Alaska
Interior Plans to Rescind Drilling Ban in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve
A critical question demands an actionable answer. To date, many takes on various sides of the debate have focused more on high-level narrative than precise policy prescriptions. If we zoom in to look at the actual sources of delay in clean energy projects, what sorts of solutions would we come up with? What would a data-backed agenda for clean energy abundance look like?
The most glaring threat to clean energy deployment is, of course, the Republican Party’s plan to gut the Inflation Reduction Act. But “abundance” proponents posit that Democrats have imposed their own hurdles, in the form of well-intentioned policies that get in the way of government-backed building projects. According to some broad-brush recommendations, Democrats should adopt an abundance agenda focused on rolling back such policies.
But the reality for clean energy is more nuanced. At least as often, expediting clean energy projects will require more, not less, government intervention. So too will the task of ensuring those projects benefit workers and communities.
To craft a grounded agenda for clean energy abundance, we can start by taking stock of successes and gaps in implementing the IRA. The law’s core strategy was to unite climate, jobs, and justice goals. The IRA aims to use incentives to channel a wave of clean energy investments towards good union jobs and communities that have endured decades of divestment.
Klein and Thompson are wary that such “everything bagel” strategies try to do too much. Other “abundance” advocates explicitly support sidelining the IRA’s labor objectives to expedite clean energy buildout.
But here’s the thing about everything bagels: They taste good.
They taste good because they combine ingredients that go well together. The question — whether for bagels or policies — is, are we using congruent ingredients?
The data suggests that clean energy growth, union jobs, and equitable investments — like garlic, onion, and sesame seeds — can indeed pair well together. While we have a long way to go, early indicators show significant post-IRA progress on all three fronts: a nearly 100-gigawatt boom in clean energy installations, an historic high in clean energy union density, and outsized clean investments flowing to fossil fuel communities. If we can design policy to yield such a win-win-win, why would we choose otherwise?
Klein and Thompson are of course right that to realize the potential of the IRA, we must reduce the long lag time in building clean energy projects. That lag time does not stem from incentives for clean energy companies to provide quality jobs, negotiate Community Benefits Agreements, or invest in low-income communities. Such incentives did not deter clean energy companies from applying for IRA funding in droves. Programs that included all such incentives were typically oversubscribed, with companies applying for up to 10 times the amount of available funding.
If labor and equity incentives are not holding up clean energy deployment, what is? And what are the remedies?
Some of the biggest delays point not to an excess of policymaking — the concern of many “abundance” proponents — but an absence. Such gaps call for more market-shaping policies to expedite the clean energy transition.
Take, for example, the years-long queues for clean energy projects to connect to the electrical grid, which developers rank as one of the largest sources of delay. That wait stems from a piecemeal approach to transmission buildout — the result not of overregulation by progressive lawmakers, but rather the opposite: a hands-off mode of governance that has created vast inefficiencies. For years, grid operators have built transmission lines not according to a strategic plan, but in response to the requests of individual projects to connect to the grid. This reactive, haphazard approach requires a laborious battery of studies to determine the incremental transmission upgrades (and the associated costs) needed to connect each project. As a result, project developers face high cost uncertainty and a nearly five-year median wait time to finish the process, contributing to the withdrawal of about three of every four proposed projects.
The solution, according to clean energy developers, buyers, and analysts alike, is to fill the regulatory void that has enabled such a fragmentary system. Transmission experts have called for rules that require grid operators to proactively plan new transmission lines in anticipation of new clean energy generation and then charge a preestablished fee for projects to connect, yielding more strategic grid expansion, greater cost certainty for developers, fewer studies, and reduced wait times to connect to the grid. Last year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission took a step in this direction by requiring grid operators to adopt regional transmission planning. Many energy analysts applauded the move and highlighted the need for additional policies to expedite transmission buildout.
