Alaskan Reality
When heating your home is not optional
The problem with having online conversations is that you have people who think they’re experts on a subject in their particular corner of the planet and they assume that what they believe must be true for your corner of the planet. Science is science, they will say. After having a back-and-forth discussion in 140 characters, I decided it was time to lay a few facts on people regarding the subject of heating in the sub-Arctic.
Context is Everything
I live in Fairbanks, Alaska, where the average outside temperature is almost always below-freezing six months a year. Some of the national weather sites deem our temperatures “extremely frigid” when we’re still running around in street clothes, and gather on the office lawn to catch snatches of sunlight at lunch. We don’t call it winter until there’s sticking snow on the ground. Our tendency to deem anything above 20’F as “moderate” weather is a direct result of experiencing REAL winter for significant portions of the year.
About four months out of the winter, the average outside temperature is almost always below 0’F. Two of those months, we remark on how warm it is if it’s above -20’F. And we usually have a few weeks every winter where the average outside temperature is -25’F or colder. As I write this article, it’s -35’F and expected to be colder tomorrow.
Alaskans have no choice but to heat our homes and offices. We would literally lose body parts and die if we didn’t.
Heat is a life-and-death issues here.
The Costs of Living
Heating our homes varies in cost. Some winters diesel is cheaper than natural gas. This year, they were about neck-and-neck in price until the turn of the year when diesel became more affordable. It’s about $3.25 a gallon right now if you haul it yourself. Maybe I’ll write an article about that fun-filled activity sometime.
It takes about 30-40 gallons of diesel to heat my home for a week during those four cold months. That means an outlay of about $125.00 a week, about $500 a month. Electricity here is 25 cents a kilowatt hour (which is over 200% higher than the nationwide average of 16 cents a kilowatt hour). This doesn’t include the various charges attached to the bill that brings the total average cost of electricity to 48 cents a kilowatt hour during peak demand. My electric bill in the winter months averages about $250.00 per month and my house is not all electric. I also sit in the dark a lot.
Yes, I have a well-insulated home. We just added extra insulation this fall and swapped out our old diesel boiler for a newer one that can be easily switched to natural gas in case the community ever gets a reliable source of natural gas in the Interior. We moved the needle from 40 gallons a week to maybe 30-35 gallons a week (we’re still calculating).
Winter happens here. Heating our structures is required. It is what it is.
How We Heat Our Homes
When I was a child, most people had coal-fired furnaces, resulting in our air being brown. I am not exaggerating.
The Usibelli coal mine provided an inexpensive fuel for heating and electricity and, again, not heating our homes was not an option. Fairbanks was like London during the Industrial Revolution.
In the 1970s, oil was discovered on the North Slope, and people swapped to diesel. Number 2 diesel (also called kerosene) was the mainstay for heating structures here for 50 years. Over time, the EPA forced us to start using #1 diesel which is lower sulfur, more expensive and less energy-dense. This drove our heating costs up by about 25%. Then natural gas became available. It’s shipped up from Cook Inlet in tanker trains and semi-trailers. It’s expensive ( $2.292/CCF) and Cook Inlet is now running out of readily-accessible sources of natural gas. Anchorage Utilities has first dibs on the gas, which means Fairbanks rates will no doubt go through the roof in the next few years. But there’s also stranded natural gas on the North Slope that just needs a very expensive pipeline to bring it to Fairbanks. And Doyon Corporation says they might be able to develop a gas field just 150 miles west of us…if Department of Transportation will build them a road so they can get their prospecting drills in there to prove there’s gas there.
Which is why I bought a boiler that is fired by diesel currently but could be swapped to a natural gas gun should this fuel become available and affordable sometime in the future. Although natural gas only makes sense some winters now, it might make sense all the time pretty soon.
Or not.
Back when we still heated with coal, the adults used to talk excitedly about how the North Slope-to-Tidewater natural gas pipeline was just right around the corner. More than half a century later, the North Slope-to-anywhere-in-the-state natural gas pipeline is still just around the corner and Cook Inlet is running out of gas.
Ah, But Why Not Go All-Electric?
So asks someone on Twitter. He’s in Canada. He knows cold weather and heat pumps are GREAT!
He also pays a great deal more in taxes than I do and his electricity bill is heavily subsidized. Different provinces have different mixes of electrical generation, but the average Canadian electricity rate is 19 cents a kilowatt hour, somewhat higher than the overall American rate*, but dream figures for those of us here in Alaska. People in the Northwest Territories, however, pay 41 cents KWH.
It’s important to recognize that many Canadian provinces heavily subsidize electric rates, so that consumers are shielded from a true understanding of what electricity really costs. It means you don’t really have to do your homework when you’re considering how best to heat your home.
Which is what this series of articles is all about.
*According to the site energy5.com, states that rely more heavily on renewable energy sources often have higher electricity prices, which I’ve noticed.
The Options
There are all sorts of ways to heat and light your home, business, etc. Some are more practical and sustainable than others. This series will look at that from a uniquely Alaskan perspective. While I might make some observations about other states, my perspective is entirely based on the on-the-ground conditions in my community and why a one-size-fits-all policy is a stupid idea.
There are a variety ways to heat your home. They all work off the same basic principle. There’s a source of fuel that produces heat that you distribute around your home.
Fossil Fuels are energy dense and convenient. Diesel, natural gas and propane can all get the job done through modern appliances utilitizing control systems so you don’t have to hang around to tend them.
Solid Fuels are also energy dense, but usually less convenient. Coal and wood are the primary fuels in this category. They require handling beyond just filling a tank and coal can be really dirty and polluting.
Renewables like solar panels and wind turbines are not energy-dense and are highly inefficient in comparison to my first two categories.
Electricity — well, we’ll look at that because most people haven’t got a clue about it and, yeah, it matters when you’re paying 25 to 48 cents a KWH.
Watch for the series.
Lela Markham is an Alaska-based novelist and commentator who believes we shouldn’t assume one-size-fits-all geographies.
Everybody's an expert, especially when it's for someone else's "benefit." Without cheating by looking at the vote counts, I bet the Alaskan representatives in Congress aren't too worried about the southern invasion. We live in the northern part of the lower 48, but we are aware that there are no fences or checkpoints between here and the Mexican border.