The candidates for one South Anchorage district both agree that Alaska needs more energy. How to get there and how the industry should be taxed divide the two as they vie for a seat in the state House of Representatives.
Rep. Ky Holland, a one-term independent, is seeking to retain his seat in the face of a challenge by Republican John Boyle, former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, in the Nov. 3 general election.
The race to represent the district spanning South Anchorage, the Lower Hillside, Girdwood and Whittier is taking place in one of the state’s wealthiest areas. It also has consistently higher voter turnout than the rest of the state, drawing top numbers in the August primary with nearly 44% of registered voters casting a ballot — 16 points higher than the state average.
In a head-to-head contest in the primary, Holland led with 59.9% of the vote to Boyle’s 40.1%. Both candidates have consistently attracted some of the highest amounts of political fundraising in Alaska’s legislative races this year, with Holland’s overall war chest topping $100,000.
During the campaign, Holland and Boyle have pitched competing visions to voters on tax revenue, how to provide stable funding for public schools and how to address the state’s looming energy crisis as natural gas production declines in Cook Inlet.
The candidates are also split on data centers, with Holland arguing large-scale data centers are an unrealistic industry for Alaska and Boyle, who works for a company proposing a $500 million data center on the North Slope, saying he sees potential for their development in the Arctic.
After his election in 2024, Holland joined the House’s bipartisan majority caucus, with his election proving crucial in forming the 21-member coalition that has narrowly controlled the chamber for the past two legislative sessions.
Boyle declined to say whether he would join a bipartisan coalition or seek to caucus only with other Republicans, but he noted that he was not supportive of the current House majority coalition.
Energy
Cook Inlet provides much of the natural gas used to generate electricity and heat homes in Southcentral Alaska. Both candidates agree that the region’s declining gas supply needs to be addressed.
Gas industry leaders say that Southcentral, facing supply shortages in Cook Inlet, may need liquefied natural gas imports or access to North Slope gas by winter 2029 to meet demands for the region.
Holland, who co-chairs the House Energy Committee, says the state’s approach to energy development is too fragmented. He said he would support creating a state office or department dedicated to energy to help coordinate policy and permitting to increase production. Holland also supports hydropower projects proposed by utilities, geothermal energy and other efforts to diversify Alaska’s energy supply.
The proposed Alaska LNG project, which would carry North Slope natural gas to Southcentral, has been envisioned for decades. A multibillion-dollar tax cut intended to facilitate the project was a central focus of the last legislative session, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy and legislative majority coalitions reached an impasse over the proposal.
Holland said the prospect and promise of a pipeline has made Cook Inlet producers less willing to invest in developing local gas fields.
He said that he supports continuing to pursue a pipeline but that other energy projects in Cook Inlet need to move forward separately from those plans, which could take “years or decades, or maybe forever.”
“This is the approach I want to bring to more of what we do in Alaska: I just want us to talk about practical projects that build on our capability, build on our assets and our people, and move us ahead. I am tired of us going after these massive megaprojects and wasting literally billions of dollars pursuing dreams,” Holland said.
Boyle, the chief strategy officer at STAK Energy, an Anchorage-based company specializing in Arctic energy infrastructure, agrees that the state should support renewable energy development, and he touted his experience pushing for a geothermal exploration program as DNR commissioner. But, he said the state should place its focus on encouraging oil and gas companies to invest in new production.
Boyle pointed to the Cook Inlet Recovery Act, a package of legislation passed decades ago when the region faced concerns about declining oil and gas production. The law changed royalty and production tax structures to ease taxes on oil and gas companies and introduced cashable tax credits for exploration and production. Boyle said those measures helped spur development, but some were later rolled back as the state needed more revenue.
Now, he argues, the state should consider a similar range of incentives. He also said the state should expand the Department of Natural Resources’ authority to encourage resource development, including potentially allowing state land to be offered at below-market rates in some cases for oil and gas drilling.
Boyle said lawmakers, like Holland, are instead pursuing policies that could discourage investment.
He pointed to his opponent’s support for a tax that would expand the state’s corporate income tax to apply to oil and gas companies that currently don’t pay the tax, such as Hilcorp, a major producer on the North Slope and in Cook Inlet.
Boyle said he sees the tax as representing “the opposite policy approach than what you should take if you’re trying to get more energy out of Cook Inlet.”
Boyle opposes expanding oil and gas taxes to include S corporations, a change that would affect major producers such as Hilcorp. He also opposes an income tax, which Holland supports.
“I feel like the current tack taken by some of our legislative leadership has been to pursue policies like taxes and other things that would disincentivize more investment and more production of energy,” Boyle said.
Both candidates say Alaska needs to address the gap between its current gas supply and the potential completion of a gas pipeline. Even if the proposed pipeline moves forward, it would take years to build and begin delivering gas.
“Our concern is that intervening window between today and when we could potentially see shipments of gas down from the North Slope, and that’s why we need every molecule we can get out of the Cook Inlet,” Boyle said.
Data centers
The candidates also have differing ideas about data center development.
The industry has become a topic of debate in communities across the state. Supporters see an opportunity to attract investment and expand the state’s economy while critics worry about the strain large facilities could put on the environment and on existing power grids.
Holland, who previously worked on building data centers in the Lower 48, is skeptical that Alaska can attract massive, hyperscale facilities. He points to the state’s limited data bandwidth, distance from major markets and infrastructure challenges as obstacles to projects such as the proposed STAK Energy development on the North Slope.
Rather than chasing enormous facilities — which he called “a fantasy idea” in Alaska — Holland said he thinks the state should focus on smaller data centers built for specific purposes, such as supporting research on climate adaptation or processing data related to Cook Inlet. He envisions a number of facilities in the 50- to 100-megawatt range, far smaller than STAK’s proposed 3-gigawatt project.
“I’m excited about what we can be doing with purpose-built, strategic, modest-sized, more traditional data centers. I think worrying about these hyperscale things is distracting us from moving ahead with practical projects that would make sense,” Holland said.
Both candidates see the potential for data centers to attract investment in energy infrastructure. They argue that large industrial customers could create demand for additional power generation, making new energy projects more economically viable and helping spread costs a