Another source of delay that underscores policy gaps is the 137-week lag time to obtain a large power transformer, due to supply chain shortages. The United States imports four of every five large power transformers used on our electric grid. Amid the post-pandemic snarling of global supply chains, such high import dependency has created another bottleneck for building out the new transmission lines that clean energy projects demand. To stimulate domestic transformer production, the National Infrastructure Advisory Council — including representatives from major utilities — has proposed that the federal government establish new transformer manufacturing investments and create a public stockpiling system that stabilizes demand. That is, a clean energy abundance agenda also requires new industrial policies.
While such clean energy delays call for additional policymaking, “abundance” advocates are correct that other delays call for ending problematic policies. Rising local restrictions on clean energy development, for example, pose a major hurdle. However, the map of those restrictions, as tracked in an authoritative Columbia University report, does not support the notion that they stem primarily from Democrats’ penchant for overregulation. Of the 11 states with more than 10 such restrictions, six are red, three are purple, and two are blue — New York and Texas, Virginia and Kansas, Maine and Indiana, etc. To take on such restrictions, we shouldn’t let concern with progressive wish lists eclipse a focused challenge to old-fashioned, transpartisan NIMBYism.
“Abundance” proponents also focus their ire on permitting processes like those required by the National Environmental Policy Act, which the Supreme Court curtailed last week. Permitting needs mending, but with a chisel, not a Musk-esque chainsaw. The Biden administration produced a chisel last year: a NEPA reform to expedite clean energy projectsand support environmental justice. In February, the Trump administration tossed out that reform and nearly five decades of NEPA rules without offering a replacement — a chainsaw maneuver that has created more, not less, uncertainty for project developers. When the wreckage of this administration ends, we’ll need to fill the void with targeted permitting policies that streamline clean energy while protecting communities.
Finally, a clean energy abundance agenda should also welcome pro-worker, pro-equity incentives like those in the IRA “everything bagel.” Despite claims to the contrary, such policies can help to overcome additional sources of delay and facilitatebuildout.
For example, Community Benefits Agreements, which IRA programs encouraged, offer a distinct, pro-building advantage: a way to avoid the community opposition that has become a top-tier reason for delays and cancellations of wind and solar projects. CBAs give community and labor groups a tool to secure locally-defined economic, health, and environmental benefits from clean energy projects. For clean energy firms, they offer an opportunity to obtain explicit project support from community organizations. Three out of four wind and solar developers agree that increased community engagement reduces project cancellations, and more than 80% see it as at least somewhat “feasible” to offer benefits via CBAs. Indeed, developers and communities are increasingly using CBAs, from a wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island to a solar park in California’s central valley, to deliver tangible benefits and completed projects — the ingredients of abundance.
A similar win-win can come from incentives for clean energy companies to pay construction workers decent wages, which the IRA included. Most peer-reviewed studies find that the impact of such standards on infrastructure construction costs is approximately zero. By contrast, wage standards can help to address a key constraint on clean energy buildout: companies’ struggle to recruit a skilled and stable workforce in a tight labor market. More than 80% of solar firms, for example, report difficulties in finding qualified workers. Wage standards offer a proven solution, helping companies attract and retain the workforce needed for on-time project completion.
In addition to labor standards and support for CBAs, a clean energy abundance agenda also should expand on the IRA’s incentives to invest in low-income communities. Such policies spur clean energy deployment in neighborhoods the market would otherwise deem unprofitable. Indeed, since enactment of the IRA, 75% of announced clean energy investments have been in low-income counties. That buildout is a deliberate outcome of the “everything bagel” approach. If we want clean energy abundance for all, not just the wealthy, we need to wield — not withdraw — such incentives.
Crafting an agenda for clean energy abundance requires precision, not abstraction. We need to add industrial policies that offer a foundation for clean energy growth. We need to end parochial policies that deter buildout on behalf of private interests. And we need to build on labor and equity policies that enable workers and communities to reap material rewards from clean energy expansion. Differentiating between those needs will be essential for Democrats to build a clean energy plan that actually delivers abundance.
