At the Soldotna Chamber Luncheon, Leslye Langla with the Alaska Department of Commerce Community and Economic Development spoke about what the department does, particularly reducing the high cost of energy in Alaska.
Langla said that because it’s been a topic for such a long time, people often tune out when diversifying energy is brought up.
Langla: “People really don’t understand how complex it is, how many multi-millions of dollars are being spent to improve the energy situation for future Alaskans and I think that’s because we have energy fatigue. We’ve been hearing about energy for so long, we’ve been hearing about gaslines, we’ve been hearing about gas taxes, it’s a complicated issue, and I think people are just fatigued by it.”
An example she gave was a replica of a 1958 newspaper article from Fairbanks titled “Natural Gas Coming Soon” that hangs in the Department’s office.
She also contrasted the knowledge of the various proposed pipeline projects across the state like the Alaska LNG Project versus the Southcentral Pipeline Project.
Langla: “Both of those projects have kind of a different focus: one is really an economic project to get our natural resources out to the global marketplace and bring money back to the state treasury and the other project the smaller project is really about utility service for the interior, southcentral and other communities as practicable.”
Langla said the goal is to work to decrease Alaska’s energy costs by diversifying energy in both fossil fuels and renewable energies depending on what is best for Alaska.
