ITSUKUSHIMA Shrine on Miyajima Island, built by the warlord Taira no Kiyomori around 1168, stands at the edge of an inlet of the Inland Sea, not far from Hiroshima. Long regarded as one of Japan’s three most beautiful places, it was registered in 1996 by Unesco as a World Heritage Site.

The shrine’s architecture is a masterpiece of the shinden style: Poised on vermilion pillars and facing the mainland across the Onoseto Strait, it appears at high tide to float on the sea.

Over almost 900 years Itsukushima has survived many disasters — typhoons, fires, earthquakes, landslides, not to mention pollution, blind development, political squabbles and wars.

In 2004 a typhoon blew off segments of the roof and tore away floorboards. Visiting the shrine with a group of World Heritage experts some months later, I asked one of the priests accompanying us whether such severe damage could ever be repaired.

He answered that longevity and close proximity to nature had also bred a keen ability to cope with disaster — the shrine had managed to survive precisely because it had learned to adapt — but that the scales were tipping. No part of Japan, he said, would be ready if that delicate balance with nature shifted too drastically or too suddenly.

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-       Jennifer Granholm, Former two-term Governor of Michigan
-       Dr. Dan Arvizu, Director, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
-       Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow-In-Residence, Post Carbon Institute

Many thanks to all of our sponsors, speakers and volunteers who helped us pull off such a great event. We couldn’t have done it without you!

Videos from the conference will be available on REAP’s website in mid-June.

Panel 1 – The World Around Us: International Clean Energy Markets
This moderated discussion featured experts on Asia and Europe, focusing on how Alaska can develop a policy that will catalyze greater clean energy development across the state.

Panel 2 – Energy Efficiency: Alaska’s “First Fuel”
This moderated discussion looked at some of the innovative construction techniques already being deployed in Alaska, and discussed what other leaders in the built environment are doing around the world to save energy and keep money in local economies.

Panel 3 – Bringing Renewables into the Grid: How Utilities and Independent Power Producers Can Work Together
This moderated discussion included perspectives from the State of Alaska, IPPs and Railbelt utilities on the kinds of market rules and transmission access that will allow abundant renewable energy development in Alaska.

Panel 4 – Alaska Native Corporations: Engines For Clean Energy Investment
This moderated discussion featured representatives from regional corporations and non-profits to discuss why clean energy is an attractive investment, and how future projects might be financed.

Panel 5 – Bringing Private Investment Dollars to Alaska
This moderated discussion examined ways that energy projects across the state and the country are being financed.

Panel 6 – Building the Workforce of the Future
This moderated panel featured labor and education experts discussing innovative programs and policies being used in Alaska and across the country, and what the State needs to do to ensure Alaskans know where their energy comes from and are prepared for the clean energy jobs of the future.

Panel 7 – Alaska’s Clean Energy Market Opportunities
This moderated panel highlighted the ways Alaskans can utilize the State’s vast supply of stranded renewable energy resources, optimize our small-scale distributed energy systems, create jobs and strengthen the State’s economy in the process.

This mantra, repeated on TV ads and in political debates, is punctuated with a tinge of inevitability and regret. But, increasingly, scientific research and the experience of other countries should prompt us to ask: To what extent will we really “need” fossil fuel in the years to come? To what extent is it a choice?

As renewable energy gets cheaper and machines and buildings become more energy efficient, a number of countries that two decades ago ran on a fuel mix much like America’s are successfully dialing down their fossil fuel habits. Thirteen countries got more than 30 percent of their electricity from renewable energy in 2011, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, and many are aiming still higher.

Could we? Should we?

A National Research Council report released last week concluded that the United States could halve by 2030 the oil used in cars and trucks compared with 2005 levels by improving the efficiency of gasoline-powered vehicles and by relying more on cars that use alternative power sources, like electric batteries and biofuels.

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You won’t find any big picture windows, but that’s OK with Tom Marsik and his wife, Kristin Donaldson, who have spent the past two years building the home. What you find instead is a home with the lowest air exchanges per hour rating ever recorded and publicized. The air in their home exchanges at a rate of .05 air changes per hour.

The home has been held up as an example of what energy efficient construction techniques could do to lower the astronomical cost of heating homes in rural Alaska. While many communities wrestle with the economic constraints of high energy costs, Marsik, an assistant professor of sustainable energy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Bristol Bay Campus, used his knowledge about energy efficient homes to build his own.

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The Alaska Energy Authority is planning to build a 735-foot, $5.2 billion structure on the Susitna River in a largely empty south-central part of the state, which is watered by runoff from the arc of the Alaska Range. The dam, designed to generate up to 600 megawatts of electricity, would create a new power supply for more than two-thirds of the state’s population.

But in Alaska, where natural energy resources and wildlife are both foundations of the economy, the proposed dam presents twin conundrums.

One is economic: which is better, creating a reliable source of hydroelectricity and weaning some of the state off natural gas, or building a spur off a proposed pipeline to bring gas from the North Slope to the populated region from Fairbanks to the Kenai Peninsula? Or both? The other is environmental: what serves the environment best, replacing natural gas-fired electricity with hydroelectricity, which is free of greenhouse gas emissions, or keeping the Susitna watershed untrammeled and avoiding the risks involved in changing the dynamics of a major salmon stream?

