early fifty years ago, the Alaska Energy Authority (AEA) was established as an independent public corporation, tasked by the state government with supporting the development of energy projects. AEA gained a new tool in 2008, when the Alaska legislature created the Renewable Energy Fund (REF) and the associated Renewable Energy Grant Recommendation Program.

A temporary program at first, REF’s five-year sunset date was extended in 2012 and then, last year, repealed entirely, cementing the program as a permanent component of Alaska’s energy infrastructure toolkit.

With its future now boundless, AEA looked back on REF’s past. The authority commissioned BW Research Partnership to examine the program’s economic, community, and environmental impacts. Some of those results are discussed in this month’s article “Energizing Renewables” by Dimitra Lavrakas, along with other public financing that helps Alaskans plug into solar power or other sustainable sources.

BW Research calculated the economic impacts of REF investments. The report concludes that twelve jobs were created and $217,375 in net energy costs were avoided per million dollars invested by the REF program. Most grants, according to the report, paid for new infrastructure: 60 percent went toward that purpose, whereas approximately 11 percent were for retrofits and 24 percent were for feasibility assessment of a project that ultimately was not built.

This edition of Alaska Trends illustrates some of the report’s other findings. The study is important to gauge whether REF is doing its job, even as the legislature appropriated $17 million last year to pay for eighteen more AEA-recommended projects.