Choosing a place to settle in Alaska usually comes down to which trade-offs work. Road system or off-road system. Cruise-ship economy or fishing-fleet economy. Anchorage commute or Inside Passage isolation. The seven towns ahead reach across Southcentral, the Kenai Peninsula, and Southeast Alaska. Each runs a working economy, hospital access, and the kind of community infrastructure that supports day-to-day life through the long winters. Median home prices range from $405,000 in Ketchikan to $688,800 in Sitka.
Homer
Homer sits at the end of the Sterling Highway on the Kenai Peninsula, about a five-hour drive south of Anchorage. The town has earned the “Halibut Fishing Capital of the World” tagline and runs one of the state’s largest charter fleets out of the Homer Spit, the 4.5-mile gravel bar that extends into Kachemak Bay. The Pratt Museum on Bartlett Street covers regional natural and cultural history, including the Lower Cook Inlet ecosystems and the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill response. Bishop’s Beach gives walkers direct access to the bay shoreline.
The local economy runs on commercial fishing, tourism, the arts community, and small-scale agriculture in the warmer microclimate that the Kachemak Bay creates. The median home price runs about $538,800. The South Peninsula Hospital handles regional medical needs, and the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District operates Homer High School and West Homer Elementary. The Bunnell Street Arts Center on Old Town Bishop’s Beach Road runs gallery rotations and music events year-round.
Seward
Seward sits at the head of Resurrection Bay on the eastern side of the Kenai Peninsula, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive south of Anchorage on the Seward Highway. The town is the gateway to Kenai Fjords National Park, which protects roughly 700 square miles of glaciated coastline along the Gulf of Alaska. Day boat tours from the Seward harbor reach the Aialik Glacier and the Holgate Glacier from late spring through early fall.
The median home price runs about $462,000, more accessible than larger Alaskan cities even though Seward draws the largest summer cruise-ship volume on the peninsula. The economy runs on tourism, marine research at the Alaska SeaLife Center, fishing, and public service. Seward Community Health Center handles primary care; the Providence Seward Medical Center on First Avenue covers acute care and emergency. The Mount Marathon Race, held every July 4 since 1915, sends runners up and down the 3,022-foot Mount Marathon directly behind town and is one of the oldest mountain races in the United States.
Sitka
Sitka sits on the west side of Baranof Island in the Alexander Archipelago, with Tlingit roots going back thousands of years and a Russian colonial history from the founding of the Redoubt Saint Michael settlement in 1799. In 1808, the Russians established Sitka (then New Archangel) as the new capital of Russian America, moving the seat of government away from Kodiak. On October 18, 1867, Sitka was the site of the formal handover of Alaska to the United States, ending Russian colonial rule. The Sitka National Historical Park preserves the site of the 1804 Battle of Sitka along with one of the most accessible totem pole collections in Alaska.
Housing is on the higher end at a median price of about $688,800. Sitka’s economy supports fishing, healthcare, education, and tourism, and the city operates as a borough that covers most of Baranof Island. The Sitka School District serves about 1,100 students. SEARHC Mt. Edgecumbe Medical Center on Halibut Point Road provides regional healthcare. The Alaska Raptor Center rehabilitates eagles, owls, and hawks across a 17-acre forested campus, and the Baranof Castle State Historic Site marks the bluff where the 1867 transfer ceremony took place.
Ketchikan
As Alaska’s southernmost city and the first stop on the Inside Passage cruise route, Ketchikan sits at the southern tip of Revillagigedo Island. The town runs one of the largest commercial salmon harvests in Southeast Alaska. With a median home price around $405,000, Ketchikan is moderately affordable by Alaskan standards. The town is accessible only by sea or air, and the Ketchikan International Airport sits on neighboring Gravina Island, reached by a short ferry crossing.
