Ballot counting #4 - incumbents retain their seats

It appears that the incumbents retained their seats. Still pending all the final numbers, but what I have are the winners with at least 40% of the vote. District 1 - Aren Gunderson - 471 votes District 2 - Tom DeLong - 506 votes District 3 - Rick Schikora - 363 votes (this was a 3 way race) An update on ballots that weren't countable due to deficiencies - it was 363. That's a lot, but typical, I'm told. While there are clear instructions on the process, I think that there should be a revisit of the multi-step process as it seems disrespectful to discount so many ballots where people at least made the effort to vote. Here are the more complete results.

Ballot counting #3

All acceptable ballots have been counted and are entered into the scanner. There are over 200 ballots that weren't on the other count due to deficiencies such as no signature on the outside or wrong signature. 10 were accepted that were delivered to GVEA offices instead of the official address. One rejection was a person whose wife had signed as the person had died some months ago. It is being held in abeyance as the signature didn't indicate she was a personal representative of her deceased husband. The computer will then be spitting out results shortly.

Ballot counting #2

An hour plus has past now and ballots are still be counted. 874 have been counted, roughly one third. The way it works is the ballots are removed from the envelope by the MAC in blocks of 50. They are then counted to make sure there are 50, then collected as a block and given to the person who then scans them into a portable counting machine. Because each district ballot is differennt, the machine knows the difference between districts. Unlike some previous years before the election process was outsourced, there won't be any real interim results, just a final one. Note that board members John Sloan and Chris Bunch are official observers, with candidate Tom DeLong stopping by, listening to MAC member Heidi Titchenal.

GVEA Board of Directors counting of ballots

GVEA is counting ballots received for the board of directors for districts 1, 2, and 3 this afternoon and evening in the board room of GVEA off Illinois St. All GVEA members are welcome to observe. Members of the MAC board will be doing the counting. You can read about the folks running on the GVEA website. Here are some opening numbers: District 1 Ballots mailed out: 6027 Ballots received: 882 Percent voting: 14.6% District 2 Ballots mailed out: 6249 Ballots received: 871 Percent voting: 13.9% District 3 Ballots mailed out: 6849 Ballots received: 811 Percent voting: 11.8%

Proposed EPA rules to limit carbon dioxide emissions

For decades, there has been attempts to limit carbon dioxide emissions at local, state, national and international levels. Since the intent is to reduce climate disruption that known no borders, getting agreement to take action has been challenging, to the say the least. The argument from those opposed to such reductions is that it will cost the economy by raising the price of energy. This might be true if one ignores the external costs of using fossil fuels (the primary source of CO2 in this case) and the cost of adapting to the wide range of effects to our world from climate disruption. Carbon credits have been used in Europe and elsewhere, while a carbon tax has been resisted successfully. The idea that we need to reduced our CO2 emissions isn't new and any responsible group or individual that is in the policy side of power plant production should be aware of this. Earlier this week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a set of regulations that is up for comment. The regulations are intended to bring down the level of CO2 emissions from power plants overall and to do so on a statewide, not on just a per-power-plant basis. The proposed rules have already generated a lot of politicizing, which is unfortunate though predictable. I mean, does one really think that the intent of the EPA and Obama Administration is to 'destroy the economy'? The cost of mitigating CO2 is not well known because the concept of sequestering it is still pretty experimental. The cheapest way to reduce CO2 emissions is to not generate them. This is why the EPA proposed guidelines has a goal of reducing the carbon pollution emitted for each megawatt-hour of electricity generated and not necessarily eliminate coal fired power plants that can't reduce the CO2 output. GVEA is one of the few power companies in Alaska using coal for generation. With a 25 mw older coal plant in operation, GVEA recently committed nearly $200 mm to purchase, refurbish and install selective catalytic reduction (of nitrous oxide) equipment for Healy 2, a 1990's era experimental power plant. The loans GVEA is using are for 30 years, meaning that we owner-members will be paying debt in excess of the face value of the loan for that long. Coal plants typically cost twice as much as a natural gas fired power plant to construct, while the coal as a source of fuel is currently cheaper. This is what drives GVEA to use coal, because they can defer paying the piper and hope that they can not have to address cost of mitigating CO2. I have argued that is a false hope and believe it is irresponsible. GVEA seems to love new projects and in the 5 years since we members allowed the board to not be restricted in borrowing, GVEA has roughly doubled the amount they have committed to borrowing than the previous limit of $450 million book value. I find that scary for members who will be paying off these loans for decades in their utility charge. The utility charge is roughly half of your bill with energy charge from the cost of producing the energy the other half. However, with the demonstrated need to reduce our CO2 emissions worldwide, for the life of me, I don't see the need to take on more long term debt that we can't get out of. There is a surplus of natural gas fired electricity in Southcentral now. Matanuska Electric has overbuilt generation, Munipal Light and Power (Anchorage) has surplus, Homer now has their own generation. Chugach, which formerly sold power to these utilities, now has surplus to sell as a result. GVEA had considered an option to build a natural gas fired power plant in Southcentral, but then would want more tie line capacity to Healy. These discussions were in executive session, so we don't know all the considerations. We are limited to 78 mw across the 138kv Intertie from Southcentral that terminates in Healy. We have roughly double that between Healy and Fairbanks. The Intertie can be upgraded relatively easily as the towers and insulators and some equipment is already designed for double that voltage. The point here is that a more efficient transmission network could allow us to take advantage of cleaner power throughout the Railbelt. The Alaska Energy Authority has a Railbelt Transmisson Plan that details where constraints and improvement might help us further the goal of cleaner and more efficient energy. Caveat: it's a detailed study and the costs aren't insignificant. Instead of a knee-jerk objection to the EPA, we might instead work toward our long term best interest of economic and cleanly generated electricity.