HEA candidate questions—Louie Flora
Voting in the Homer Electric Association’s 2024 board election began on March 29 and runs through the HEA Annual Meeting on May 2. Members will elect one director for each of HEA’s three districts. Members can vote in three ways:
--By mail—paper ballots were mailed to members in late March and must be received by May 1.
--Online—members can vote through the HEA election portal through 5 p.m. on May 1.
--In person—members can vote at the HEA Annual Meeting (May 2 at Homer High School, registration from 4:30-6:30 p.m.)
For more information, see the HEA Election page.
Here are the responses to the AETP questionnaire for Louis “Louie” Flora, a candidate in HEA’s District Three (which includes Homer, Anchor Point, Ninilchik, and parts of Kasilof). Flora is currently completing his first term on the HEA Board. Flora is a commercial fisherman and also works as a staff member in the Alaska Legislature. His candidate page on the HEA website can be found here.
Louie Flora, from his HEA candidate profile
1. Why do you want to serve on the HEA Board?
Our electric rates are extremely high. I want to serve on the board to work with staff and find ways to help members conserve on their electric and home heating bills. I believe we can incentivize heat pumps, and solar panels for more homes and businesses in the service area. Heat pumps can help decrease home heating costs especially for those on diesel and propane. Solar panels help offset the cost of heat pump electricity use. Electric utilities can and should help members conserve energy.
2. What do you think are the biggest challenges facing HEA over the next 5-10 years? What can be done to prepare to meet them?
Lack of an energy transition plan is a huge problem. We have experienced common gas field decline curve for some time now in Cook Inlet. The state has allocated billions of dollars to subsidize development of Cook Inlet gas, and storage of Cook Inlet gas over the past twenty years. Had the legislature at the time put teeth into the Palin-era renewable energy goals (50% percent renewable by 2025) we would be in a much better position today.
Energy transition planning is a function of the state government and the utilities working together with stakeholders including Independent Power Producers, Consumer rights groups, the University of Alaska, natural gas producers, and utility experts. I commend the work that has gone into the creation of the Railbelt Reliability Council. This organization will be charged with energy planning and will ensure railbelt system reliability.
At HEA in specific, in the near term we need to invest in greater battery storage capacity as well as new, large-scale wind and solar projects. We need to help our customers with conservation programs, as there is a high probability that our rates will be going up due to the importation of Liquefied Natural Gas.
3. Although HEA is a member-owned cooperative, levels of member engagement and involvement are low—only 15.5% of members voted in the last election and very few members attend board meetings. What can the board do to encourage greater member engagement and involvement in helping to guide the cooperative’s policies? For example, would you support moving board meetings to a time when more members could attend? Is there anything you would do as an individual board member to facilitate member engagement?
Community meetings are generally popular. I support increasing the frequency of community meetings. I would be willing to try evening Board meetings. There will be incremental costs of overnight hotel stays for members who are driving to meetings, should the meetings go long. I also think our Teams platform is not the best, and would like to explore other options for community participation. Community and member engagement is also about finding ways that the members can give back to the community. I am interested in exploring a program like the Goodcents program at Golden Valley Electric Association where members can voluntarily choose to round up their bill to the nearest dollar with the extra contribution going to a suite of community programs like food pantries, scholarships etc.
4. One practice that encourages member disengagement is the extensive use of executive session in board meetings. In 2023 HEA’s board spent a relatively limited amount of its meetings in executive session (just under 20 percent of meeting time, less than any other Railbelt cooperative). Recognizing that the use of executive session is necessary on occasion, as a member of the board would you commit to working to keep the HEA’s board use of executive session to a minimum?
Yes. Transparency is critical. There are financial and legal items that must be addressed in executive session. I believe that our staff have worked to decrease executive sessions over the past year, and that is a good thing.
5. In recent years there have been attempts to foster greater collaboration among the Railbelt utilities. Do cooperative boards have a role in facilitating greater cooperation, engaging directly with other boards, or should they defer to staff around collaborative efforts?
Boards do not communicate with one another to a great deal though there are informal networks of board members who are aligned on issues. Alaska being a small population state there is often intersectional interests and relationships between board members of different service areas. The Alaska Power Association is a forum for board communication at its annual and legislative meetings. Board members have the opportunity to meet and network through APA events. The Renewable Energy Alaska Project is a non-profit organization where board members can join and have serious discussions and debate on state policy as relates to electric cooperatives. I opposed HEA withdrawing support from The Renewable Energy Alaska Project, one of the most effective energy policy organizations in the history of Alaska.
I believe that there are a lot of commonalities between boards, and a lot of differences, but we are all under the same pressure to provide reliable and less expensive energy, and we should be in greater communication especially around statewide policy issues.
6. The increased collaboration among Railbelt cooperatives has included participation in several Railbelt-wide organizations. These have operated with varying levels of transparency. Some, like the Railbelt Reliability Council (the Electric Reliability Organization, or ERO, whose creation was mandated by the Legislature) have made an effort to be as transparent as possible. Others, such as the Utility Working Group looking at future gas supplies or the Bradley Project Management Committee (in its discussions of transmission planning and applications for federal grants), have conducted their work largely behind closed doors without consultation of other stakeholders, announcing their decisions to the public only after they have been made.
Allowing that some aspects of these discussions need to be confidential, should boards be working to help make as much information as possible about them public before the final decisions are made? Or should information about these deliberations remain restricted?
Our member-owned utilities should make every effort to provide transparency. The Bradley Project Management Committee (BPMC) could be modified to provide more public access. I do not believe that this model currently provides enough transparency. Boards have largely deferred to staff to execute BPMC decisions. As the railbelt system continues to modernize and more transmission and renewable energy projects are incorporated into the grid system, the public needs to be at the table. That is one of the important aspects of the Energy Reliability Organization– it will provide for a more robust public process around generation and transmission planning.
7. Predictions are that Cook Inlet gas production will no longer be fully able to meet the needs of the Railbelt utilities by 2027. Given that HEA currently relies on Cook Inlet natural gas for over 80 percent of its power generation (and only has a contract ensuring a gas supply until 2025), what should it be doing to plan for its generation needs over the next 10 years? Is this an area where the cooperatives should be collaborating on solutions? Should the state be playing a role?
The likelihood that we will be importing Liquefied Natural Gas into the foreseeable future grows every day that we do not act to decrease our reliance on gas. This problem is much larger than a single utility can solve, so the state absolutely has a role. The state has a long history of participating in energy policy and funding on the railbelt and it is appropriate that this continues. The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation have the ability currently to finance energy efficiency programs. The successful Renewable Energy Fund at the Alaska Energy Authority can be used to assist in the planning and development of new renewable energy projects. There are long lead times with everything from new hydroelectric projects to new transmission lines and even the time horizon for importing LNG is over five years away. We need to prioritize energy efficiency in the near term, add additional battery storage, add new wind and solar projects. A recently published analysis of railbelt energy concluded that we can get to 76% renewable energy on the railbelt by 2040 and save consumers over $100 million annually.
8. Beyond the issues already discussed in this questionnaire, are there any particular policies or issues you think the board needs to address?
The cost increases associated with natural gas generation will have a negative ripple effect on the economy. Policies like solar net metering can help lower overhead cost for businesses and save homeowners thousands of dollars. We should make net metering more popular by offering a credit for excess generation at the retail rate, allowing for annual “banking” of credits and allowing for larger solar installations.
