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Video Clips

Quoted moments from Alaska public meetings, hearings, and press conferences.

Clips from Alaska Energy AuthorityClear
0:14
Gwen Holdmann“That required the formation of the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative. Diane was on the initial board that formed AVEC, which many of us are familiar with.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:18
Gwen Holdmann“a new governor, a new legislature, you know, they have an opportunity here to knock heads around a little bit to the extent that that's needed and get us all on a— get the ship sailing in a consistent path”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

1:00

Peter Asmus

“this book is essentially a lot of oral histories because a lot of the folks profiled are now retiring, moving on. Well, Chris, you're now in Portugal, obviously, but— and Clay Copeland just, you know, moved on from his job in Córdoba. So I think the other value of this book is sort of capturing this time when the innovation was starting, and a lot of it is sort of decentralized innovation.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:41

Chris Rose

“unless there's some major gas discovery that none of us know about, can get online fast enough, I unfortunately don't think that we're going to see that kind of replacement.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:41

Chris Rose

“the rail belt right now is still about 80% reliant on natural gas for making electricity, almost 100% for heat. And that's really a problem now that natural gas is in short supply. It's getting a lot more expensive. There's a world market for it.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:31

Chris Rose

“one of the issues that the rail belt really faces is that it is not operating as an integrated grid.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:32
Gwen Holdmann“It's actually really timely because last, last night we just inducted Diane into the Alaska Women's Hall of Fame, and that was like a really, really, really cool event and a cool opportunity to share some, some stories about her.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:37

Peter Asmus

“the community, only 70 people, a utility that serves only 70 people, everybody does basically everything, but they use their indigenous wisdom because that river is the salmon”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:28

Peter Asmus

“we mentioned Kodiak Island. That's 99% renewable, and the reason they can get there, as Darren Scott describes, they have 3 layers of storage. First of all, they use hydro. A traditional hydro dam, then they have lithium-ion batteries, and then they have a flywheel”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:21

Peter Asmus

“one person I was getting to is Diane Carpenter, who I believe, passed away, and so that's one person in the book where she was a last-minute addition. I think Gwen suggested it”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:17

Chris Rose

“The problem we've had historically in the rail belt is we've had many utilities and many visions that don't always align.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:18

Peter Asmus

“we discovered— and there are some definitional issues— that Alaska had more microgrids than any other state. In fact, basically everybody in Alaska gets their power from a microgrid.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:35

Chris Rose

“We've got a Regulatory Commission of Alaska that also does not have a vision to execute. So we've got pieces, but they're kind of at misalignment.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:15

Chris Rose

“we don't have a Department of Energy. We call ourselves an energy state, but Alaska doesn't have an energy division. We've got an Alaska Energy Authority that doesn't really have a lot of policymaking horsepower.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:29

Donovan Russoniello

“really encourage folks to go and grab a copy of that book, whether physical or digital. It's, it's an amazing resource and there's a lot of really inspiring stories in there.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:37
Gwen Holdmann“she came to Alaska, I think, in 1955 with her husband, who was a dentist. They moved out to the Bethel area and then to a little village called Stony River.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:27
Gwen Holdmann“We've got 3 competing proposals for importing natural gas that utilities are spending lots and lots of time and dollars on, you know, looking at. And we need to kind of come together around like some consensus around these things instead of all going off on our own in our own direction.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:26
Gwen Holdmann“I don't see any way that we can avoid that. I mean, I think long term we want to move away from our reliance on natural gas, but it would behoove us also to just have that as an option, but certainly for heating.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:16
Gwen Holdmann“I find out she'd just written a book at like age 90. She just published a book. I ran to the local bookstore, got the only copy they had of it, read it all night.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:23

Peter Asmus

“it's University of Alaska Press, which is actually University of Colorado Press. I guess it's a subset. So if you Google Alaska Microgrid Innovators, University of Alaska Press, that will also bring you up”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:52