Ketchikan’s economy runs on fishing, seafood processing, and a cruise-season tourism industry that brings about a million visitors per year between May and September. The Ketchikan Gateway Borough School District operates Ketchikan High School, and the University of Alaska Southeast runs a satellite campus in town. PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center provides full medical services. Recreation centers on the Deer Mountain trail, historic Creek Street (the former red-light district on pilings over Ketchikan Creek), and the Totem Bight State Historical Park with restored and replica Tlingit and Haida totem poles. The Blueberry Arts Festival on the first weekend of August anchors the local summer calendar.
Petersburg
Petersburg sits on the north end of Mitkof Island, halfway between Juneau and Ketchikan along the Inside Passage. The town is known as “Little Norway” because Norwegian immigrant Peter Buschmann founded the settlement in 1897, drawing Scandinavian fishermen who shaped the town’s identity. Petersburg was incorporated in 1910 and still celebrates Norwegian Constitution Day on May 17 with the multi-day Little Norway Festival, the longest Syttende Mai celebration of any Norwegian-American community in the country. Sing Lee Alley holds rosemaling-decorated wooden buildings and the Sons of Norway Hall, built in 1912 on pilings over the water.
Fishing and seafood processing drive the local economy; Petersburg is consistently ranked among the top 25 fishing ports in the United States by dollar value. With a median home price of about $422,500, Petersburg runs moderately affordable by Alaskan standards. Students are served by the Petersburg School District, and Petersburg Medical Center operates a 24/7 emergency department. The Bojer Wikan Fisherman’s Memorial Park at the harbor holds the Valhalla, a miniature Viking ship, as a memorial to local fishermen lost at sea.
Kenai
Kenai sits at the mouth of the Kenai River on the western side of the Kenai Peninsula, with views across Cook Inlet to the active volcanoes of Mount Redoubt and Mount Iliamna. The Kenai River produces the largest sport king salmon runs in the world; the world-record king salmon, weighing 97 pounds 4 ounces, was caught in the river by Les Anderson in May 1985 and the record still stands. The Holy Assumption of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church, built between 1894 and 1895, is a National Historic Landmark and one of the oldest Russian Orthodox churches in Alaska.
The median home price runs about $429,000. The local economy is fueled by oil and gas, commercial fishing, tourism, and remote-work transplants. Kenai Central High School serves area students, and Central Peninsula Hospital sits a short drive away in Soldotna. Weekends often run on fishing trips along the Kenai River, hiking nearby trails, or watching beluga whales along Cook Inlet from the Erik Hansen Scout Park bluff. The Kenai River Festival in June brings people together at the riverfront.
Wasilla
Wasilla sits in the heart of the Matanuska-Susitna Valley about 45 minutes north of Anchorage on the Parks Highway. The city holds about 10,000 residents, the largest city outside Anchorage in the Mat-Su Borough, with views of the Talkeetna Mountains to the north and Pioneer Peak to the east. With a median home price of about $449,000, Wasilla runs notably more affordable than Anchorage proper and has drawn commuters, young families, and remote workers across the past decade.
The economy runs on construction, retail, logistics, healthcare, and small businesses. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District supports the area’s educational needs, while Mat-Su Regional Medical Center handles healthcare for the valley. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race holds its ceremonial start in Anchorage on the first Saturday in March, with the official restart in Willow the next day, about 30 minutes north of Wasilla on the Parks Highway. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race Headquarters is in Wasilla and houses a museum about the race. Lake Lucille Park and Iditapark add walking trails and lake access close to downtown.
Choosing The Right Alaska Town
The seven split roughly into three regional clusters. The Kenai Peninsula produces Homer, Seward, and Kenai. The Inside Passage produces Sitka, Ketchikan, and Petersburg. The Mat-Su Valley produces Wasilla. Road-system access goes to the Kenai Peninsula and Mat-Su towns; the Southeast Alaska towns are reachable only by air or sea. Median home prices run from about $405,000 in Ketchikan to about $688,800 in Sitka. The right choice depends on whether the move favors road connections to Anchorage, the year-round Inside Passage rhythm, or the marine economy of the Kenai Peninsula.
