**Title**: Energy in the North - Ingemar Mathiasson
**Date**: July 9, 2025
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Ingemar Mathiasson

00;00;01;00 - 00;00;04;00 [Ingemar Mathiasson] next few years, going into the future with those kind of prices, people are trying to find other places to live at $18 a gallon, it becomes almost impossible to heat your house.

00;00;10;13 - 00;00;16;12 [Amanda Byrd] This week on energy in the North, I speak with Ingemar Mathiasson, the energy manager for the Northwest Arctic Borough. Since 2009, he's been managing multiple renewable energy projects in 11 communities across the region and has been helping to develop some of the most innovative energy systems in the world. I began my conversation by asking Ingemar tell me a little bit about the Northwest Arctic power.

00;00;32;14 - 00;00;34;08 [Ingemar Mathiasson] Yeah, it's a northwest corner of ÐÓ°ÉÔ­°æ. 7000 people total. But 11 villages, 21 different kinds of government. We're trying to coordinate that with the energy steering committee, that holding the region together for the future energy plan

00;00;46;13 - 00;00;47;23 [Amanda Byrd] The energy plan that you have helped write is really extensive and has really good, achievable steps that your team has actually started making really good progress on.

00;00;58;18 - 00;00;58;24 [Ingemar Mathiasson] Yep. That's correct. We investigated all available resources from the beginning, and everything is on the table and still is. And then we take the
best low hanging fruit and and, produce products for hopeful transition into the future with developing any renewable resource at home that we can to offset the diesel fuel from the outside.

00;01;18;07 - 00;01;21;12 [Amanda Byrd] Diesel fuel comes in by airplane and barge?

00;01;21;12 - 00;01;22;26 [Ingemar Mathiasson] Yep. That's correct. There's a significant difference in price. It can range anywhere from $4 or $5 coming in for utilities by barge to over $10 to $12 coming in with airplanes and the retail fuel, range as high as $18.50 a gallon.

00;01;37;22 - 00;01;39;19 [Amanda Byrd] How do people survive out there with diesel fuel that high?

00;01;40;25 - 00;01;43;18 [Ingemar Mathiasson] Well, actually, the population is decreasing. We had a high of about 7470 505 six years ago. We're now going to drop under 7000. So it's going to
 next few years, going into the future with those kind of prices. People are trying to find other places to live at $18 a gallon, it becomes almost impossible to heat your house.

00;02;01;04 - 00;02;01;18 [Amanda Byrd] Through your work, you have introduced some really innovative energy solutions to the area, and one of them is heat pumps, which for the longest time it was just pooh-poohed as a solution for even Fairbanks or Southeast ÐÓ°ÉÔ­°æ. You're using it in the Arctic.

00;02;19;02 - 00;02;21;01 [Ingemar Mathiasson] Yep. And actually, even in 2010, when we started to introduce solar at the beginning of that whole project, everybody was Pooh poohing solar and thought the Arctic was dark. And we proved to D.C. that we actually could have solar in the Arctic. Not only that, that we had more solar than in Germany. That continued then to look at the how can we use the solar? Well, if we get electricity, then with a heat pump, we can use that electricity to also offset the heating fuel for the households. So we tested some in 2016 to see if they were working, they were Panasonic's oversized, two in every community. And they are still working today and seem to be, in some communities, saving as much as $2,000, $2,500 a year to run on electricity instead of the fuel because of the very high cost of fuel.

00;03;09;07 - 00;03;13;21 [Amanda Byrd] That's incredible. And I know of one case where a person has, a heat pump reversing to use as a cooling room for hunted meat.

00;03;20;08 - 00;03;28;03 [Ingemar Mathiasson] Yeah, he sent that to me. After he installed this heat pump in August. He was out hunting moose and, of course, he realized that. Okay, he was running it to, heat up the house at that point, and it was cooler there. So he put a little
lean-to around it, hang this meat in front of it, and sucked the heat out of the meat, put it in the house instead. And, the cooler at the same time. Yep. People are very, you know, innovative out there. And that was one of the solutions that went around the world.

00;03;46;25 - 00;03;50;20 [Amanda Byrd] Ingemar Mathiasson is the energy manager for the Northwest Arctic Borough, and I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for ACEP. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep.