  **Title**: Energy in the North - Dominique Pride
**Date**: March 12, 2025
**Participants**: Amanda Byrd, Dominique Pride

00;00;00;12 - 00;00;17;00 [Dominique Pride] I lived in a really leaky cabin and during a cold snap and as the temperature would decline outside, the temperature inside the cabin would just keep dropping and dropping and dropping as the cold snap dragged on. 

00;00;17;00 - 00;00;19;16 [Amanda Byrd] This week on Energy in the North, we speak with Dominique Pride. She's a research associate professor of economics at the 乐虎直播 Center for Energy and Power. Dominique and a team of economists at ACEP recently completed a report on the energy cost burden of residents in the Fairbanks North Star Borough. The report found that the energy consumption and expenditures in 乐虎直播 are the highest in the nation. The Fairbanks North Star Borough residents are spending about 10% of their household income on energy use. The national average is about 3.1%. The energy cost burden measures the percentage of household income spent on energy use, such as space heating and the electricity to run our appliances. I began by asking Dominique why the Fairbanks North Star Borough was interested in calculating the energy cost burden for their residents.

00;00;53;20 - 00;01;07;17 [Dominique Pride] The Borough's interested in this because high energy costs have a big strain on our households here. So energy cost burden is related to three factors - a household income, the energy efficiency of the building, their home and energy prices. And, so in your house, the biggest energy consumption factor is space heating in the Fairbanks North Star Borough. Then also the electricity that's used to run your appliances, such as your refrigerator and your blender and things like that.

00;01;31;24 - 00;01;41;00 [Amanda Byrd] We have a really big fluctuation in temperature in the Fairbanks area, especially in the wintertime. The must really create that increased burden.

00;01;41;00 - 00;01;58;13 [Dominique Pride] Let's say you want to keep your house at 65, 70 degrees Fahrenheit, as the temperature outside declines, you have to use more energy to keep the inside of your house at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And so our climate is a huge factor. Things in Fairbanks that contribute to our high energy prices, though, we have a real lack of infrastructure. We also have a small population. So that means our energy markets are smaller. And then we also have higher cost energy sources here in Fairbanks. So in south Central, they have access to natural gas and we do have some access to it, but it's more limited. So most people here are heating their households with heating oil, which is a pretty expensive fuel to heat with because it's expensive. A lot of people supplement that with wood, but that comes with its own challenges. So energy efficiency is a huge piece of the puzzle. When I was in grad school, I lived in a really leaky cabin and during a cold snap, as the temperature would decline outside, the temperature inside the cabin would just keep dropping and dropping and dropping as the cold snap dragged on. And that's because the heat would escape through the walls, roof floors, doors and window panes faster than my little Toyo could replace it. And so if I was able to improve the energy efficiency of that cabin, it would have made it much less leaky and then therefore cheaper to heat because it would have required a lot less energy and it would have been a lot more comfortable to live in it, too.

00;03;10;16 - 00;03;15;02 [Amanda Byrd] Plugging the holes, making your exterior shell of your house less leaky.

00;03;16;01 - 00;03;36;24 [Dominique Pride] Yeah, so it's called the thermal envelope and that is comprised of your foundation floors, the walls, the windows, the roof and the doors. Then you can reduce the amount of energy it takes to keep your home warm. But you have to be careful, because if you make it too airtight, then you'll affect the air quality within the home. And that's unhealthy. If it's too tight, you can end up with moisture issues and that's really bad for the occupants of the home. It can cause respiratory problems.

00;03;44;24 - 00;03;57;18 [Amanda Byrd] Dominique Pride is the research associate professor of economics at the 乐虎直播 Center for Energy and Power. And I'm Amanda Byrd, chief storyteller for ACEP. Find this story and more at uaf.edu/acep.