At Icy Strait Point, visitors can spot whales and eagles while supporting a small Alaska community.
How cruise tourism could help and hurt Alaska’s environment
Although Alaskans rely on revenue tourism cruise ships bring in, some locals are raising concerns on the impact of tourism on Alaska’s environment.
Icy Strait Point in Hoonah, Alaska, offers a rare kind of cruise stop — one where nature, culture, and community take center stage. It was also specifically developed with tourists in mind.
Built on Huna Tlingit land near Hoonah, this privately owned destination was designed to spread visitors across 23,000 acres of wilderness rather than overwhelm the town. The result is a place where travelers can see bald eagles, sea lions, and crashing waves instead of traffic and tour buses.
Beyond its dramatic scenery, Icy Strait Point generates about $20 million in annual economic impact for a community of roughly 900 people, supporting hundreds of jobs, making it a model for how tourism can benefit residents while preserving Alaska’s character.
Why it matters
Located on Huna Tlingit land, Icy Strait Point shows how tourism can support small communities while preserving their identity. Places like this reflect a broader American story of stewardship, self-determination, and economic opportunity.
According to Icy Strait Point’s Senior Vice President, Tyler Hackman, the destination generates “$20 million a year of positive economic impact on a community of 900 people,” creating jobs while allowing Hoonah to remain distinctly itself.
What to see today
Unlike many cruise ports, Icy Strait Point feels remarkably undeveloped.
“This place is mostly untouched,” Hackman said. “When a ship comes into a dock here, somebody can be standing on the top deck of the ship, and you don’t see a parking lot, you don’t see a bus, you don’t see a vehicle.”
Visitors can take a gondola to the mountaintop for sweeping views, then follow Hackman’s advice and head to the beach in front of the historic cannery. There, they can search for shells, dip their hands in Alaska’s icy waters, and take in snowcapped peaks on the horizon — and maybe spot a humpback whale or an orca.
Ask a local
For a sweet stop with a bigger purpose, visit Lil’ Gen’s Mini-Doughnuts.
Operated by The Salvation Army, the shop serves warm mini-doughnuts to cruise visitors all summer. The impact extends far beyond dessert: Hackman said that in 2025, profits from the shop helped fund “$130,000 worth of food to the local community.”
It’s a delicious way to support Hoonah residents directly. Try the lemon sugaring.
Plan your visit
- Best time: May through September during the Alaska cruise season.
- Hours/admission: Open seasonally. Access is included with most cruise itineraries.
- Getting there: Primarily reached by cruise ship from Southeast Alaska itineraries.
- Learn more: https://icystraitpoint.com/
Governor Mike Dunleavy today announced the appointment of Stephen Cox as his new Counsel to the Governor. The appointment comes after the legislature’s decision to not confirm him as attorney general, despite his extensive legal and public policy experience and proven record of defending Alaska’s interests both at home and on the national level. Cox’s responsibilities will be to advise Governor Dunleavy on a wide range of legal, regulatory, and constitutional matters affecting the State of Alaska.
Governor Dunleavy also appointed Cori Mills acting attorney general for the Alaska Department of Law. Mills has been with the department for 14 years and most recently served as deputy attorney general.
“Stephen Cox has a strong understanding of Alaska law and the challenges facing our state,” said Governor Dunleavy. “His experience, professionalism, and commitment to public service make him a valuable asset as Counsel to the Governor. I look forward to working with Stephen as we continue advancing policies that strengthen Alaska’s economy, uphold the rule of law, and serve the people of our state.”
As Counsel to the Governor, Cox will continue to work closely with the Department of Law and other executive branch departments to provide counsel on policy initiatives, legislation, and executive actions.
“I am honored to serve Governor Dunleavy and the people of Alaska in this new role,” said Stephen Cox. “I look forward to continue supporting the administration’s efforts to promote responsible resource development, governance and opportunities for Alaskans across the state.”
Cox assumes his new role effective today.
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