For environmentalists, the choice is uncomfortable. “It is a bit of a hard choice for the environmental community to have to make. Do we choose a big natural gas project or do we choose a big dam?” said Corinne Smith, a Nature Conservancy official in Alaska responsible for the study of the Matanuska-Susitna Valley where the dam would be located.

While energy is a foundation of the Alaskan economy, it is most visible in the federal arena. The big political fights over energy have involved federal lands, like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the National Petroleum Reserve. Discussions over how Alaskans should generate their own energy are less frequent and lower-key.

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But a new state program might help you see even more savings, if you’re willing to go through certain steps. It’s called the energy rebate program, and it promises between $4,000 and $10,000 to homeowners who agree to make homes more energy efficient.

Jimmy Ord is with the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, which runs the program. He says for some homeowners, it might mean adding better insulation, or making sure the house keeps its heat inside.

“And then a lot of times it’s the heating unit,” he said. “My home — I have a home that I purchased in Anchorage — has a 60 percent efficient boiler. Imagine if, every month, you spend $100 on your heating bill, $60 goes to heat your house and $40 goes up the chimney. So if you have an efficient unit, at maybe 95 percent efficient, $95 goes to heat your house, and only $5 goes up the chimney.”

Ord says more than 25,000 homes across Alaska have participated in the rebate and weatherization program, and they’ve seen an average of 30 percent savings on energy bills.

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However, the plant will be maintained in a standby mode to be available if opportunities develop, company spokeswoman Amy Burnett said in a statement issued March 4.

“The plant is currently operational, in a stand-by mode, maximizing our flexibility as we determine the long-term future of the facility,” Burnett said. “ConocoPhillips will consider pursuing a new export authorization only if local gas needs are met and there is sufficient gas for export.

“Right now, we unaware of sufficient gas supply to support exports. We still have the flexibility to resume operations and apply for a new export authorization if gas becomes available. Plans will depend primarily on gas availability, local gas needs, various regulatory decisions and market conditions.”

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In January, a company called Mosaic, made a splash in the renewable energy world when it introduced a crowd-funding platform that makes it possible for small, non-accredited investors to earn interest financing clean energy projects. When Mosaic posted its first four investments online – solar projects offering 4.5 percent returns to investors who could participate with loans as small as $25 — the company’s co-founder, Billy Parish, thought it would take a month to raise the $313,000 required. Within 24 hours, 435 people had invested and the projects were sold out. The company had spent just $1,000 on marketing. All told, Mosaic has raised $1.1 million for a dozen solar projects to date. Now it is connecting with other solar developers to identify new projects for financing. More than 10,000 people have already signed on and are standing by to invest.

A generation and a half after the first Earth Day, we may be witnessing the coming of age of solar power. Last year, when Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company floated an $850 million bond offering for the Topaz Solar Farm, in California, it was the first time a public bond offering for a U.S. photovoltaic power project had been deemed “investment grade.” The offering was oversubscribed by more than $400 million and the company is now planning a second round to raise potentially $1.265 billion more. And last month, it was reported that First Solar, a manufacturer of solar panels, had signed an agreement with the El Paso Electric Company to sell its power for less than half the cost of power from typical coal plants. In 2011, almost half of the 208 gigawatts of electric capacity added globally came from renewable power, primarily wind and solar (pdf), and almost half of the additional power capacity in the European Union came from solar alone.

A big reason is cost. Over the past five years, the price of photovoltaic panels has declined by about 80 percent. We’re used to hearing about Moore’s Law, which refers to the steady and predictable increases in power and decline in cost of integrated circuits.Swanson’s Law holds that each time global manufacturing capacity of photovoltaic cells doubles, the costs fall by 20 percent.

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A brewing ground blizzard in this Southwest Alaska hub is making it difficult for Jack Hébert to get to Atmautluak, a village of less than 300 people here on the flats of the Kuskokwim River Delta. Hébert, president and founder of the Cold Climate Housing Research Center in Fairbanks, is traveling to Atmautluak because members of the village’s tribal council called him for advice.

The villagers want to both build their own homes and set up their own construction company.

Hébert, along with Aaron Cooke, an architectural designer with the center, want to partner with the people of Atmautluak as they have assisted others in places like Anaktuvuk Pass, Quinhagak, Crooked Creek and Point Lay. In Anaktuvuk, center staffers helped design and build low-cost, fuel-sipping, semi-subterranean houses that meshed with the country and the lifestyles of the locals.

Now, the community, hundreds of miles away from the nearest grid, wants to make another use of that power.

“If we’re able to convert that energy that’s pounding on our shores and displace diesel, the state’s going to save a lot of money,” says Chris Rose, founder and executive director of REAP, theRenewable Alaska Energy Project.

“We’re a place that makes sense to test this stuff, because we have higher energy costs than a lot of other places,” says Rose, who’s been watching the project’s progress.

Yakutat Borough Manager Skip Ryman says the bottom line is to get away from diesel.

He says the municipal power plant sells electricity for about 57 cents a kilowatt hour. The state’s Power Cost Equalization Program halves the residential price. But still …

“People are finding that anywhere from 45 to 60 percent of their disposable income has been going for utilities and home heating,” Ryman says. “This in turn is hurting retailers. We’ve been losing families, losing kids in the school system and essentially sending the community into a bit of a death spiral.”

Yakutat, about halfway between Juneau and Cordova, has been interested in wave energy for some time.

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