MEA Candidate Questions: Bryan Cherry

Voting in the Matanuska Electric Association’s 2023 board election begins on March 30. Election information and paper ballots will be mailed to members at the end of March. MEA will be accepting paper ballots until 5 p.m. on April 24. Members may also vote electronically via their SmartHub accounts by the same deadline. Members who have not voted by mail or on-line will also have a chance to vote at the MEA Annual Meeting on April 25.

Here are the answers from Bryan Cherry. Cherry is one of nine candidates running for two At-Large seats on the MEA Board. Cherry is a resident of Fishhook and has lived in the area for twenty years. He is a Project Manager for construction, energy management, and environmental remediation projects, and is currently overseeing work for the Bering Straits Native Corporation. Cherry has served as Treasurer of the Fishhook Community Council, and has been active with the Boy Scouts and coached youth soccer. His full candidate profile can be found on the MEA Election page.

Bryan Cherry, from his MEA candidate profile

1. Why do you want to serve on MEA’s Board?

Change is coming regardless of whether we like it or not. I want to be part of the change and provide direction for MEA as it moves forward. This isn’t a career move for me. I am here to help. I am not, nor have I ever been, a professional politician. I can serve as a cheerleader, but I can also serve as the project Eeyore; every team needs both.

2. Are there any particular policies you would champion as a member of the Board? Are there any current or proposed policies you would oppose?

I am concerned we are becoming less open and less transparent with the membership. With the growth of the customer base and the impending challenges with fuel supplies, there is a lot going on. I sense a bit of ‘circling the wagons’ mentality.

3. What are the biggest challenges MEA will face in the next five to ten years? What can be done to prepare to meet them?

The probable loss of the Cook Inlet natural gas is the biggest single challenge that the MEA is facing. It’s a problem which will dominate discussions for the next several years. Other issues are expanding service areas to meet demand, maintaining, servicing and improving the existing system. Diversifying the production portfolio. i.e. adding more renewables, or sharing generation capacity among utilities, is going to introduce new levels of complexity in load management, system maintenance. The challenges of improving resilience to knowns, planning for the unknowns, and being open and honest about what we don’t know.

4. In 2022 MEA’s Board spent 47% of their regular public board meetings in Executive Session. While Executive Sessions are sometimes necessary, their extensive use excludes member-owners from significant discussions of issues such as strategic planning and sources of power generation. Do you believe that cooperative boards have an obligation to their member-owners to maximize the openness and transparency of their decision making? Should MEA’s Board minimize its use of Executive Session? What could be done to achieve this goal?

More transparency is always better than less. It’s not always a comfortable position to be transparent. Worts and blemishes are exposed. From a governance standpoint whether is a board of directors, a community council, municipality, state legislature, we can’t separate ourselves by geographical separation, or creating rules, or creating exclusionary social media clubs, from the object of governance. It breeds distrust. Executive sessions need to be few, far between, and solidly justified.

5. Hilcorp has said that it cannot guarantee natural gas supplies from Cook Inlet beyond its current contracts (MEA’s contract with Hilcorp ends in 2028). What strategies should MEA use to address potential future shortfalls in Cook Inlet natural gas?

Renewables are certainly a part of the solution. If you are asking me personally “would Iadvocate investing in renewables, I say yes. Go for it. Figure out what works and how to make it work better. However, as I understand the legalities of the coop, our abilities to invest are limited. At present I think we are looking at some options for funding from outside the coop structure like grants and federal aid.

Short term we are stuck with natural gas. There is no way that we could come close to building out enough renewable capacity to replace the natural gas before 2027. How this plays out as we approach 2027 remains to be seen. There are probably some potential options that might stretch this out a few more years but they come with their own risks. Longer term we need to find alternatives that may well involve checking the “all of the above” box. Which may well include hydro projects, wind, buying electricity from other utilities.

Whatever direction we need to go will require a reasoned, disciplined, and consistent approach. It is going to take input form a number of sectors and a lot of thinking and exploring.

6. In recent years many have argued that there needs to be greater collaboration among the Railbelt utilities, leading to the creation of the Railbelt Reliability Council (RRC) in 2022. Do utility Board Directors have a role in fostering greater collaboration and integration among Railbelt utilities, or should they defer to staff on these questions? What can board members do to facilitate greater cooperation?

The respective board of directors do have a role in fostering cooperation. The boards need to decide what is important to them; in this case cooperation and collaboration between the utilities. They need to convey to management and staff that this cooperation and development of a dialogue between Railbelt Utilities is a priority.

Although ultimately the respective staff will need to do the heavy lifting, the boards of directors need to be clear as to their expectations and hold the staff accountable.

7. The Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) proposal introduced last year by Governor Dunleavy was recently reintroduced in the Alaska Legislature (HB 121 and SB 101). This bill would require utilities to reach 80% renewable power generation by 2040 with intermediate targets along the way. Last year the Railbelt utilities supported amendments that pushed back the milestones and changed the RPS into Clean Energy Standards (CES) that included nuclear power and gas generation technologies (waste heat recovery) that the utilities already have in place. Do you support either the RPS or CES? If so, which do you believe would better serve Alaskans? What role should the Board have in advocacy for either?

Politicians are going to do what politicians do best. The RPS sounds good and makes good press but are less reality based than the CES. The CES offers more flexibility and is more performance based.

8. How do you think MEA can best take advantage of the many federal infrastructure incentives and grants created under programs such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)?

This seems to be the default strategy: go, hat-in-hand, to the federal government and beg. Before seeking funding, a specific need must be identified, with a well defined scope, and a realistic budget attached. The board, management, and members need to understand the funding source, limitation, terms and conditions -i.e. “the fine print”. It’s too easy to be swayed into making bad decisions because of all those zeros and the “but its free money trap”. Money is a hell of a drug, to paraphrase Richard Pryor.