Andrew Guy, President and CEO
Storyknife, May/June 2025 edition
It is past time to solve the energy crisis in our Region. Our villages cope with lengthy power outages that run up household bills, cause mechanical breakdowns and lead to school closures.
I traveled to Juneau in late March along with other community and Tribal leaders—including Aniak Traditional Council Traditional Chief Wayne Morgan to discuss our Region’s energy needs and potential solutions with Alaska legislators. We were joined by AFN President Ben Mallott during our testimony before the House Special Committee on Energy.
I testified to the energy committee that we have a term in Yugtun—elliinginaq—not to be doing anything in vain. We need real solutions versus studies that gather dust.
Rural energy solutions for our Region require access to affordable sources of energy and developing electric interties. In our Region, we have 19 providers for our villages, many of them run by individual operators. Those individual operators lack economies of scale and must develop and maintain their own expertise in running utilities.
In Western society, infrastructure development is the responsibility of the government, which funded electric interties for the Railbelt and Southeast Alaska decades ago. By contrast, rural Alaskans have depended on federal and state assistance programs to defray our high energy costs—programs that are increasingly threatened by budget cuts.
Rural energy solutions for our Region require access to affordable sources of energy and developing electric interties.
Andrew Guy, Calista Corp. President/CEO
Alaska’s Power Cost Equalization (PCE) program is an important endowment fund to help reduce energy bills, but it is not enough. Our Elders and families are crippled by power outages and high bills. We need a reliable, affordable energy backbone, especially as our Region continues to grow in population.
I encouraged legislators not to neglect rural Alaska when it comes to developing a large-scale natural gas pipeline. The pipeline project appears to be gathering momentum, and, if it is successful, it can spur economic and business development throughout Alaska, including in our Region.
This matters for households as much as it does for businesses. In the Lower 48, nearly every community, including very small ones, is intertied with electric power. In Alaska, we can do that too.
