Legislature(2015 - 2016)BUTROVICH 205
04/02/2015 01:00 PM Senate SPECIAL CMTE ON ENERGY
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| Presentation By: Association of Alaska Housing Authorities (aaha), Rural Alaska Community Action Program (ruralcap), Alaska Community Development Corporation, and Interior Weatherization, Will Be Presenting Their Collective, Statewide Contributions and Impact on Alaska Energy Issues and Policy. | |
| Adjourn |
* first hearing in first committee of referral
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ALASKA STATE LEGISLATURE
SENATE SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON ENERGY
April 2, 2015
1:03 p.m.
MEMBERS PRESENT
Senator Click Bishop, Co-Chair
Senator Peter Micciche, Co-Chair
Senator Lyman Hoffman
Senator Dennis Egan
MEMBERS ABSENT
Senator Bert Stedman
COMMITTEE CALENDAR
Presentation: Association Of Alaska Housing Authorities (AAHA),
Rural Alaska Community Action Program (RurAL CAP), Alaska
Community Development Corporation (ACDC), and Interior
Weatherization, Inc. presenting their collective, statewide
contributions and impact on Alaska energy issues and policy.
- HEARD
PREVIOUS COMMITTEE ACTION
No previous action to record
WITNESS REGISTER
CAROL GORE, President/CEO
Cook Inlet Housing Authority
Anchorage, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Commented on the Weatherization Program in
Southcentral Alaska.
CRAIG MOORE, Vice President
Planning & Development
Tlingit-Haida Regional Housing Authority (THRHA)
Juneau, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Commented on the Weatherization Program
impacts through the THRHA.
DAVID HARDENBERGH, Executive Director
Rural Alaska Community Action Program (RurAL CAP)
Anchorage, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Commented on Alaska's Weatherization
Program impacts for low income folks.
ETTA KUZAKIN, President
Agdaagux Tribal Council
King Cove, Alaska
POSITION STATEMENT: Related the Weatherization Program's impact
on her family and others in rural communities around the state.
ACTION NARRATIVE
1:03:07 PM
CO-CHAIR MICCICHE called the Senate Special Committee on Energy
meeting to order at 1:03 p.m. Co-Chair Micciche was present at
the call to order.
^PRESENTATION BY: Association of Alaska Housing Authorities
(AAHA), Rural Alaska Community Action Program (RuralCAP), Alaska
Community Development Corporation, and Interior Weatherization,
will be presenting their collective, statewide contributions and
impact on Alaska energy issues and policy.
1:03:42 PM
CO-CHAIR MICCICHE said the purpose of this meeting was to
receive a presentation from the Association of Alaska Housing
Authorities (AAHA), Rural Alaska Community Action Program (RurAL
CAP), Alaska Community Development Corporation (ACDC), and
Interior Weatherization, on their collective statewide
contributions that impact on Alaska Energy issues and policy.
1:04:20 PM
CAROL GORE, President/CEO, Cook Inlet Housing Authority (CIHA),
Anchorage, Alaska, said she serves most of Southcentral Alaska.
It is one of the 14 regional housing authorities that are
members of the AAHA. She said she represents a recipient and
practitioners who understand first-hand the value of the state's
investment in energy for homeowners who live across the state.
Managing energy efficiency and housing costs results in safer,
healthier, and more affordable housing and smart, strategic
investments in energy efficient housing have an important
economic impact for the state. The state's investment in energy
efficient housing is critical to achieving sustainable
communities.
1:07:52 PM
CRAIG MOORE, Vice President, Planning & Development, Tlingit-
Haida Regional Housing Authority (THRHA), Juneau, Alaska,
recognized two people in the audience that have a wealth of
information on the Weatherization Program: Pat Shively,
Executive Director of Alaska Community Development Corporation,
and the Weatherization Coordinator, Matthew Bell. Mr. Moore said
he oversees the Weatherization Program at the Housing Authority
as well as new construction and rehab projects.
MR. MOORE provided an overview of the state's Weatherization
Program and the positive impacts it has brought to his region.
