Getting Involved with Renewable Energy
Want to get involved with renewable energy? Find out ways you can impact policy today!
Getting involved with energy policy is the best way for you to push for the development in renewable energy in Alaska. There three different ways to impact local policies through:
1) The Alaska State Legislature During the 2009 first session of the 26th legislature, there were many energy related bills
that were concerned with renewable energy and energy efficiency and conservation. Click here to find out more information on ACE's top energy legislative priorities.
2)The Regulatory Commission of Alaska
The Regulatory Commission of Alaska (RCA) regulates, among other things, electric utilities. Most fundamentally, RCA approves the prices that the utilities pay to wholesale suppliers of energy and the prices they charge to retail electric consumers. Primarily the RCA's agenda is dominated by price-setting. However, the RCA is also engaged in energy policy-making in Alaska. Very recently, Federal law mandated that the RCA address whether or not to adopt federal standards for various energy efficiency and renewable energy-related regulations. Click here to learn more about these standards, including net metering- a policy that promotes residential and commercial-scale renewable energy system installations.
3)The Electric Utilities.
Energy utilities are the vehicles from which energy is created and distributed in Alaska. ACE's goal is to help utilities move towards a diversified energy mixture of renewable and traditional sources of power. In southcentral Alaska, where ACE has its community focus, utilities are primarily cooperatively run. Because of this, energy consumers, known as ratepayers, have the power to a)promote renewable energy candidates for the Board of Directors and b) help move the utilites to adopt a regional energy plan for the railbelt grid in order to implement an integrated resource plan.
