Climate Change

In the language of the Gwich’in people of northeastern Alaska, the word for the month known in English as July is Łuk choo zhrii, meaning “the month of king salmon,” said Rochelle Adams, an Indigenous advocate who grew up in Beaver and Fort Yukon.

With Yukon River king salmon runs diminished to the point where harvests of the species were not even allowed, that name now poses a dilemma, Adams said.

“If we can’t fish in the month of king salmon, what are we living in?” Adams said at a conference last week. “How we navigate the world is in our languages. Do we have to change the name of our month?”

To help explain the changes caused by a warming climate that people are seeing on the land and in the water, Adams and language scholar and educator Annauk Olin are embarking on a project to compile a glossary of Indigenous environmental terms.

The work is being done through the Alaska Public Interest Research Group Language Access program, which Adams directs.

The two described their project at the Alaska Just Transition Summit organized by Native and environmental groups and held in Juneau last week.

“The terms our ancestors used are sometimes no longer applicable to what we’re seeing, and that is — wow,” said Olin, who is from Shishmaref, an Inupiat community just north of the Bering Strait on the Chukchi Sea coast.

“How are young people going to understand the environment of yesterday and tomorrow and today?” she said. One answer, she said, is a close examination of traditional language.

Adams and Olin already have plenty of experience with language and cultural instruction and documentation. They, with some AKPIRG colleagues, in 2022 produced a set of protocols to guide use of translations. Other Language Access program projects included translations of information about COVID-19 and about the 2020 U.S. Census. Olin, among other projects, has helped guide the Northwest Arctic Borough School District’s language-immersion instruction. Adams is one of the creative forces behind the PBS Kids series Molly of Denali, serving as a cultural advisor for the Indigenous-focused show, and she has been part of the Doyon Foundation’s language revitalization committee and is also an artist known for her salmon-skin works.

At the summit session, Adams and Olin described ways that Indigenous languages are valuable in practical life.

That is shown, Olin said, in the myriad Inupiaq words describing in precise detail the different forms that sea ice can take – including the warnings that those words sometimes hold.

She read an Inupiaq passage that is an example and translated it into English: “In the spring on the landfast ice and pack ice, when they begin to thaw, melt holes form. The melt holes are dangerous, as people may get wet when they step near the holes.”

The words themselves are pieces of scientific evidence.

One Inupiaq word – pikaluyik – refers to old sea ice that is so compacted over time that it is blue, like glacier ice, according to a dictionary published in 1970. Such ice is scarcer that it used to be. Sea ice that was over four years old comprised about a third of the peak winter Arctic ice pack in the 1980s but is now down to under 5% of the total.

Western scientists have already adopted at least one Indigenous word as a term to describe an effect of climate change. The Yup’ik word usteq, which translates to “surface caves in,” is now used when referring to a catastrophic form of land collapse in which “frozen ground disintegrates under the compounding influences of thawing permafrost, flooding, and erosion,” according to the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

But in the past, the value of Indigenous languages was dismissed by the non-Native world.

Some participants in the conference session were moved to tears as they talked of language losses, like Margaret Tarrant, who spoke about her Indigenous mother who was beaten at a North Dakota reservation school in the 1950s for speaking her language, as were others. “They were made to feel ashamed about themselves,” Tarrant said.

Others said they regretted not learning their Indigenous languages when they were young and are now trying to correct that lapse. Some said they worry about languages fading as elders die.

To help reverse the losses, Adams and Olin have abundant material with which to compile an environmental glossary.

As with the Gwich’in word for July, there are numerous words in different languages that describe conditions at certain times of the year – which could be changing. In the Ahtna language, for example, the term hwdlii na’aaye’ used for the month of April translates to “crusted snow month,” according to a dictionary published in 1990 by the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Alaska Native Language Center. Inupiat terms for May refer to that as the time of year when river ice breaks or when river waters start to flow, according to the 1970 dictionary.

Other words describe the way sites were used in the past to gather food. The Dena’ina name for Ship Creek, the waterway running through downtown Anchorage and the site of the railroad construction camp that ultimately became Alaska’s largest city, is Dgheyay Leht, meaning Stickleback Creek; it was a source of fish used in a soup when salmon was not available, according to scientist Frank von Hippel, who studies that species of fish. The ridge where the UAF campus is located is called Troth Yeddha’, a Lower Tanana Athabascan name that means wild potato ridge; it was a place where that subsistence food was traditionally gathered.

The Dena’ina language is undergoing a revival of sorts in Anchorage, where there is a project focused on local place names. And for UAF, the Troth Yeddha’ name has become important. The university adopted the name for its campus and intends to use it for a planned Indigenous studies center.

Correction: The name of the Alaska Public Interest Research Group has been corrected.

This story originally appeared in the Alaska Beacon and is republished here with permission.

After nearly a year of frantic lobbying and debate, the EPA has finalized strict new rules on vehicle emissions that will push the auto industry to accelerate its transition to electric vehicles.

The EPA expects that under the new rules, EVs could account for up to 56% of new passenger vehicles sold for model years 2030 through 2032, meeting a goal that President Biden set in 2021.

The regulations are a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s efforts to fight climate change.

Combined with investments the U.S. is making in battery and electric vehicle manufacturing, the auto regulations will help shift the U.S. away from relying on fossil fuels for transportation, a senior administration official said during a call with reporters.

“Three years ago, I set an ambitious target: that half of all new cars and trucks sold in 2030 would be zero-emission,” Biden said in a statement, adding that the country will meet that goal “and race forward in the years ahead.”

Biden added that U.S. workers “will lead the world on autos making clean cars and trucks, each stamped ‘Made in America.‘”

The new rules require auto manufacturers to slash emissions of greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide that are heating the planet, as well as air pollutants that contribute to soot and smog. The administration says the new standards will avoid more than seven billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions and deliver almost $100 billion in annual benefits, including $13 billion in health benefits as a result of less pollution.

“That’s going to have immediate benefits in improving air quality, but also improving people’s health,” Cara Cook, director of programs at the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, told reporters ahead of the EPA’s announcement. “So they’re not breathing in dirty air, especially for those who are living near major roadways and highways, heavy traffic [areas]. Those are the ones that are going to really experience a significant amount of benefits from these rules.”

Entire fleets, not individual cars, must meet strict rules

The rules cover light- and medium-duty vehicles — cars, SUVs, vans and pickup trucks, but not 18-wheelers — from model years 2027 to 2032.

For light-duty vehicles, the EPA expects the rules will result in an industry-wide average emissions target of 85 grams of carbon dioxide per mile, representing an almost 50% reduction compared to existing standards for model year 2026 vehicles. The agency expects the average CO2 emissions target for medium-duty vehicles to fall by 44%.

The EPA rules are not written as an EV mandate or a ban on the sale of gas cars, like some states and other countries have adopted. Instead, the EPA sets standards that apply across an entire fleet — meaning an automaker still can make vehicles with higher emissions, as long as they also make enough very low or zero-emission vehicles that it averages out.

That means over the next decade, automakers can continue to offer a range of vehicle types, but the “menu” that’s available to consumers will shift to be cleaner overall.

The rules will likely drive a shift not just among automakers, but among their suppliers and in infrastructure, says Thomas Boylan, regulatory director at the Zero Emission Transportation Association, which advocates for electric vehicles.

“I think it creates a substantial tailwind in the EV market itself, but I think it’s even more pronounced throughout the supply chain” for things like parts manufacturing and charging infrastructure, Boylan said.

“It’s really that full supply chain that has an additional level of certainty with these types of rules.”

The EPA says consumers will also be able to opt for gas-powered vehicles with particulate filters and gas-electric hybrids.

Electric vehicles have higher price tags, on average, than gas-powered vehicles, although the gap has been narrowing and federal tax credits sometimes exceed the difference. Consumer groups have expressed support for the EPA’s rules, noting that EVs save drivers money over the life of the vehicle because it’s almost always cheaper to charge than to fuel up. Researchers last year found the proposed rule would save all drivers money, with the biggest savings for lower-income Americans.

The EPA says it expects the new rules will deliver fuel savings to consumers of up to $46 billion annually, plus savings on maintenance and repairs that the agency values at $16 billion annually.

“This is one of the biggest pieces of climate regulation in history,” Chris Harto, senior policy analyst for transportation and energy at Consumer Reports, said on a call with reporters.

“It’s going to have opponents,” Harto added, because the money consumers will save is “coming out of the pockets of the oil industry.”

In addition to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the rules also call for a reduction in other types of tailpipe pollution. A senior Biden administration official said those pollution regulations will reduce hospitalizations and prevent 2,500 premature deaths in 2055.

Auto industry asked for a slower start

The auto industry is in the midst of a dramatic transformation, with virtually all major companies pivoting toward making electric vehicles — albeit at different speeds.

In the U.S., EV sales increased by 50% last year, to just under 10% of new car sales. Automakers are also looking to Europe and China, which have embraced the idea of an electric future, and shifting their global plans accordingly.

But U.S. charging infrastructure is not increasing fast enough to keep pace with EV growth. Most EVs for sale right now are luxury vehicles, with relatively fewer options on the cheaper end of the scale. And, significantly, legacy automakers are making far more money on their gas-powered vehicles than their EVs, some of which are not yet profitable at all.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing auto manufacturers, asked the EPA to adjust the timeline for the new rules, dialing down the ambition for the next few years and then cranking up the pace toward the end of the time frame. The United Auto Workers union made a similar appeal.

The approach reflected what the Alliance calls a “Goldilocks problem”: automakers see huge risks if they move too slowly or too quickly toward EVs.

Of course, the auto industry is not a monolith. All-electric automakers like Tesla and Rivian encouraged the EPA to set even more stringent rules. Dealers, who have generally been more skeptical of EVs than manufacturers, sharply criticized the EPA’s original proposed rules.

The final rules the EPA settled on reflect the input from auto makers, labor unions and car dealers, a senior administration official said. Manufacturers will be able to make more gradual cuts to emissions in the early years, the official said, but the rules will ultimately deliver the same reductions as the agency’s initial proposal.

The oil industry is fundamentally opposed

The oil industry, meanwhile, has been an even more vocal critic of these rules and other policies promoting EVs. Rising adoption of electric vehicles is expected to reduce oil demand over time, although it will take decades for the global fleet of vehicles to turn over.

Oil trade groups call the new EPA rule a ban on gas-powered cars, although the regulations allow the continued sale of gas vehicles. The American Petroleum Institute has said the rule “threatens consumer freedom, energy reliability and national security.”

The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which has spent millions on ads against the EPA rules and other policies, also criticized the EPA for not considering the environmental impact of manufacturing a giant battery or charging an EV. A large body of research has found that even with those impacts factored in, EVs are still vastly better for the planet than comparable fossil fuel vehicles. It’s true, however, that larger, less efficient EVs have a bigger environmental footprint than smaller ones.

But the oil industry’s opposition goes even further. The attorney general of Texas has previously filed a lawsuit challenging the EPA’s authority to set rules designed to promote electric vehicles. Multiple oil trade groups backed Texas in the case. The auto industry sided with the EPA, noting that carmakers are investing billions in going electric and that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a “national priority.”

In fact, cutting greenhouse gas emissions is a global priority. The world has now agreed that transitioning away from fossil fuels is key to reducing the devastating impacts of climate change that, even in the best-case scenario, will disrupt ecosystems and human lives around the world.

And as the EPA sets rules designed to accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels, carmakers and oil producers are responding very differently.

The auto industry sees a profitable zero-emissions future for itself — if it can figure out how (and when) to get there. The oil industry is fighting to defend its core product.

On a call with reporters earlier this month, Chet Thompson, the CEO of the AFPM, lambasted media reports that the EPA was considering a “compromise” that would give the auto industry a few more years of more lenient standards, buying companies time to prepare for the EV transition.

Thompson emphasized that the EPA rules would still be, fundamentally, aimed at making most cars sold in the U.S. run on batteries.

“At 2032, it’s the same outcome,” Thompson said, frustrated. “This administration should not be calling that a compromise when in fact, they want to take us to the same place.”

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Wildlife biologist Janet Neilson keeps a close eye on Alaska humpbacks. For the National Park Service whale monitoring program, she keeps a count of the whales that migrate up from Hawaii to feed in Glacier Bay and Icy Strait every summer.

During the summers between 2014 and 2018, she and researcher Chris Gabriele, who has led the park’s monitoring program for three decades, noticed something was off.

“Young whales, calves went missing. We had whales in the prime years of their lives go missing. And we certainly had some older whales go missing as well,” Neilson said. “But it really seemed like it hit all the whales.”

Neilson is one of 75 co-authors on a new study, which finds that almost 7,000 North Pacific humpbacks went missing between 2012 and 2021 — a 20% drop-off from the peak population of more than 33,000. Researchers believe they starved to death during the record-setting marine heatwave known as “the blob.”

Naturalist Ted Cheeseman is the one who brought all the whale researchers together. He’s the founder of Happy Whale, a photo database that uses artificial intelligence to quickly identify individual whales by the unique black-and-white patterns on the underside of their tail fins, or flukes. With Happy Whale, Cheeseman set out to do a simple population count.

“But when we first saw these numbers, it turned a population study into a climate study,” Cheeseman said.

That’s because the database revealed a sharp decline in humpbacks that coincided with “the blob,” which spiked ocean temperatures from Alaska to California between 2014 and 2016, killing fish, seabirds and more than 30% of Alaska’s humpbacks.

Climate change may complicate the species’ conservation success story. Back in the 1990s, Cheeseman worked as a tour guide in Antarctica. And he said humpbacks were hard to come by back then.

“We didn’t see many whales at all,” Cheeseman said. “We did, however, visit some of the largest whaling stations that were ever built — you know, they’re factories. Absolutely factories to turn living whales into product.”

Commercial whaling pushed humpbacks  to the brink of extinction, but their populations in the North Pacific have boomed since it ended. Humpbacks were taken off the endangered species list in 2016. But around that same time, researcher Heidi Pearson was seeing the whales around Juneau get skinnier and skinnier.

Pearson, who researches at the University of Alaska Southeast, says these whales are usually more adaptable than other marine species. They can travel long distances to find food. And their diet is flexible.

“So the fact that they still declined due to what we think is lack of prey means that it must have been really bad,” she said.

She says she still believes in the resilience of humpbacks. But the study’s results make it clear that the species is feeling the pressure of warming driven by the burning of fossil fuels.

“I really learned a lot about the fragility, actually, of the ocean system to this warming,” Pearson said. “Animals and systems are resilient, but clearly during the heatwave they reached this tipping point.”

For Neilson, in Glacier Bay, the decline emphasizes the need to protect humpbacks even when their populations seem healthy. Though they’re recovering in Glacier Bay, she says, they’re still not back to their pre-heatwave levels. And they’re also frequently threatened by ship strikes and entanglements in fishing gear near the coast.

“It’s important to realize that the whales that we do see out on the water these days are survivors of a major ecological disruption,” Neilson said. “Those survivors deserve protection because more heat waves are coming.”

As those heatwaves come, real-time population monitoring for humpbacks may be more important than ever bef0re. The whales, which are large, coastal animals that are easy to track, can be indicators of overall ecosystem health in a rapidly changing ocean.

Technology like Happy Whale can help researchers better track whales as they migrate all across the North Pacific. The new study pulled more than 200,000 fluke images from the database, which were collected from researchers and more than 4,000 citizen scientists.

“The scale of problems that our world is facing today within the environmental realm — climate change being the biggest one — they’re only going to be solved by collaboration,” Pearson said. “No one can do it alone, in their one study site.”

Trees are gaining ground in the Arctic as a result of climate change. A group of scientists studying tree cover in Alaska’s Brooks Range found that trees are expanding north and at higher elevations, in part due to the loss of Arctic sea ice, which is disappearing because of human-caused global warming.

When sea ice retreats, large areas of open water are left in its place. Warm conditions speed up evaporation, leading to heavier snowfall on nearby land, said Patrick Sullivan, director of the Environment and Natural Resources Institute at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

“You basically have this blanket of snow that covers up small seedlings and saplings, and protects them,” he said.

That thicker snow layer is making it easier for trees to survive in harsh Arctic conditions.

“In the winter in the Arctic, the wind picks up all of these spiky snow crystals, and basically batters trees and other vegetation that stick up above the snow,” Sullivan said. “And so the deeper the snow, more of the population gets protected.”

Sullivan said snow also serves as an insulator, keeping the ground warm enough that soil microbes can continue to churn out nutrients for growing trees.

Permafrost thaw, another effect of climate change, is also at play, said Sullivan. The thick, insulating layers of snow are speeding up the thaw, making it easier for trees to take hold in the soil and grow.

Rapid growth in white spruce trees can actually be linked to periods of open water at sea, said Colin Maher, a postdoctoral fellow at UAA who studies tree rings.

