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Summary of Greenstar Programs In Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Central Kenai Peninsula
Eric Larson
The Green Star® Program is a voluntary program created in 1990 to encourage businesses, schools, non-profit organizations, and government agencies to educate employees, reduce waste, conserve energy, and recycle materials. The program began as a cooperative agreement among the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce, the Alaska Center for the Environment, and the Pollution Prevention Office of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. Since its inception, the program has expanded to include over 400 Alaskan business firms, government agencies, schools, and non-profit organizations employing over 60,000 people in Alaska. The program has also expanded to include chapters in several others states. This report is a summary of some of these cost-savings and benefits as reported by participants in the Green Star® programs in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Central Kenai Peninsula. This summary is based on interviews with selected, knowledgeable participants in the programs -- including awardees, enrollees, and board members. This report also describes the current status of these three programs -- including the characteristics of the current membership, available financial resources, and long-term goals of the programs.
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Summary of Selected Commercial Pollution-Prevention Efforts in Alaska
Eric Larson
Businesses and government agencies in Alaska recycle and reduce a wide variety of hazardous and non-hazardous wastes each year. A substantial component of their efforts are documented in "Waste Minimization/ Pollution Prevention Supplemental Reports" submitted by businesses and agencies to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. These reports describe how facilities are meeting federal guidelines to reduce hazardous wastes. The purpose of this report is to provide a summary of information and feedback to facilities that handle these different types of wastes. Our analysis is based on the information businesses and government agencies have submitted to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation on the "Waste Minimization / Pollution Prevention Supplements to Annual Hazardous Waste Reports." For this study we analyzed a total of 121 supplemental reports submitted to the department in 1995 and 1996. The supplemental reports contain four sections: Section A: Steps taken to reduce and recycle hazardous wastes, Section B: Identifying and assessing opportunities for source reduction and recycling, Section C: Planning for pollution prevention, and Section D: Pollution prevention programs that include other waste streams. For each section of these supplemental reports, we have analyzed, described, and statistically summarized selected information submitted by facilities.
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Teachers Planning Professional Development in a Reform Context: The Case of Kentucky
G. Williamson McDiarmid and Phillip P. Kelly
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Northeast Asian Energy Development in a Global Perspective
Arlon Tussing, Samuel A. Van Vactor, John Tichotsky, and Ronald D. Ripple
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Caveat Emptor: Purchasing Petroleum Industry Investment with Fiscal Incentives
Matthew D. Berman
Increasing international competition is encouraging governments to negotiate fiscal incentives with oil producers. The asymmetrical nature of information driving industry development decisions means that governments do not know how much they are paying with these incentives or what they are getting in return. This paper models renegotiating of fiscal terms for a petroleum prospect as an economic game. Nash equilibrium strategies are derived for the government and the developer for revising royalty rates, investment credits, and profit shares, The paper also addresses how the developer's strategic sharing of information may affect the outcome of negotiations. The model results suggest that governments should exercise caution with the use of discretionary incentives.
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Defining Arctic Community Sustainability
Stephen Braund and Gary Kofinas
The question of defining sustainability is a subject of much discussion in the literature, with much of it centering on debates regarding the definition of the more controversial term "sustainable development." Part of this discourse has examined questions of the erosion of natural and social capital, the evolution and diversity of institutions, and the dilemmas associated with achieving a balance between economic growth and maintenance of environmental quality. Through our initial discussions, we recognized the legacy of failures associated with non-locals defining criteria of sustainability (and community well being) for northern peoples. We, in turn, responded to this problem by applying for supplemental funding from NSF to involve communities in our study. As a part of our grant, we proposed that we work with local community members to define appropriate community sustainability goals. In this summary, we present the results of our work – - a the list of the elements which are considered by locals to reflect the conditions for achieving Arctic community sustainability. In the first stage of the research, we worked with the communities of Arctic Village, Aklavik, Old Crow, and Kaktovik. Our effort to define community sustainability goals was completed through meetings of local organizations (e.g., hunters and trappers committee) and at project-sponsored workshops. We also met one-on-one with formal and informal local leaders to discuss the project and with them entered into discussions about the applications of the term sustainability in a northern community context.
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Yukon-Kuskokwim Region Sanitation Utility Management Options Type I Market Feasibility Study
Steve Colt and Mary Forster
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Working for Children: Kids Count Alaska
Norman Dinges, Rosyland Frazier, and Eric Larson
Many Americans are worried about children in the U.S. growing up in poverty, in broken homes, and in dangerous neighborhoods. Policymakers and others with responsibilities for children's well-being need reliable information about conditions affecting children. Alaska in 1990 had relatively few babies born with low birth weights (which can mean developmental problems later), with little regional variation. The share of children in poverty statewide in 1990 was 11 percent, but regional shares varied from 6 to 24 percent. More than one in five Alaska families were headed by single parents in 1990, with the regional share as high as one in three. Overall, we hope the indicators compiled and disseminated by Kids Count Alaska will become an important tool that Alaskans in public and private life can use in developing policies and programs to help children and families.
