Volcanoes along the Aleutian chain, hot springs in the interior and the Southeast. these are Alaska's three main geothermal resources. Lisa Murkowski has encouraged Alaskans to develop them. Gwen Holdmann, Director of the Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP) says the main thing stopping development is the distance.
“At the end of the day, if you're looking at economic development of these resources, you need to have some sort of a load within a reasonable distance to make it worth developing or some way to attract industry to that location,” Holdmann says.
The ACEP has looked at ways to get around the distances between heat sources and population centers, and one solution they've found is agriculture.
“That's one of the things that we've worked with Pilgrim Hot Springs out in Western Alaska on is having local food production, and then exporting that food to other parts of the region," Holdmann says.