“If you look at the tree ring measurements, you would see an increasing trend in ring widths. They start kind of small, and then they get bigger and bigger. And that’s what the open water looks like as well,” Maher said. “It’s increasing rapidly.”

Roman Dial, a math and biology professor at Alaska Pacific University who co-authored a paper in Science with Sullivan and Maher, studied satellite imagery from around the circumpolar north and found that the tree line is advancing in many parts of the Arctic.

Dial said this shift in the Arctic ecosystem isn’t limited just to trees – animals like moose, beavers, black bears, and even salmon are moving north too. The availability of the subsistence animals that many communities rely on is also changing.

“What does that mean for people who live there? It’s hard to say,” Dial said. “It’s a change. You can talk to people in Kotzebue, and they’re excited about the huge chum salmon runs that they’re getting, but they’re kind of bummed out that the caribou populations are crashing.”

Dial said it also remains to be seen how increased tree cover will affect the climate. Trees serve an important role as a “carbon sink,” storing carbon dioxide, which is a major driver of global warming. But at the same time, dark trees like spruce soak up sunlight instead of reflecting it back the way bare, snowy tundra does. Dial said trees trapping heat like that could speed up Arctic warming.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has announced a new $2.4 million award toward the community of Napakiak’s move away from the Kuskokwim River, as constant erosion threatens local structures.

The edge of the village of Napakiak sits less than 50 feet from the water.

“I measure the erosion every month starting from the time the ice goes out,” said Walter Nelson, who is a primary coordinator for Napakiak’s retreat from erosion.

The Kuskokwim River wasn’t always so close, but in recent years erosion is marching the banks 25 to 30 feet per year toward the community’s well-water source and school building.

“The priority for Napakiak now is our only well-watering point for the community sits at 49 feet from the erosion,” Nelson said.

In 2020, Napakiak came up with a groundbreaking 50-year plan – a roadmap for retreating to a new site.

“We are currently on an island,” Nelson said. “And the new subdivision site is, like, 2 miles away from the Kuskokwim River and the erosion problems that we’re constantly having every year.”

Moving is an expensive endeavor. Napakiak’s retreat is projected to cost upwards of $200 million.

The village received $25 million in 2022 from the Department of the Interior‘s Voluntary Community-Driven Relocation Program, and around $60 million in state funding for the school.

They’ve also tracked down funding for a temporary watering point in the current village, as well as a well-water source in the new subdivision.

“Everything is sort of on the move for us,” Nelson said.

The City of Napakiak, the Native Village of Napakiak, and the Naparyalruar Corporation are all coordinating the retreat. They are seeking out a patchwork of funds from a variety of sources including FEMA, the Department of the Interior, and the Denali Commission.

Altogether, Napakiak will eventually have moved or newly built dozens of houses, a new Native corporation store, a water plant, a multipurpose building, and a school. Nelson said that the erosion is currently around 300 feet from the existing corporation store.

That new school building is now under construction. For now, though, students attend classes in a partly-demolished building that’s roughly 80 feet from the edge of the river – about the length of two shipping containers.

Construction on the new school is set to finish in 2025. The pressing need for a new Napakiak school that’s safe from erosion actually prompted a change in the way the Alaska Department of Education evaluates infrastructure needs when it put the new school at the top of the priority list in 2021.

At the end of February, FEMA announced its grant toward the move.

“The funding awarded today gets us one step closer to a safe, sustainable future for our community,” Nelson said, reached by phone in Napakiak.

Nelson said that the money will go toward around 300 feet of new road and 10 house pads in the new subdivision site.

FEMA Community Resilient Infrastructure Grants Branch Chief in Region 10 Jay Pritchett said that Napakiak is a notable community.

“I think it’s a testament, really, of the community’s goals for resiliency,” Pritchett said. “The permafrost thawing that’s going on in Alaska is expanding on itself. Climate change is clearly having a direct impact on the communities up there and the Native Village of Napakiak, they had the wherewithal and the insight to really look at what was occurring to their community and the land around them. And then looked at ways of leveraging, they had a really solid plan, actually, to put this into implementation, leveraging many different federal resources.”

Napakiak is one of a number of villages in Alaska in the process of planning and carrying out a relocation project. A recent report from the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium points to almost 150 villages in the state dealing with accumulating climate-driven threats. The report was harsh. It said that the current system is “inequitable and inefficient.” The federal government isn’t set up to address the needs of those communities, and that’s a point Pritchett makes as well.