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Kids Count Alaska 1996
Norman Dinges, Claudia Lampman, Fay Reilly, Genee Jackson, Jack Kruse, Rosyland Frazier, Eric Larson, Mera Atlis, Alexandra Hill, Barbara Minton, and Monette Dalsfoist
Between 1990 and 1995 the total population of Alaska increased about 12 percent, growing from 550,043 to 615,900. However, the number of children (18 and under) only grew about 9 percent, from 179,939 to 196,037. So the share of children in the population dropped slightly in the first half of the 1990s, from 32.7 percent to 31.8 percent. It was slower growth in the number of White children that caused the decline; numbers of children in other ethnic groups increased faster than the general population between 1990 and 1995.
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Economic Projections for Alaska and the Southern Railbelt to 2025
Scott Goldsmith
In the 30 years between statehood and 1990, Alaska was dominated by petroleum-driven growth punctuated by a number of boom and bust cycles, each of which has brought the economy to a higher plateau of activity. Since 1990 the Alaska economy has moved into a period of slower growth because petroleum production-the source of half of state value added-is now in decline. Continued exploitation of petroleum resources, even as production declines, as well as growth in other basic industries such as tourism and mining, will help to offset this loss and stabilize the economy. But dependence on commodity- producing industries means that cycles in the petroleum, fishing, timber, and mining sectors will continue to generate business cycles at the state and regional levels. This series of reports continues from previous economic projections which used 2020 as the end date for its modeling.
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Fiscal and Socio-economic Impact of Marginal Oil Field Development in Alaska: Does It Pay Its Own Way?
Scott Goldsmith
As oil industry interest turns toward Alaskan oil fields with higher unit costs of production and, consequently, lower state revenues per barrel, an important public policy question is whether these fields on state lands are able to "pay their own way." This is loosely defined to mean that the benefits to the state from the development of the publicly owned resource exceed the public costs associated with development. A related question is how much state tax and royalty policy can change in an attempt to stimulate marginal field development and still provide a net economic benefit to the state. This paper develops a methodology for analyzing the conditions under which an oil field development produces a net economic benefit to the state. The model calculates the public sector costs associated with field development and compares them to the public revenues generated by the oil production from the field. The methodology demonstrates that whether a project produces net economic benefits depends not only upon the characteristics of the economy, the characteristics of the oil field, and the existing or anticipated fiscal regime but also on the benefits and costs chosen for inclusion in the analysis. In particular, the question of which revenues and which costs to attribute to the development is an important determinant of the result. The paper presents an analysis using a hypothetical marginal oil field in Alaska as an example. This example demonstrates that using the definitions of costs and benefits commonly associated with other natural resource activities in the state, marginal oil field development is likely to be able to "pay its own way" under a variety of fiscal regimes. This paper was presented at the International Conference on Petroleum Fiscal Regimes in Anchorage, Alaska on May 3, 1996 .
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Economic Impacts of the Kodiak Launch Complex
Alexandra Hill and Pershing Hill
The Alaska Aerospace Development Corporation hopes to build a commercial satellite launch facility on Kodiak Island during the next several years. The facility would launch small satellites and small to medium rockets into polar, low-earth orbits. It would be one of the few commercial launch facilities in the U.S. and would compete in a rapidly-growing market. MDC hired the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) at the University of Alaska Anchorage to examine the potential economic impacts of such a facility. The economy of the Kodiak Island Borough depends heavily on the commercial fishing industry (including both seafood harvesting and processing) and on government (particularly the U.S. Coast Guard station at Kodiak). The proposed facility; to be known as the Kodiak Launch Complex, would not change the basic picture of the Kodiak economy.
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Economic Impacts of the 1996 Arctic Winter Games
Pershing Hill
The fourteenth Arctic Winter Games (AWG) were held in Eagle River, Alaska in March 1996. It marked the first time in their 26-year history that the AWG had been held in Southcentral Alaska. This study estimates the impact of the games on the regional economy. The direct initial increase in spending resulting from the AWG was an estimated $2.49 million and the initial equivalent increase in jobs was 43.4 person-years of employment. The total impact of the games - including the indirect effects - was $4.26 million in increased regional income and the equivalent of 62 person-years of employment. Note that these estimates are based on assumptions outlined in the text of the report. Those assumptions qualify the findings. This study does not explicitly consider the 125,000 hours of volunteer time that were required to stage the games. We generated our estimates with the Alaska Input/Output model, which the Institute of Social and Economic Research developed to analyze the Alaska economy. Many additional impacts of the 1996 Arctic Winter Games are not quantifiable but are nonetheless real. Certainly the games increased the sense of community in the area of Eagle River, Chugiak, and Anchorage. The games and the events held in conjunction with them also undoubtedly contributed to increased understanding among the people of the North. Almost two thousand people from across the North came together at the games. The Russian dancers from Magadan, for instance, provided Alaskans and others with a glimpse of their culture. One young girl from Baffin Island in Canada's Northwest Territories had never seen trees before she came to take part in the games.
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Economic Impacts of the 1995 Carrs Great Alaska Shootout
Pershing Hill and David Gilmore
This study estimates the economic impacts of the 1995 Carrs Great Alaska Shootout on Anchorage and on Alaska. Held in Anchorage every year since 1978, the shootout has become one of the nation's premier college basketball tournaments, drawing some of the top-ranked NCAA teams. The tournament generates significant income and jobs for the Anchorage and state economies. The estimates in this report are based on assumptions and qualify our findings. The basis of the analysis is a diary study, in which participants and spectators record their spending while they were in Anchorage attending the tournament. Tabulated data was then used in an Alaska input/output model to estimate the economic impacts of the tournament.
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