By ALEX GIMARC
There is another election going on today, the annual Chugach Election. Given the strength of renewable energy grifters these days, this election may be just as important as the Bronson – LaFrance runoff for Anchorage mayor.
Important how? Given that Chugach is part owner of the Eklutna power station (electricity and water for Anchorage) and the largest electricity supplier for the Rail Belt, poor decisions by the Chugach board on generation will have significant, negative consequences for decades to come.
Voting started April 17 and will run through their annual meeting May 17.
Four candidates are running for two seats on the Chugach Board of Directors. The two incumbents, Sam Cason and Mark Wiggin, both endorsed by the Alaska Center (for the Environment) and the Renewable Energy Alaska Project (REAP), are running for another four year term on the Board.
Their opponents are Dan Rogers and Todd Linley.
Chugach members have been voting online since April 17 with notification via e-mail. The Chugach Annual Meeting & Election page is a great place to start, get additional information, or to get in touch with Chugach if you have any questions. Participation is generally pretty low, with somewhere around 10% of the 144,000 members voting. Voters who turn out can have significant impact on who wins.
Challengers Dan Rogers and Todd Lindley are running under the auspices of an outfit calling itself Vote Chugach Stability. Both candidates are engineers. Rogers has been in the electrical world for decades as an entrepreneur and businessman, co-founding one of the largest power system engineering companies in Alaska. He notes that he has “more experience with renewable systems that actually work,” and important datapoint in this election. Lindley is a bit younger, with mechanical engineering experience for the last decade.
Both candidates are pointedly non-doctrinaire on generation choices, meaning that for them it is not wind and solar to the exclusion of everything else, which probably explains the lack of endorsement for their candidacy by the Alaska Center and REAP.
By my count, the renewable energy aficionados currently hold a 5-2 or 4-3 majority on the Chugach Board. Elect these two candidates and we have a very good chance to flip the Board majority to more of an all of the above worldview. Rogers interest in “renewable systems that actually work” is both a promise and a warning given current Board’s dalliance with large solar, wind farms and decarbonization.
The choice in this election is clear. If we want an all of the above approach to electrical generation here in the Rail Belt, Rogers and Lindley are your choices. If you want solar or wind generation with all the instability and expense it will introduce into the grid to the exclusion of everything else, Cason and Wiggin are your logical choices.
Rogers and Lindley will keep the lights on while Cason and Wiggin will introduce us to the Brave New World of rolling blackouts and skyrocketing electricity prices. From here, it’s a pretty easy decision.
The rest of the world is learning the painful lesson of over-reliance on renewable energy. We don’t have to make the identical mistakes up here to learn those lessons. If we want clean energy, there are a lot of ways to get that done including multiple hydro projects (not including Watana), GenIV nukes, and natural gas). All of these are affordable and reliable, something Cason and Wiggins’ “Big Wind and Big Solar” aren’t.
Get out and vote.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
