The Kenai Peninsula Borough voted against an agenda item at their most recent assembly meeting that would, if passed, support Senate Bill 17 relating to performing energy audits on certain public and community facilities.
Assemblyman Brent Johnson explains Resolution 2021-022, “This piece of legislation, in section one it says that the assembly hereby supports Senate Bill 17, which among other actions authorizes the Alaska Energy Authority to conduct the energy audits on public facilities upon request. It also requires the department of transportation and public facilities to perform energy audits for public school buildings every seven years and sets a target date of 2026 for a state energy policy to have at least 50% of total energy used by the state to come from clean energy sources. The intent is to reach that target date by entering into contracts valued at $100 million to retrofit a variety of public facilities in a manner that will result in a net savings and energy cost within 15 years after completing the retrofits.”
Prior to the vote, Assemblyman Kenn Carpenter said, “My thing is, I want to save energy but it takes a lot of money to save money. It’s going to take a lot of money to set it up, which we don’t have. The state is running a giant deficit. We don’t know where that money going to come from even though they save $100 million. But it takes a lot of money to set up an energy system. We found that out at AVTEC where we run a bunch of classes and we learned it takes a lot of money to put a wind tower up to get almost no money. It takes years to get your money back on those type of things. I need a lot more information on that.”
Assemblyman Richard Derkevorkian echoed similar sentiment, “I am opposed to this resolution. The senate bill has some very broad language in it. First of all, it’s asking the state of Alaska to spend $100 million dollars they don’t have today while we’re operating at over a billion dollar deficit. I’m going to vote no on that everyday.”
The resolution did not pass with 5 no votes and 4 yes votes. Many who voted no echoed similar sentiment. For details on Senate Bill 17, click here.