Alaska is wealthy in energy - how can Alaska sustain its future with it?

This is the first posting on a new discussion board which is meant for Alaskans to discuss what we want for our state's future. Our state, probably more than any other is blessed with resources which should portend a prosperous and sustained economic future and history.  Our future demands citizen participation - we can and must move our leaders out of their comfort zone.

Alaska has all the ingredients for an economy which can become much more robust and even.

• Alaskan have environmentally benign, low impact, lake tap electrical generation potential which many areas can only view with envy.
• Alaskans have a giant storehouse of natural gas, which presently may be uneconomic, but is much more like money in a gigantic Alaska Permanent Fund. It's present state is what those in the investment community might call an unrealized gain.
• Alaskans have the "Ring of Fire" a huge stretch of coast which is seismically and geothermally active and rich.
• Alaskans have an abundance of biomass, tidal, wind and wave energy all which are awaiting technologies and demand which would make them viable. Some of this list is and some will become achievable in the future.
• Alaska is blessed with a swag of coal hydrocarbons, some of which is intended to be developed benignly as well.

We can't have a sustainable economy with the presently high cost of energy, but with economies of scale we can do much to lower our areas high energy costs and with it leverage our huge advantages.

Alaska has a huge stockpile of natural gas - but is it that big on a world scale? No, not at all. So what ought we do with this one-time blessing? I would argue that we ought to consider what we can do with it here to produce value added products for export - not a one-time wham blam, thank you - type development.

To do that we need to attract industry which can depend upon some long term incentives and a stable, in-state incentivized tax structure to boot - we should do this through means which adds value to our resources while in state through the creation of in-state industries. However, we need to have ean adequate industry base to bring economies of scale to natural gase's production and use. We can't build an in-state line and just expect that industries will come. Concurrently, we need to invite and attract industry to Alaska! Do we have what it takes? I'd think so. Here is what we have:

• Clean air and water that must stay that way
• Hunting, fishing and seasonal recreation galore!
• Abundant state and Native corporation land
• An established University for training our resident Alaskan workforce
• Abundant forms of renewable energy to power our industries
• A creative and friendly Native and Pioneering can do Alaskan spirit
• A willingness to create a fair tax structure in exchange for creating in-state industries

Natural Gas Jet Flight story

Just today, the first 6 hour jet flight between London and Qatar took place - what was different about this flight was that it was fueled by a synthetic jet fuel, which was partially comprised of natural gas! Hmm, this sounds much like  Alaska? We have natural gas, we have refineries already making jet fuel.   An innovation like this could be a start to providing sufficient gravitas to an instate use of abundant North Slope natural gas. But there is more!

1. Alaskans have already seen a successful fertilizer production facility with Agrium's plant on the Kenai Peninsula
2. We have the least expensive means of energy transport in the world at our doorstep - marine shipping
3. We could look at the state of Utah's initiatives with using natural gas and a fuel of choice for our instate transport system
4. Why not synthesized Avgas?
5. We have an instate need for residential natural gas and for rural Alaska we can ship propane where a gas line isn't economic

So this is six possible in-state uses of North Slope Natural Gas. I'm certain there are many more!

The world today is thinking outside the box or paradigm. We need to do this as well.