Arctic nations tour microgrids, exchange green energy knowledge

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By Kayla Desroches, KDLG-Dillingham

A program is leading representatives of Arctic nations to Alaska, Canada, Iceland and Greenland to look at the microgrids in remote communities.

The Arctic Remote Energy Network Academy, or ARENA, is in the middle of its pilot year and gives participants a look at innovative remote energy networks. They hope to gather information and contacts that could benefit their communities.

This week, some academy participants are in Finland to present at the Arctic Energy Summit, which begins today and continues until Wednesday.

In March, participants stopped by Yellowknife, Canada, for a week. In June, they visited Kotzebue, Fairbanks and Nome.

'Stark, Raw and Wild:' Dennos exhibition takes viewers 'Into the Arctic'

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BY MARTA HEPLER DRAHOS

TRAVERSE CITY — Cory Trepanier was a commercial artist when he began painting the northern shoreline of Lake Superior.

The project kicked off his fine art career and gave him the “bug” to paint the wilderness — particularly the vast and rugged Canadian Arctic Circle, one of the planet’s last great landscapes virtually untouched by man.

“It’s stark but it’s raw, it’s wild,” said Trepanier, a Canadian artist, explorer and filmmaker who lives north of Toronto, Ontario. “I wanted to feel the earth as it is before we come around and mess it up.”

Trepanier made four expeditions to remote corners of the Arctic from 2006 to 2015, hauling backpacks loaded with camping, painting and film gear weighing up to 120 pounds. Funded at first by 15 clients who paid in advance for paintings, he immersed himself in the landscape — most of it never painted before.

“Initially I set up three trips to the western, eastern and high Arctic,” he said. “My goal was to do 30 paintings and one film, until I got up there and realized the vastness of it.”

China sent a ship to the Arctic for science. Then state media announced a new trade route.

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By Adam Taylor

China's state news agency Xinhua reported last week that a Chinese ship had conducted a successful test of a trading route along the long-fabled Arctic Northwest Passage.

This was a major milestone, according to the agency, which proclaimed that “a new channel” between North America and Northeast Asia had been opened. The trip, which had seen a ship called the Xue Long (or “Snow Dragon”) travel for 2,293 nautical miles through the Canadian Arctic, had lasted for eight days and would provide “a wealth of navigation experience” for future Chinese ships, Xinhua reported.

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