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.
This might have been more helpful if published a few weeks ago
Well said, if you vote for the Green Energy grifters, you will be forced into energy sources that do not make sense in Alaska. Wind Energy, besides killing birds of prey, is a failure in Texas. Solar Energy is okay but not practical for Alaska’s extreme winters. Also, the secret they never want to tell you is the solar panels are a huge environmental problem as they deteriorate into our soil. Nasty heavy metal contamination from compounds used to manufacture them. Wind and Solar in Alaska do not make sense and are not cost effective.
Drill baby drill!
Thanks for this Alex & Suzanne.
What about the 2 by-law amendments Alex?
I’m thinking “no” on amendment 1 (is that a pronoun move?)
And “yes” on amendment 2 (which will curb to many meetings & save money?)
But maybe reducing paid meetings will result in less competent people running in the future.
What do you think?
I’ve gotten into the habit of voting no to everything requested by this Board majority because I don’t trust them. Of course, your mileage may vary. Cheers –
I recently read an article (I cannot remember where) that talks about the far left removing many smaller dams as sources of electricity across the country. This is a pattern. And it looks as if there is greater agenda at hand for total control. Citizens do not go to sleep!
That is because hydroelectric power is generally the most reliable source of power available. And among the many things that radical leftists hate, reliability is right up there. They would much prefer everything be UNreliable and fragile, so that they can have their great god government come in to “save” us whenever things go bad or wrong. And if not enough is going bad or wrong, by God, they will make sure that they do!
Not a bad observation, but reality in the form of customer choices has a way of destroying the best laid plans and agendas.
One of the things going on in Cali is home solar panels that by law sell electricity back to the grid operator. This year, they’ve started generating more than the grid can absorb, causing it to be dumped. Obvious solution is storage, which is as expensive as baseload generation. Local storage is also a growing possibility, though currently expensive (costs are quickly decreasing). Will probably end up seeing something like this in the the southern half of the US for Spring – Fall.
What are the Powers That Be gonna do when customers start taking care of their own energy needs, thus destroying the Grand Centralization and Control Plan? In any war, the enemy (us, in this war), always gets a vote. Cheers –
DO NOT VOTE FOR MARK WIGGIN. I called him with a concern about Chugach’s poor customer service and a billing problem I could not resolve after exhausting all other options. He ended up changing the subject to a “real problem” that he experienced with his family on a recent ski vacation trip. He is disrespectful, self-centered, and completely out of touch. Chugach customers deserve better. DO NOT VOTE FOR MARK WIGGIN.
So True. Mark Wiggin is an arrogant under achiever with an oversized ego. Combine this will being a REAP Board member and you someone who doesn’t care about the Chugach members.
In many ways, Wiggin is the perfect democrat, something he demonstrates to the general public on a regular basis. Cheers –
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