GreenBiz: Alaska's energy and arctic-tech startup scene is warming up for global challenges

By Isaac Vanderburg, Managing Director, Launch Alaska

This original ran in Greenbiz.

Alaska's unique take on innovation is driven by its vast geography and harsh climate. For a technology to be useful here, it must perform well in remote and harsh conditions, be easy to repair and solve a real problem. This unfussy approach to innovation is at the heart of the state's emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem, where entrepreneurs, researchers, policy wonks and technologists are tackling on some of the world’s most challenging problems in the energy sector.    

With the highest cost of electricity and some of the highest per-capita energy consumption in the United States, Alaska is hungry for energy innovation because of the outsized impact that energy costs have on our residents' pocketbooks. This is particularly true in rural parts of the state.

And with 12 percent of the world’s islanded microgrids, the state offers a unique opportunity to deploy flexible energy solutions that can be adopted in remote regions globally. Think Puerto Rico and Samoa. Both are isolated from mainland electric grids, face high energy costs and are highly susceptible to disruptions in fuel supply chains based on extreme weather conditions.