**Title**: Energy in the North - Phil Wight
**Date**: April 23, 2025
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Phil Wight

00;00;00;08 - 00;00;07;10 [Phil Wight] We have an Alaska railroad sized opportunity in front of us right now to bring online these new generation resources.

00;00;07;11 - 00;00;13;03 [Amanda Byrd] This week on Energy in the North, I speak with 51·çÁ÷¹ÙÍø, Assistant Professor of History and Arctic Northern Studies and Energy and environmental historian Phil Wight. In 1914, the Alaska Railroad was built and sometimes termed a golden age in Alaskan electrification. And I started the conversation with Phil by asking him what makes a Golden Age event.

00;00;28;25 - 00;00;35;14 [Phil Wight] So I would argue it starts even earlier in 1904, but certainly 1914 is when the railroad began to be constructed. It was approved by Congress. And what we mean by these golden ages is that Alaskans love to debate this prospect. Active projects, whether it's the Susitna hydro project or the LNG pipeline. But most of us don't sit back and appreciate what we've already built here in the state. We've built a tremendous infrastructure. As part of that, this infrastructure was not built all at once. It was built over time. And when we look at that, we notice that there are these moments of frenetic development, these golden ages, where the stars align and we bring online a lot of new generation capacity or we build a lot of transmission capacity. And just as you mentioned, the first of these was really the building of the railroad itself, which gave us this new template for settlement and networked electrification and connected Seward and Fairbanks. And of course, Fairbanks was the most populous city in Alaska in 1910. So we became the North star of this new infrastructure system. And then following the creation of the rail belt, we had a number of these golden moments, one of which was after World War II, that we had this moment of defense electrification, where the federal government helped to bring on line all of these new military bases and generation. And, we had another one of these golden ages during the pipeline boom. Right. Which effectively doubled the population of the state of Alaska. And it also brought online over 780 new megawatts of generation

00;02;08;07 - 00;02;10;24 [Amanda Byrd] Are we entering a new golden era in Alaska?

00;02;10;24 - 00;02;12;07 [Phil Wight] I think that's a great question. If you look back in the past and you look at what created these electrification, Golden Ages, it was basically when there was an alignment between the federal government, the state government, our rural electric cooperatives. It's when we had new technologies coming about and we really needed power to move our economy forward. And I think if you look out at the landscape right now, we have a shortage of Cook Inlet Natural gas that we have historically relied upon for power. We need new generation. The costs of new generation technologies has fallen considerably, especially solar, wind, battery storage. We are at this moment right now, where after, roughly five years of federal funding, we have over $1.1 billion worth of federal investments into our electricity system, both the railbelt and statewide. To put that into perspective. That's the same amount of money that the federal government spent to build the Alaska Railroad. So we have an Alaska railroad sized opportunity in front of us right now to bring online these new generation resources. Obviously, it's not so simple or straightforward. Historians, we always get nervous to predict the future. But I think that we have most of the fundamental elements that we need to build this new generation of transmission projects, of generation projects, and hopefully, reduce the volatility in energy prices and create more energy security. Because right now we are facing a very insecure energy future.

00;03;48;08 - 00;03;49;02 [Amanda Byrd] Phil Wight is an assistant professor of history and Arctic Northern Studies at 51·çÁ÷¹ÙÍø. And I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for ACEP. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep.