Alaska’s Small Villages Turn Toward Renewables—And Don’t Look Back

Early in summer 2015, a barge hauling two deconstructed wind turbines lumbered out of Seattle bound for the Alaskan Arctic. It traveled along the western edge of Vancouver Island, passed the pristine wilderness of the Tongass National Forest, slipped across the Gulf of Alaska, rounded Cape Sarichef into the Bering Sea, and worked its way up the coast toward the Bering Strait, 3,000 miles from home.

As mayor of the Inupiaq village of Buckland,  

Tim Gavin has overseen the installation of wind

 turbines and solar panels that offset the high 

price of energy in remote Alaska.

By August, the ice in the Chukchi Sea had dispersed enough for the barge to get into Kotzebue Sound. There, the white towers, black blades, and the rest of the parts were loaded onto a smaller boat that made its way past Puffin Island to the southeast end of Eschscholtz Bay.

After winding 26 miles inland up the Buckland River, the turbines were placed on trucks for the last 5 miles to a hilltop where they were erected and began to spin.

That is one way to get to Buckland, a village of about 400 mostly Inupiaq Alaskans that sits near the Arctic Circle.

Read Stephen Miller’s story in Yes! magazine - “Alaska’s Small Villages Turn Toward Renewables—And Don’t Look Back.”