THRHA serves rural communities in the Southeast Alaska Region
from Yakutat to Hydaburg, he said, and few programs are as
important to the well-being of the rural communities as this one
is.
Since 2008, THRHA has received funding to weatherize 915 homes,
and many more need this service. The average cost per unit is
$11,000 and this represents a significant infusion into the
local economy. It has reduced heating costs, because many old
rural homes are in the one-to-two star energy range, very
inefficient, and are typically heated with fuel oil. Some are
heated with wood. There is no natural gas heating in Southeast.
They find that with insulating and sealing against heat loss,
servicing heating systems and, in some cases, replacing failed
or very inefficient heating systems with new energy efficient
systems can often raise these homes to three or four star
ratings.
1:10:33 PM
MR. MOORE said trained assessors use blower door tests,
combustion analyzers, backdraft testing, IR cameras, fan flow
measurements and their trained eyes to test and identify health
hazards in the homes. They then take measures to reduce carbon
monoxide, mold and mildew, poor indoor air quality and fire
hazards making homes much healthier and safer.
MR. MOORE said this program has also provided much needed jobs
in economically depressed communities and economic benefits to
local businesses. Materials are purchased from local vendors and
contractors are hired for many weatherization services;
transportation companies benefit and local stores benefit from
the cash infusion from wage earners. This all helps sustain the
local economies.
He said Crews receive training in building science, energy
efficiency which has also raised the level of knowledge about
indoor air quality and health factors in the construction
workforce. Workers are trained to identify and seal heat loss
bypasses in attics, floors and walls, to test and repair
defective heating systems and to call in heating contractors
when failed systems need to be replaced. They test for adequate
ventilation and install high quality fans for good indoor air
quality. These skills and knowledge are invaluable in the
villages, a benefit that carries forward long into the future.
MR. MOORE said the Weatherization Program helps slow the
outmigration of village families, because these jobs give young
men and women a chance to earn good incomes and gain self-
respect while they improve the quality of life for their elders,
and it makes their homes more affordable to operate. These all
affect their decisions to stay in their beloved communities and
not move to the urban hubs.
MR. MOORE summarized that he sees benefits on a regular basis
and he is thankful to be part of a program that so positively
affects so many people.
1:14:11 PM
CO-CHAIR MICCICHE noted that he had used the program with
astounding results.
1:15:23 PM
DAVID HARDENBERGH, Executive Director, Rural Alaska Community
Action Program (RurAL CAP), Anchorage, Alaska, mentioned that
Senator Micciche was probably talking about the Residential
Rebate Program, which is also administered by AHFC, but it is a
little bit different than the income eligible Weatherization
Program for lower income folks.
1:16:31 PM
MR. HARDENBERGH thanked the committee for being able to review
the measurable results and impacts of the Weatherization
Program. He said the original concept for what has now become a
national program was born here in Alaska and came out of the
Community of Fort Yukon in the 1970s. Weatherization assistance
provides income eligible households with energy efficiency
improvements; it saves money, saves energy, keeps people
healthy, extends the life of the home and creates skilled jobs.
Seventy percent of the households served include a senior
citizen or person with a disability and more than half of the
households served include children under the age of six.
One of the factors that makes the return on investment in energy
savings so compelling in Alaska is that low income Alaskans
experience the highest energy burden in the country, Mr.
Hardenbergh said. The energy burden for low income families in
rural Alaska often exceeds 50 percent just for home heating
fuel. Thus, a program that reduces the amount of fuel needed to
heat a home by 30 percent on a statewide average and more than
40 percent in much of rural Alaska can be life-changing for a
low income family.
MR. HARDENBERGH said average rural families save more than
$2,300 a year on home heating fuel; statewide the average family
saves $1,300 a year after their homes have been weatherized, and
the amount of savings to a family budget increases to more than
$4,000 a year in those parts of the state where both fuel prices
and energy burdens are highest.
1:18:25 PM
CO-CHAIR MICCICHE asked if the program had spent $10 million, an
average of $11,000 on 915 homes, so far.
