If Governor Palin would just step out of the way Alaska could be in the forefront of renewable energy creation.

In the last few years Bernie Karl, the owner of Chena Hot Springs Resort, has pioneered technology to generate electricity from hot water.

But Chena Hot Springs is about much more than energy.

Karl uses his resort as a laboratory to grow new ideas.

His latest brainchild is a portable power generator that can be hooked up to an oil or gas well.
The mobile geothermal power plant is basically a power plant on a flat bed truck.

When it's hooked up to an oil well the hot water byproduct can generate enough power for 280 homes.

That's a lot of energy in a state like Texas where there are a lot of oil rigs.

That's why the Department of Energy and several private companies have put about $1.4 million to develop and test the prototype which will be hooked up to an oil well in Florida this fall.

The technology is not limited to oil wells.

Waste heat or geothermal energy can also be used to create hydrogen fuel which Chena Hot Springs plans to use to run its cars soon.

"Any waste heat stream. Go to anybody that's got an engine running, anybody that's manufacturing something. It's got waste heat," Karl said. "You back it up and turn it into electricity."

It's expensive to produce but if the energy is renewable it could pencil out especially for communities in rural Alaska that pay more than $6 a gallon for fuel.

"Hydrogen is just one more tool in your renewable energy tool box," said Karl. "Yet someday hydrogen will be the fuel of the future, you'll see."

Karl says we need two ingredients to find the fuels of the future.

"We have no vision. We have no passion," Karl told a group of state lawmakers who took Chena's energy tour this week.

This is what a TRUE Alaskan can do!

Alaska used to be famous for the tough innovative people who lived up here and the ingenious methods they came up with to battle the cold and get from place to place.

From Cessna planes wings held together with duct tape and the power of prayer, to native Alaskans who set out in a skin covered boat to bring in a bowhead whale to feed their village, Alaskans are the champions when it comes to problem solving.

When the state was devastated by the 1964 earthquake Alaskans did not sit holding their heads in their hands waiting to be rescued by the federal government. No, they started working to save lives and repair the damage almost before the shaking had even stopped. (As a matter of fact my grandmother told me once that some after shocks hit right after she had finally put her living room back together and she said some very unladylike words before setting out to fix it back up again.)

Before we sold out soul to Exxon Oil and British Petroleum Alaskans were some of the most independent, eclectic innovators on the planet. It seems nowadays that those Alaskans are much harder to find. Having been replaced by out of staters who came up here chasing the big money promised by the oil companies.

And that is why I am so stoked to see this article about Bernie Karl. Here is one of the Alaskans of my youth. Here is a man, not only thinking out of the box, but possibly reinventing the damn box!

We need more people of vision like this in Alaska! And we need politicians and investors that will listen to these new ideas and help Alaska to lead the way toward a more energy independent lifestyle. And we need fewer people who are bought and paid for by the big oil companies who refuse to finance or support ANYTHING which might take money out of the pocket of some CEO at Shell Oil.

Just think what Mr. Karl could do with a couple million dollars of that stimulus money. The mind reels.