By BROOKE CUSACK
This spring, Gov. Mike Dunleavy hosted the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference: a three-day showcase of how the 49th State is leading on the technologies and developments of tomorrow.
Sen. Dan Sullivan headlined; industry leaders attended, and the panel topics spanned micronuclear energy, to geothermal potential, to rare earth mineral mining, and to the promise of Alaska’s LNG.
It was a glimpse of a vision of economic prosperity and private sector innovation that conservative young Alaskans like myself hope to see.
Those of us looking at the future of America know that unleashing American energy is key to much-needed energy independence, national security, and addressing our environmental, economic, and climate challenges. Alaska — not Saudi Arabia, not Venezuela, not Russia — should be the ones providing the world with energy sources of the future, for we know how to develop resources responsibly and have high standards for doing so.
However, there’s a couple critical obstacles to fully unlocking American resource development.
Domestically, the Biden Administration has pursued an agenda that kneecaps energy at every turn. From continuously blocking access to important development projects, like the Ambler Access Project, to appointing judges and government bureaucrats that hinder our ability to develop and innovate, it’s clear they are shutting down projects based on ideology, not rationality. (And on top of that, these bureaucrats clearly don’t understand what drives rural economies!)
Internationally, the trade policy landscape is far outdated. The world is in a new paradigm, where we are needing not only low-cost, but clean, high-quality production. However, the old paradigm allows foreign adversaries like China to flood the market with goods that have virtually no modern labor and environmental standards. This leads to a world that is overall far more polluted, and undercuts US production, which is far cleaner.
In fact, Alaska is particularly implicated by this gap. To put into perspective just how clean we are, Gov. Dunleavy launched an annual Alaska Standard report, which delineated our best practices and compared our overall production to the other major players in global markets.
It shows we are far more advanced than others — whether due to our strong guardrails to prevent flaring or our strict environmental standards that ensure generations of Alaskans will continue to enjoy the pristine environments we all know and love. Alaska’s sustainability is in a league of its own — no matter whether compared with Canada, Russia, Norway, or Texas!
To account for our high standards and reward our clean production, we need to address the unfair competition and level the playing field in trade. That means enacting real policy prescriptions like a foreign pollution fee aimed at places like China, Venezuela, and Russia.
This tool targets imports produced under drastically different environmental standards as our own. A foreign pollution fee would incent other countries to meet them or pay a price if they want products to enter the US market.
When you look at the numbers, the need for this is great. Russia, Iran, and China — the world’s leading natural gas producers after the U.S., respectively — pollute up to twice as much when extracting their yields. The U.S. produces oil four times cleaner than our Canadian neighbors. And for critical earth metal mining, which is key to next-gen energy production, American producers can process these same minerals with half the pollution that China emits.
Especially in the context of increasingly tight international energy markets, we need to do all we can to boost domestic production.
As a young Republican, I am thankful that, despite their differences, Gov. Dunleavy, Sen. Dan Sullivan, and Sen. Murkowski are unified in bolstering Alaskan energy and resource development while responsibly addressing environmental issues.
We need to fight back on the domestic front to unlock energy here, while also bringing the world to meet the standards we’re pioneering so American businesses and consumers are rewarded for them.
Brooke Cusack is a resident of Anchorage and the former Chair of the Alaska College Republicans. She is active in the State Republican Party.
