The “climate change” industry is making a play to take over the board of Chugach Electric. The current election of board members attracted endorsements from The Alaska Center for three candidates: Shaina Kilcoyne, Susanne Fleek-Green, and Jim Nordlund. These are the candidates who have made promises and pledges to the environmental industry to kill natural gas.
Starting April 19, the board election can be voted on by all customers (members) of the association. Voting takes place electronically, when on that day members with emails on file will receive an election notification email from Chugach Electric.
Since Chugach Electric bought all the accounts from Municipal Light and Power, it now has 90,000 voting members from the northern Kenai Peninsula, Whittier, and greater Anchorage.
Hardly any ratepayers vote in sleepy electric utility elections, which gives The Alaska Center the leg up in stacking the board with people who are anti-natural gas. This election is right down their ally in developing a green energy future, whatever that may be for Anchorage.
The Democrats have pushed this deal from the outset. The arrangement to buy ML&P was brokered by former Mayor (and former Senator) Mark Begich with then-Mayor Ethan Berkowitz. Voters approved the purchase in 2019, and the Regulatory Commission of Alaska approved the merger details in 2020, when the deal was complete.
The total transaction was $986 million and the promise was that ratepayers would have lower rates and would save about $200 million over 15 years.
But then the environmentalists decided to take over the board and keep the rates high. The Democrats have fingerprints all over this latest move.
Sen. Mark Begich’s former press secretary Julie Hasquet now serves as Senior Communications manager for Chugach Electric and runs the communications about the elections.
The Alaska Center, meanwhile, dropped the “for the Environment” part of its name a few years ago, but its mission has remained the same — support Democrat candidates and build a Democrat, climate change and anti-oil political base in Alaska, controlling local, state, and national government.
It endorses almost exclusively Democrats and candidates who identify as nonpartisans or undeclareds in order to get elected in marginal districts. Now the Alaska Center is working to take over the electric association and disconnect Alaskans from their natural gas.
Candidates supported by the Alaska Center have Mark Begich and former Mayor Berkowitz in common: Susanne Fleek-Green was statewide coordinator for Alaskans for (Mark) Begich and was a key advisor on the staff of Mayor Berkowitz. She now works as the superintendent of Lake Clark for the National Park Service.
Shaina Kilcoyne was Energy and Sustainability Manager for Mayor Berkowitz. She wrote the municipality’s climate change plan and installed solar panels on top of the Egan Center, claiming they would save the municipality $21,000 a year once the $200,000 investment is paid off. The panels are covered by snow for about six months a year and no one has looked to see if they are actually functional. She also worked the Alaska Center, and is associated with the Alaska Venture Fund, an environmental group at alaskaventure.org.
Jim Nordlund is the Alaska Center’s third pick and is a former Democrat member of the Alaska House of Representatives. He was Alaska State Director of USDA-Rural Development and is a reliable vote for the Alaska Center’s mission.
The Alaska Center’s top three donors are the Sixteen Thirty Fund, League of Conservation Voters, and Tides Advocacy Fund, all 501(c)(4) left-of-center advocacy groups, according to InfluenceWatch.org.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund has gotten involved in Alaska politics increasingly in recent years, including supporting Forrest Dunbar for mayor, unsuccessfully, and successfully opposing an Alaska constitutional convention.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund is a dark-money behemoth. In 2020, it poured $400 million into efforts to unseat President Donald Trump, according to Politico. It gets involved in Alaska politics because it’s a cheap state to work in, with a small population and voters that are mostly in the undeclared column.
The Sixteen Thirty Fund also brought ranked choice voting to Alaska by funding Alaskans for Better Elections.
In addition, the Alaska Center is funded by the Soros-linked Tides Advocacy Fund, which also helped pay for the expenses of Alaskans for Better Elections, the ranked choice voting group.
Chugach Electric’s election ends on May 19, when it will host a community open house event from 3 pm – 6 pm at ChangePoint Alaska. The voting takes place electronically. On April 19, members will receive an election notification email from Chugach Electric.
