce its reliance on expensive, imported diesel. Local leaders say their nearly completed solar farm, along with an existing biomass plant, will boost the town's savings and protect residents from blackouts during extreme weather. The technology has the potential to provide clean backup power in emergencies and improve the power grid's resiliency, all while diversifying the village's energy sources and providing job opportunities for locals.

The projects come at a precarious time for renewable energy transition in the United States. The Trump administration has canceled billions of dollars of clean energy grants in an effort to bolster fossil fuel production, and billions more in investments have been scrapped or delayed this year. So far, the village's federal grants for the solar array haven't been impacted, but local leaders know the risk remains. Whatever the future of public funding, the village is an example of how renewable energies can save costs, boost reliability during extreme weather and create jobs.

Once online, the solar array will ensure that the village's power grid has a backup system, said Tim Kalke, general manager of Sustainable Energy for Galena Alaska — or SEGA — a nonprofit that will operate it. So when the power goes out, it doesn't result in tens of thousands of dollars in repairs, he added, and heat is guaranteed in times of extreme cold.

"You're dealing with life, health and safety," he said.    

In May, dozens of high school students in navy blue caps and gowns stood with nervous excitement in a locker-brimmed hallway, each waiting their turn to walk through yellow tinsel into a packed auditorium. It was graduation day for Galena Interior Learning Academy.

The school's vocational training courses and cultural offerings attract some 200 students annually from across Alaska, boosting the village's population and energy needs.

Students here can take classes on sustainable energy, aviation, carpentry and much more. But in order to keep it running — especially during long, cold winters — it needs heat.

That's where the biomass project comes in. Every winter since 2016, trees (mostly paper birch) are locally harvested and shredded into wood chips that fuel a large boiler plant on campus, offsetting about 380,000 litres of diesel annually for the school district and the city, said Brad Scotton, a Galena City Council member who also serves on SEGA's board. It's notable as one of the state's first large-scale biomass plants and is the most rural, he added.

Cost savings from using biomass has allowed the Galena City School District to hire certified professionals in trade jobs and do upkeep on campus facilities, said district superintendent Jason R. Johnson in an email.

It's also created a local workforce and a job base the village never used to have.

"It's keeping the money that used to go outside within the community and providing pretty meaningful jobs for people," Scotton said.