Peter Asmus

“I got a chance to go down and visit her in Alamos, spent a bunch of time with her and being able to hear directly from her some of those stories. And so that was pretty special to me”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:12

Peter Asmus

“Well, you can go to Amazon, but it just officially came out last Thursday, actually. There's also an online version which actually has color photographs.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:20

Peter Asmus

“this opportunity came up and actually it started— I met Gwen at a conference of some sort. And at the time, I was an analyst, had a global database on microgrids, and I think Gwen said something to the effect like, "You don't have enough Alaska microgrids in your data,"”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:50

Chris Rose

“I think it's very unlikely that the utilities that have relied on natural gas in the Southern Rail Belt are going to have any other opportunity to replace that natural gas but for importing it.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:16
Gwen Holdmann“she was actually working on organizing all of her papers related to the rural electrification story. And one of the reasons why she had left that out of the book is because she always intended to tell that story separately.”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:27

Chris Rose

“A lot of these smaller utilities that were administered by people like Brad Reeve up at Kotzebue or Darren Scott at Kodiak Electric had boards of directors that shared a vision of where they wanted to take that utility”

REAP: [2026 Fall Energy Speaker Series] Alaska’s Microgrid Innovators ·

0:10
John Sims“If both Chugach Electric and MEA those exchange agreements actually come to fruition and we do that, we are still about a BCF short.”

Alaska Legislature: Special Coverage - August 20, 2026 2:00pm ·

0:06
John Sims“Is it full? Is CINGSA for right now? Representative Fields, through the chair, it is not. It is about maybe half. I don't know the exact number.”

Alaska Legislature: Special Coverage - August 20, 2026 2:00pm ·

0:31
John Sims“We have restarted conversations with Chugach again, and we are waiting back to hear their proposal on what they can do in this different timeframe.”

Alaska Legislature: Special Coverage - August 20, 2026 2:00pm ·

0:27
John Sims“So as has been publicly noticed, we are in the middle of an arbitration with HEX to try and get the gas that we expected from them.”

Alaska Legislature: Special Coverage - August 20, 2026 2:00pm ·

0:32
John Sims“What we are trying to do contractually is they will give us 1.2 BCF in exchange for us sending that same volume back to them by March of 2028. So we're not receiving gas that we get to keep and just, you know, use for our customers.”

Alaska Legislature: Special Coverage - August 20, 2026 2:00pm ·

0:38
John Sims“we had a certain expectation of gas deliveries from the Cook Inlet at the beginning of the year. One of those— I guess one of those groupings of volumes was from Bluecrest.”

Alaska Legislature: Special Coverage - August 20, 2026 2:00pm ·

0:09
John Sims“Information that we have since received from them is that they do not plan on starting their exploration or their production.”

Alaska Legislature: Special Coverage - August 20, 2026 2:00pm ·

0:19
John Sims“We have not received any discretionary gas sales from HEX since July 26th. We are receiving 8 million a day from them, 8.1 million a day, which is their firm volumes. We were expecting more than that per what we viewed as our contract rights.”

Alaska Legislature: Special Coverage - August 20, 2026 2:00pm ·

0:37
John Sims“back in April when we spoke to a number of you down in Juneau, we were expecting gas to start flowing in our system by September 1st from Blue Crest, and we were expecting about 1 to 1.5 BCF of gas. We now know that's not possible for that September 1st delivery to start.”

Alaska Legislature: Special Coverage - August 20, 2026 2:00pm ·

0:35
John Sims“Chugach Electric offered up the opportunity for us to do a similar exchange with them, uh, for about 1 BCF of gas.”

Alaska Legislature: Special Coverage - August 20, 2026 2:00pm ·

0:28
John Sims“we are working on an exchange agreement with Matanuska Electric.”

Alaska Legislature: Special Coverage - August 20, 2026 2:00pm ·

0:31
John Sims“the commission denied our initial petition for reconsideration— excuse me, our petition for, uh, determination of prudency.”

Alaska Legislature: Special Coverage - August 20, 2026 2:00pm ·