MR. HARDENBERGH answered that the program serves Anchorage after
taking it over from the Municipality about five years ago, and
then along with some regional housing authorities they serve all
of Western Alaska from the Y-K region all the way up through
Nome and Kotzebue regions, as well as Juneau, along with the
Housing Authority here.
CO-CHAIR MICCICHE asked him to consider savings per capita
across the state in the future to demonstrate the value of the
program.
1:19:28 PM
MR. HARDENBERGH said he had a number from AHFC which he would
come to in a minute. He continued that the Weatherization
Program also includes health and safety benefits ranging from
smoke and carbon monoxide detectors to improve indoor air
quality and the mitigation of mold and mildew problems; it
improves Alaska's housing stock by adding more than 20 years to
the lifespan of the average home. AHFC has calculated that the
aggregate return on investment from previous years using the
Weatherization Program was $46 million this year. The economic
impacts on local communities also resulted in wages paid to
locally hired crews and payments made to local vendors.
He said that RurAL CAP works with dozens of local businesses in
Anchorage and Juneau that provide materials and deliver services
for the program. Economists at the University of Alaska
Anchorage's (UAA), Institute of Social and Economic Research
(ISER), found that energy efficiency programs were the most
conservative and cost effective options for state energy policy,
saving both energy and money, creating jobs and yielding a
timely and low risk return on state dollars.
1:21:14 PM
MR. HARDENBERGH read several testimonials; a very favorable one
came from an elder in Chevak where locally hired crews completed
work on 107 homes last year from the more than 16,000 owners of
homes weatherized since 2009.
1:22:05 PM
SENATOR HOFFMAN joined the committee.
1:22:48 PM
CO-CHAIR BISHOP joined the committee.
1:23:51 PM
MS. GORE said she is of Aleut decent and her mother was born and
raised in the village of Ninilchik, one of 12 siblings who grew
up in a one-bedroom home. Her great grandfather led mining and
trapping expeditions at Cooper Landing; his name was Joseph
Cooper.
She has worked with Cook Inlet Housing for 15 years that was
making a huge difference in Mountain View where she was born and
where there is a large concentration of very low income and
Alaska Native people. During her time at Cook Inlet Housing she
learned much about the responsibility at both the household and
statewide levels connecting energy consumption, housing
affordability and fiscal responsibility.
She said that Alaskan homes use more energy than homes in the
Lower 48, but it is startling to know how much more. On average,
Alaskan houses use nearly three times more energy per square
foot than nationally. Consumption is high because of a
combination of extreme climate and poor quality housing stock.
Most of Alaska's housing stock is not energy efficient having
been hurriedly built during the pipeline boom in the 1970-80s.
Statewide, nearly 20,000 homes have an energy rating of one
star, the lowest energy rating any home can have. Even in
Southcentral, which has the most affordable energy in the state,
residential energy costs are 50 percent greater than in cold
climate regions in the Lower 48.
Across Alaska, high energy costs combined with high energy
consumption have put a financial squeeze on both families and
the state. Families in Interior Alaska pay on average more than
$8,000 per year in energy costs. The state also bears a fiscal
burden due to the energy costs and consumption in programs like
Power Cost Equalization and the Housing Assistance Program.
1:26:51 PM
MS. GORE said a very small program has had a long standing
investment from the state from the late 70s called the
Supplemental Housing Development Grant Program that is delivered
through Alaska Housing Finance Corporation (AHFC). This program
was designed to encourage the delivery of safe energy efficient
housing throughout Alaska. Funds can be used for energy
efficient design features and basic infrastructure. By statute,
the Supplemental Housing Development Grant Program may match no
more than 20 percent of development costs for any project.
Historically, recipients have matched every dollar of state
supplemental funding with $5 additional and in her case, it's a
9:1 match. She said the Supplemental Housing Development Grant
Program plays a critical role in ensuring that housing built and
rehabilitated in rural Alaska is energy efficient.
