Twice a month, planes land on the gravel landing track in Noatak, Alaska, about 70 miles north of the Arctic Circle, transporting diesel that residents need to heat their houses in the bitter cold.
And once a month, they receive electricity bills four times higher than those of most of the rest of the country which include two separate costs: one for the cost of energy itself, and another for the cost of the fuel used to pilot.
“The cost of fuel is the thing that kills,” said Bessie Monroe, 56, who works as assistant to the tribal administrator of the village, while she was making her invoice. Even if it completes the heat of its generator with a wood stove – and can still sometimes feel the cooling of the wind through one of its walls – Mrs. Monroe paid about $ 250 per month for electricity for its small house in a room this winter.
So a few years ago, in order to build a source of local electricity and save money from residents, the village of Inapiat of 500 worked with its public service company to install a small farm of solar panels. And when the congress approved new tax credits for clean energy projects in 2022 through the inflation reduction law, was signed by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the village has seen the opportunity to buy more.
But the fate of the project – and dozens of others like him in Alaska and in the country – is now in doubt, leaving the uncertain villagers of their financial future.
These doubts are at the origin of an intraparty quarrel which takes place among the Republicans in Washington, where the members of the Congress of the GOP throw ways to pay for the interior day of President Trump. Certain fiscal darkers have focused on clean energy tax credits as a main target for elimination.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, alaska republican, has become a Slearly partisan to keep the tax credits.
“A wholesale repeal, or the end of certain individual credits, would create uncertainty, would endanger the planning of long -term projects and the creation of jobs in the energy sector,” wrote Ms. Murkowski and three other Republicans in a letter to the leader of the majority of the Senate last month to plead in favor of the preservation of the energy breaks.
The calls to eliminate them have already had an effect. The main manufacturer of solar farms along the rail belt withdrawn from a major project. Dozens of additional projects were left in the limbo after Mr. Trump signed a decree in January to freeze the federal subsidies funded by law.
And everything comes in Alaskians Prepare for imminent natural gas supply deficitsThis prompted state officials to warn of the possibility of rolling power outages.
“It seemed that two, three years ago, there was a lot of enthusiasm to move forward with many of these projects,” said Matt Bergan, an engineer who worked for the electric association based in the city of Hub Kotzebue, 80 kilometers south of Noatak.
“We know what we need here,” said Mr. Bergan. “We need wind and solar and storage to make heat, and move away from diesel fuel. And the stars aligned themselves. These great federal dollars were going to pass. We had our projects ready for the shovel to go. And now all the stars are not aligned. “
Similar stories take place throughout the country. But nowhere has the law had a deeper effect on daily access to power than in Alaska, where energy companies have sought to take advantage of tax credits to develop renewable energy infrastructure in isolated communities.
“There is still a substantial sum of money that must get out of his pocket in order to operate these projects,” said Bill Stamm, director general of Alaska Electric Village Cooperative, a non -profit public service at the service of residents in 59 places throughout Rural Alaska, including Noatak. “If you can recover part of this money, especially for people who have a tax appetite – that I think, influenced the movers and the Shakers, the people who will decide:” We really want to get involved in this kind of business? “”
During an event last month in Anchorage, Ms. Murkowski told a conversation she had had with the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, in which he commented that there would be little support from the Trump administration for wind energy projects.
“Remember that so many Alaska state communities will never benefit from a gas pipeline,” said Ms. Murkowski. “It's not going to take a hit towards Togiak. It won't make a sperm at Kobuk. So please, don't forget the opportunities that come in our more rural communities which are more isolated, which must be able to access the resources that are there. “
Even simple tasks in Noatak are often difficult. For years, the public service company which served the village would send diesel by Barge during the months of spring and summer. But the water levels of the Noatak river have since dropped so low that the public service can now fly only in the fuel. There are no roads to Noatak, and the nearest city, Kotzebue, 3,000 inhabitants, is more than an hour by all-terrain vehicle.
“You could probably go to Hawaii as cheap as you can arrive in Noatak from Anchorage,” said Stamm, the director of public services. “It is therefore not insignificant that we must fly people there to make repairs. We have to steal all our equipment in there to make repairs. ”
At the end of last year, the planes used in diesel underwent mechanical problems and were anchored for weeks. The village has rationed diesel for residents, forcing a lot, like Mme Monroe, to rely strongly on their wood stoves. It was 25 to 35 degrees below zero, so she and other residents recalled.
“It happens a lot, fuel shortages,” said Sad Ashby, the village tribal administrator. “And some people do not have wooden stoves here, so they have only one source of heat.”
The cold in winters, Mr. Ashby added: “It's like you don't believe.”
During this shortage, Ms. Monroe lacked wood, she asked her 20 -year -old daughters to chop. “I asked:” Lord, I need wood today. Later, there were two newspapers outside my house.
When diesel is accessible, its smoke persists in the air in the residential streets.
“When I entered this office, I asked the previous administrator, who obtained the solar panels:” How could I get another farm? “” Said Ashby, who, at 22, is the youngest to be a tribal administrator. “With solar energy, there is no fuel emission. Every day we see smoke coming out of the plant. “
But the real reason he hopes to pivot solar energy, he said, is to reduce costs.
While the average residential electricity rate in the United States is around 16 hundred per kilowatt hour, Noatak pays more than a dollar. During a recent visit, Heating Fuel cost the Gallon $ 13.
Some larger houses cost $ 1,700 to heat, and residents say that it is not uncommon for them to pay their electricity bills in payments. Robbie Kirk, who lives in Noatak in a house he built himself, remembers having received an electricity bill of $ 2,500 about seven years ago, when the temperature flowed to 60 negative and stayed there for weeks.
Which often presents difficult decisions. Mr. Kirk described how he and the others each winter must decide to heat their water line. If they do, that brings their electricity bill. If they don't, the pipe could freeze and burst.
The more common compromise, he said, is to decide between spending money to heat fuel or petrol for mountain biking and snow machines they use to cross the snowy gravel roads that have crossed the village. Around 5 p.m. every day, just before closing the unique gas pump at the village store, a small line forms. A recent Thursday afternoon, Tianna Sage filled her brother's snow machine so that he could use it to go duck hunting. She said that she should refuel every day for him, at the price of $ 11 the Gallon.
“I work three jobs to make sure that the fight is not there,” said Kirk. “But I have a lot of family here, a lot of widowed uncles, widow's aunts that they are not able to, but not physically.
Sitting in her office, Ms. Monroe said that she always had the hope that Congress would preserve federal support for villages like Noatak. She said that she would worry about the ability of her daughters to pay their bills each month if a kind of change had not come.
“Our future does not seem good in itself, with the cost of living right now,” she said. “I am starting to realize that all this will come to them. They will have to wear the burden of heating their houses or buying food. ”