Learn more about the voting process here:
Excellent piece, Suzanne. The climate cult won’t rest until every Alaskan is cold, in the dark and part of CCP-dependent supply chain for everyday, essential services. We already count on the Chinese for our pharmaceutical/medical supplies, electronics and even defense technologies. Why give them control over our energy grid? If we elect radical environmentalists – who see traditional energy as ‘evil’ and contributing to a made-up ‘climate crisis’ – to the Chugach BoD, we are ceding additional power to the CCP. I appreciate your continued shining of the light on these roaches. Let’s hope Southcentral Alaska votes this time – our energy future is dependent on it.
Rick ditto on your comment! Wondering who your three picks are ?
Ditto
If you head to ‘www.votechugachstability.org you may see what you’re looking for! You’ll find the right candidates for the job and support by many of your friends, family, and coworkers! Bettina, Harold and Brad are NOT taking financial contributions and are only running for the members, NOT special interest groups! Agendas do not belong in the board room of the CEA board in conversation with a billion-dollar utility and with member’s rates at stake! watch our video that outlines what the other side is working on doing: ‘https://www.votechugachstability.org/in-the-news
We hope you share with family, friends, and coworkers on the importance of this election and who to vote for, to keep rates with only members in mind.
The why is simple. The left wants control of every aspect of our lives.
In Alaska, the ability to heat your home as affordably as possible is paramount.
The left doesn’t want the lower classes to have affordable anything. And what little they have is given by the left.
It’s elegant in its simplicity. The left wants as few of us prols as possible. Their climate change religion demands they reduce the unnecessary population-us.
They want you to be dependent on government as that means more control for the ruling elitists. There is power in control.
Fascists gotta fascist.
Back in the pre pipeline days when environmentalists were fighting against development of the Prudhoe Bay oilfield, my dad had a bumper sticker on his pickup that said “let the bastards freeze in the dark”. I wish I had that same bumper sticker today.
They don’t care how many people get killed by this. They really don’t.
Oh thats just what we need. Democrats in power controlling our power. Based on what we have experienced the last two years of the Dumbacrat stranglehold the future is looking very bleak with some dark cold winters ahead
The Begich/Berkowitz legend lives on long after they are gone. Has Berkowitz’ wife forgiven his sins of the past so he can return to public life and “face” the news anchors without dropping his drawers? Or is he still rolled up in the carpet in his basement and suffering daily floggings with a broom handle? Lots to ponder here…LOL
Who the heck are you to question or ASSUME anything about YOUR fantasies on others?
Heavens, Maureen, don’t let go of those pearls.
Oh please. A little histrionic.
Not.
Clearly Calvin-you may want to reconsider what defending women means. Be all butt hurt about Berkowitz, fine, leave his wife -and your own views about what you think their marriage is out of it.
For the underinformed and lazy voters in Anchorage — you’d better wake up– ANYTHING GEORGE SOROS TOUCHES THROUGH HIS MILLIONS will ruin your life
You guys are on a knife’s edge by letting these scallywags take over the Board.
Stay home, don’t vote and enjoy the ugly consequences, just like Ranked Choice Voting has truly been beneficial to Alaska’s demise.
If you have an email on file, you get an electronic ballot.
You dont even have to leave the couch.
There is absolutely no way to generate enough power for the rail belt without using coal, natural gas, diesel fuel. These idiots pushing the climate agenda, when there has been no change in average temperature in 38 years, are just lunatics. The people making this hamster wheel go round and round better get pretty vocal pretty fast or it is going to become a disaster.
Its an EXISTENTIAL threat according to the president.
Actually, you could do it with Watana, GenIV nukes and a CTL plant at Tyonek. Cheers –
These three candidates represent what is WRONG in Alaska/America. The “existential” threat of climate control.
DO NOT VOTE THESE THREE – Shaina Kilcoyne, Susanne Fleek-Green, and Jim Nordlund
And since there is major money backing all three any of them winning is Anchorage LOSING, as usual.
Even when the ballot is easy, anchoragite barely show up. This will hit us in our wallets if we let them in. You want a higher electric bill?
This impacts OUR rates that WE PAY for electricity. If these nut jobs from soros win, we pay more, cause you know natural gas is the left/democrat next target.