“The real challenge, honestly, is time,” Pritchett said. “Climate impacts are only becoming more common and more rapid. There’s a lot that goes into the process of obtaining FEMA funding, and the steps and requirements can be opaque. We’re trying to be more thoughtful about our outreach to communities because we’re realizing information is important, and accessing information is just as important.”

FEMA is just one of several federal agencies that can help fund climate-driven relocation or retreat efforts, all with differing requirements. Pritchett said that as climate impacts hit Alaska communities, governmental agencies need to listen, self-reflect, and figure out how to address their needs while complying with federal laws and regulations on environmental protections and historic preservation.

“What can we do better through the policies, if a policy can be changed?” Pritchett asked.

But he said federal agencies will need to go beyond that as well: “And then really getting that information up to the real decision-makers and saying, ‘Here’s the data that we got, here’s the information we got from the communities,’ and I think people listening and really looking at the most advantageous approach for our communities to meet those, those goals that they need.”

For now, in Napakiak, Nelson works to navigate the complex grant management systems.

“It’s just no easy small task, but, you know, any help that we get, any amount that we get, that’s going to help our community out,” Nelson said.

The new FEMA grant is chipping away at the total cost of getting the community to safer ground, but local authorities will need more.

“We still need millions. Millions and millions more; I can’t give you an exact number,” Nelson said. “But, you know, that’s where we try to get more funds from the state, from FEMA and so forth to help with our retreating efforts.”

In the meantime, every dollar helps the community stay ahead of the advancing banks of the Kuskokwim.

For thirty years Alaska had a small coal export industry, but with demolition slated for the state’s only coal loading facility, those days are likely gone forever.

At its peak in 2011, Alaska exported 1.1 million tons — or 18 ships’ worth — of coal annually. The coal traveled down the Alaska Railroad from the Usibelli Coal Mine in Healy to the Seward Coal Terminal. There, it was loaded on boats headed for South Korea, Japan and Chile.

But within five years, coal exports had dropped 95%. In 2016, the railroad and the mine shut it down.

“There simply wasn’t the global business to justify continuing with the operation at that time,” said Meghan Clemens, a spokesperson for the state-owned Alaska Railroad Corporation, which owns the Seward loading dock.

Demand for coal never came back, a signal of the global energy transition toward lower carbon fuels. Meanwhile, the coal-loading equipment on the Seward dock has sat idle for eight years, deteriorating to the point that it is unusable.

“It’s more of a liability than anything else right now,” Clemens said.

Now the railroad has decided to demolish the coal terminal in the hopes that it can find a new use for the dock.

“With this equipment out of the way, how can we better use this dock in Seward to bring some additional business through town?” Clemens said.

Bidding on the project closed last week and Clemens said the railroad will soon select a contractor. She said the demolition budget is $1.5 million to start.

With the coal loading infrastructure gone, it’s unlikely the mine or the railroad ever reinvests in coal exports, said University of Alaska Fairbanks energy historian Philip Wight.

“It’s hard for me to see any situation where this is not the end of Alaskan coal exports,” Wight said.

Usibelli Coal Mine did not respond to a request for comment.

Coal was never a huge part of Alaska’s energy exports. But Wight said its decline is one example of changes driven by the global energy transition.

Nations have committed to reducing their contribution to global warming, which means switching to lower carbon sources of energy.

Around the world, coal has been increasingly replaced by natural gas. Wight said since the 2010’s, countries in Asia have imported more liquefied natural gas, or LNG.

“And that made a big difference in the power sector, where countries like South Korea and Japan burned a lot more LNG rather than coal for electricity generation,” he said.

Natural gas releases less carbon into the atmosphere than coal when it’s burned, which has led it to be seen as a cleaner option. But it’s still a fossil fuel, and new research has raised questions about whether it has a lower climate impact than coal.

Despite that, demand for natural gas is growing. Wight said that’s in part because it works well as a backup to renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

“We’re looking at a transition where LNG is going to continue to play a large role in that regardless of its carbon emissions.”

Even if the state likely won’t be exporting any more coal, it still remains a major energy source inside Alaska. In 2020, a third of electricity generated in the Interior came from coal, according to the Alaska Resource Development Council.

But coal infrastructure in Alaska is aging. And local utilities are eying other options — including wind energy and natural gas.