MS. GORE said that Alaska doesn't have a statewide building
energy code. However, the Supplemental Housing Development Grant
Program mandates compliance with Alaska's Building Energy
Efficiency Standard Program (BEES). In rural communities this
both triggers energy efficiency requirements and helps to fund
some of the costs of energy efficient design and construction.
In turn, this reduces dependency on programs like Power Cost
Equalization and the Heating Assistance Program.
1:28:29 PM
MS. GORE said there are clear examples of the impact of the
Supplemental Housing Development Grant Program. The Tagiugmiullu
Nunamiullu Housing Authority (TNHA), the regional housing
authority based in Barrow serves Alaska's northern most
communities. Recognizing the harshness of their climate, TNHA
launched a Sustainable Northern Shelter Project to address the
need for sustainable rural housing that uses very little energy.
Their housing model combines the time-tested method of earth
banking with numerous innovative design and construction
techniques. They worked with Cold Climate Research out of
Fairbanks, which is also part of AHFC's structure. The resulting
homes were designed to last 100 years or more and need just 18
percent of the heating fuel consumed by typical homes in the
same climate. Best of all, the state's investment was just 15
percent of total costs, the remainder being funded by federal
grant programs and federally guaranteed commercial loans.
Sixteen of these homes are in their communities thus far.
The impacts of the Supplemental Housing Development Grant
Program in rural Alaska extend beyond housing. Because the
program is often used to close funding gaps and advanced
developments that are otherwise infeasible, it has significant
labor impacts throughout Alaska. The regional housing
authorities employ more than 1,000 Alaskans and their activities
support the employment of 2,250 Alaskans in total.
1:30:09 PM
MS. GORE said the impact of the Supplemental Housing Development
Grant Program is not limited to rural Alaska; it is truly
statewide. In Anchorage, Cook Inlet Housing Authority will soon
break ground on Grass Creek North, a multi-phase development in
East Anchorage that will consist of 100 apartment homes for
families and seniors. Because of the relatively small investment
of Supplemental Housing Development Grant Program funds of just
one-tenth of the total costs, all homes in Grass Creek North
will be built to new six-star energy efficient standards.
1:30:38 PM
MS. GORE said in urban and rural communities alike, the
Supplemental Housing Development Grant Program helps regional
housing authorities secure federal and non-state resources to
develop and rehabilitate housing to energy efficient standards.
1:30:52 PM
SENATOR EGAN joined the committee meeting.
1:31:37 PM
MS. GORE said for example, in Anchorage's Mountain View
neighborhood, Cook Inlet Housing Authority has facilitated
approximately $88 million in energy efficient housing
redevelopment. The state's portion of that investment, excluding
the debt that came from AHFC, has been just 8 percent. This
redevelopment work made possible by a relatively modest state
investment of state funds has stimulated economic development.
Mountain View has attracted dentists, a telecommunications
store, restaurants, a health clinic, a credit union and much
more. The Supplemental Housing Development Grant Program is a
small program that brings big things for Alaska. It helps secure
non-state funding, closes development gaps, stimulates economic
development and most critically it results in the production of
energy efficient homes throughout the state.
CO-CHAIR BISHOP asked if Barrow homes would have the same 18
percent fuel savings.
MS. GORE answered probably not as much, but they are doing a
couple of things: a new combination of two types of solar - one
photo voltaic and one solo thermal - and one geothermal. They
have the duty to measure the outcome and they have the Grass
Creek site to measure against, which is only a five-star and not
a six-star property. She would get those details to him.
1:33:17 PM
CO-CHAIR MICCICHE noted that the total savings of the program
have amounted to $46 million across Alaska for 16,000
weatherized homes.
1:33:36 PM
ETTA KUZAKIN, President, Agdaagux Tribal Council, King Cove,
Alaska, related the Weatherization Program's impact on her
family. She is a recipient of the program and is proud to have
this opportunity to share how important it has been to her and
others in communities across Alaska.