Want sanity and a future? Stop supporting the “existential” (fake, not real, philosophy not reality) threat of climate control, they want to take away our gas stoves and stopping our utility from using natural gas is the first ste to stopping US from using natural gas.
No need to sway public opinion when you can install your people on the board that makes decisions.
Yup.
Yeah. Like Leigh Slone spoke of (her attempt of a) Seven Mountains infiltration of government.
Brainwashed little wackos running the joint. Climate change is the biggest hoax perpetrated by man. It’s now one of the original sins. These little gals, left in charge, will ruin our economy. They are abject idiots, thinking they know what’s best. Complete fools.
The Chugach board needs to give up natural gas first before they tell anybody else what to do. What a bunch of dumb hypocrites.
Even if you are skeptical of climate change it still makes sense to move to renewable and carbon free energy alternatives. If you read the news at all you’ll know Anchorage only has a few years of guaranteed natural gas contracts left. Chugach Electric is dependent on a diminishing resource. If you truly are concerned about rate hikes and sitting in the dark then the time is now to start planning for the future. The cost of solar is now about the same as fossil fuels and dropping so installing solar makes sense to lower our rates. No one expects solar power in the winter when the sun is low but to ignore this low cost energy in the summer to extend our reserves is like dying of thirst standing in the rain. Modular nuclear may be an ideal fit for Alaska as Senator Murkowski recognizes (https://www.murkowski.senate.gov/press/release/murkowski-directs-significant-funding-for-alaska-), and finally, wind has been a great supplemental resource. I like seeing those Fire Island turbines making me some low cost energy. Closing your mind to anything other than fossil fuels is, to my mind, the most expensive path. I’ll be voting for the Alaska Center endorsed candidates.
“If you truly are concerned about rate hikes and sitting in the dark then the time is now to start planning for the future.”
Oh I am. I’m getting the hell out of here.
Couldn’t we just hide the decline using Mike’s Nature trick?
Scott, thank you for admitting your ignorance and blind conformity to an evil and anti-human agenda.
.
You authoritarian and quasi-religious ‘left’ are deluded in your love of the unsustainable and so-called “green” energies of solar and wind. In reality, those methods of generating electricity are wholely depending on oil, gas and coal for their extraction, manufacturing, maintenance and decommissioning. As radical leftists invariably do, you conveniently ignore ALL the costs, from start to finish, associated with solar and wind power; in reality, they are actually net energy sinks, when ALL costs involved are taken into account.
.
But as usual, we can always count on innumerate statists and radical leftists to fail to grasp the whole-picture ramifications of their utopian (and coercive) proposals.
Last time I checked, Fire Island windmill power was 50% more expensive than natural gas. But at least they are ugly.
Interesting that you pick up o GenIV nuke, which is a good first step. You missed Watana and CTLs at Tyonek.
Fire Island wind made our rates go UP rather than down. That’s why they are specifically broken out on your monthly electric bill. Fire Island was such a disaster that CIRI never tried to push Phase 2. Fire Island wind is why Nordlund is running.
Right about Cook Inlet natural gas to a point, as contracts are always running out. They always get renewed. LNG from the North Slope just got approved, so that process continues. Bad news is Haaland cancelling permits for Cook Inlet natural gas which will drive us to import it. We were in the same boat in 2009.
Natural gas is about as clean as you’re going to get. Note that electricity is only a third of our daily fuel use. Home heating and vehicle fuels are the other two thirds. Pushing wind / solar / tidal in lieu of natural gas will (and already has) make the system unstable / brittle / unreliable like it has in Cali. If you love blackouts, keep pushing renewables. Customers will respond with home generators to keep their individual lights on like they’ve done in Cali. There are better ways to do this. The Alaska Center is pushing a fantasy. Cheers –
Scott, please realize that everything you look out and see the Fire Island wind turbines “making me some low cost energy”, due to the grid size, any power generated is backed by thermal spin. This means that if you are making 19MW from Fire Island, there is 19MW of available spin being generated by a gas turbine or a large scale recip at Eklutna to support the grid voltage and frequency. So literally all of the low cost power is actually twice as bad for the environment and is literally the most expensive power you can buy from Chugach. Additionally, with the “low cost solar”, where are these products made? And how much “fossil” fuel is used to make these? The small scale nuke is the smartest idea you suggested, but you will need to get your lefty dem government out of the way to make that happen. Sounds like you need to do a bit more research before proffering your position.