MS. KUZAKIN said she had lived in King Cove all of her life and
works for the school district. She is married with three
children. King Cove is located on the south side of the Alaska
Peninsula, 625 miles southwest of Anchorage. It has an active
federally recognized tribal government like many other Alaskan
communities, an active progressive municipal government and a
successful village corporation. King Cove is also home to
another federally recognized tribe.
1:35:22 PM
She explained that their economy depends primarily on the year-
round commercial fishing and seafood processing industries and
they have a history of severe economic up and downs. Many in the
community, like in most rural communities, struggle year to year
to make ends meet.
MS. KUZAKIN said the Weatherization Program is "absolutely
amazing" and she thought that recipients and community leaders
across would say the same thing if they were able to be here
today. She said 61 homes have been weatherized in King Cove
since the program began. Little did they realize how such a
relative small investment could have such a large impact on
energy efficiency, cash savings, comfort and improved health and
safety. This is a gift that keeps on giving. The average savings
in diesel fuel appears to 35 percent and the $80,000-100,000
that was previously being spent annually on diesel fuel is now
available for families to spend on other critical needs.
MS. KUZAKIN said another great program's success in her region
is Atka, a small very remote community near the end of the
Aleutian Chain. It very carefully documented its 12-month pre
and post-weatherization community fuel use for homes and
realized an average of 43 percent savings, an average of $4,100
per household. She provided a data sheet in support of these
figures.
She said this program could mean the difference between a
community keeping its school open or being forced to close it
because of lack of students. It is hard to overestimate the
importance this program or imagine a program that has a more
direct significant impact on so many households in communities
across the state.
1:38:28 PM
MS. KUZAKIN showed a picture of Agnes Gould, a handicapped elder
from King Cove, whose home was weatherized this year. She had
expressed to Ms. Kuzakin how grateful she and her family were
for the reduction in utility bills, but also how much more
comfortable she is, how she feels healthier and basically how
her quality of life has been improved by the program. Her fuel
use was cut in half by the improvements.
1:39:19 PM
MS. KUZAKIN also shared Janet Wilson's positive sentiments about
the program and concluded by asking the legislature to continue
the program at a level that allows the thousands of Alaskans
still waiting patiently to receive the same benefits she and
others have received.
1:40:07 PM
CO-CHAIR MICCICHE asked if the programs were originally funded
at $26 million and if the governor's current budget had $6.6
million.
MS. GORE answered that was correct.
CO-CHAIR MICCICHE said the benefits are obvious.
MS. GORE commented that she knows these are tough times and
tough decisions need to be made, and she wished them great
wisdom.
1:41:34 PM
CO-CHAIR MICCICHE said that Alaska has a long way to go with
energy efficiency and energy availability, particularly in the
rural areas.
MS. GORE added that migration to urban areas is already being
seen.
CO-CHAIR BISHOP agreed and noted a meeting he attended with the
Department of Energy for Alaska. It was centered on rural energy
and delivery using everything in the toolbox, including coal. He
noted a study from a few years ago that said energy efficiency
would save Alaska billions of dollars. The savings she has
presented need to be replicated.
1:44:38 PM
CO-CHAIR MICCICHE said he appreciated all their comments and
finding no further business to come before the committee,
adjourned the Senate Special Committee on Energy meeting at 1:45
p.m.
| Document Name | Date/Time | Subjects |
|---|---|---|
| Senate Energy Committee Hearing PPP.pdf |
SNRG 4/2/2015 1:00:00 PM |
|
| 15-0330 Written Testimony to State Committees re Supplemental - Senate.pdf |
SNRG 4/2/2015 1:00:00 PM |
|
| RurAL CAP Senate Energy Committee Testimony - 04-02-15.pdf |
SNRG 4/2/2015 1:00:00 PM |
|
| THRHA testimony for Senate Special Committee on Energy 4-2-15.pdf |
SNRG 4/2/2015 1:00:00 PM |
|
| Verbal Testimony - Senate - Etta Kuzakin.pdf |
SNRG 4/2/2015 1:00:00 PM |
|
| Weatherization Assistance - Working for Alaska.pdf |
SNRG 4/2/2015 1:00:00 PM |