“Why is Alaska Center trying to take over Chugach Electric Board?……..”
For the same reason leftists take control of everything else:
They want power over everything.
Didn’t even read the article. We all know why. …. Progressivism.
And they WILL succeed.
ANC is 85% liberal (95% if we subtract ER)
Now that the communists (from outside of AK) have arranged one elec. utility, they can focus on getting out the government, union employee, vote & take over Chugach, just like they have taken over ANC.
We are easy pickings for the Left.
Too sad.
Soros is a currency trader. He is shorting the dollar.
I learned of the current board its already got a plan regarding renewables and it don’t need help from 3-radicals to reach its 2033 goal. I don’t like radicals cause a radical is impatient. We consumers are already paying too much these this last years
Wind and Solar are nondispatchable, meaning not reliable to maintain reliability. Chugach ratepayers pay CIRI about double the costs to generate power via gas turbines.
Well, I guess we’re not going to see this one in the ADN, I mean Daily Worker, now are we.
1630 Project is heavily funded by a Swiss billionaire.
‘https://apnews.com/article/dark-money-democrats-wyss-politics-elections-601d40cd01569190559d545418afe396
Who brainwashed these mental midgets and climate clowns into thinking that the sky is falling? They received an expensive education and came out all the dumber for it. There is no man-made climate change. It’s an absolute fiction. The only things we are getting are spot changes in localized weather and oscillations of the jet stream and dynamic solar output, which temporarily raise temperatures by a degree or two, then cool again. It’s been going on for a few billion years. The earth isn’t a static planet. Changes occur at the behest of mother nature, not by ConocoPhillips and Exxon. Time to grow up, little ones.
“Hardly any ratepayers vote in sleepy electric utility elections.. ” says it all. Once again the other side has successfully enlisted its supporters to vote in these sleepy elections when hardly anyone one else ever bothers. This has given them an outsized voice in almost every public and private governing body that they’ve become involved in.
The fact that the majority of potential voters can’t be bothered to vote proves that they just don’t care. And we get what we deserve.
Until we figure out how to motivate these missing voters, we are going to lose again and again.
After reading these candidate’s resumes and current organizations (non profit) their associated with, they should all be very qualified if elected to have great success in bankrupting Alaska’s largest utility in no time… We have become a ship of fools.
Who counts the “electronic” votes ?
Greenwashing.
Button, button. Who ‘s got the button. They’ve got the “powah”. $? To the moon.
What could go wrong with voting online? Even easier than mail in voting and much easier to cheat!
I’m also concerned with who counts these votes.
I recently got my ballot. You vote for three. We know the left will vote Fleek, Green and Nordlund in a block. The rest of us (the few who will vote) will be scattered among six little known candidates. I would love to have some one post an informed list of three good selections. I would be happy to follow suit and encourage friends to do the same. Otherwise, we have no chance.
Hi Jack,
Please head to ‘www.votechugachstability.org I think you’ll find a lot of your friends support the same three as well on this page! Great information, background and goals with only members in mind! Vote, Bettina, Harold and Brad! 🙂
Vote for Betina CHASTAIN, Harold HOLLIS and Brad AUTHIER
http://www.chugachconsumers.org/
Repost to top, trollers only give names of the ones we don’t want to vote for
Hi Laura! Thank you for your vote! ‘www.votechugachstability.org is a great place for your friends to learn more on our wonderful candidates! They are not financially endorsed and only have the members in mind! We appreciate your support, Laura!
Why are MRAK and Save Anchorage trying to take over Chugach Electric Board?
the biggest problem is the poor people they carry the heaviest burden
same with gas prices they are hit the hardest
and they just keep making them poorer
permanent fund money also stealing from our poorest alaskans
a family of 4 that makes 70,000 a year is just getting by that is way more than 50% of alaskans today
may need to get a car or a more reliable car to get to work
their kids college education
it doesnt hurt me but it hurts alot of people what about the elderly
hey put the names of who we should vote for all the rest so people see the good choice
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