Developing cold environments: opportunities and challenges

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In winter, temperatures can fall below -30 °C, which is dangerous for workers and stops materials such as concrete from setting properly.

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Tourists visiting places such as Alaska spend money on accommodation, wildlife tours and guides, creating jobs for local people. This money is then spent in local shops and businesses, helping the wider economy grow.

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Many cold environments have large reserves of fossil fuels. Alaska's North Slope contains Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field in North America. Extracting and transporting the oil has created thousands of jobs in drilling, pipeline maintenance and related services. The taxes and royalties paid by oil companies have funded schools, roads and health services, and since 1976 the Alaska Permanent Fund has invested oil money and paid residents an annual dividend. The roads and airports built for the oil industry also help other industries, such as tourism. Cold environments also have renewable energy resources: rivers fed by snow and glacier meltwater can be used for hydroelectric power, and strong winds can drive wind turbines, providing local electricity so remote communities do not have to rely on expensive imported diesel.

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Alaska is a cold environment where the opportunities for development have been very large, but so have the challenges.

The greatest opportunity has been oil. Prudhoe Bay, discovered in 1968, is the largest oil field in North America, and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, completed in 1977, carries the oil about 1300 km to the ice-free port of Valdez. Oil has created thousands of jobs and for decades provided a large share of the state's income, paying for services and the Permanent Fund dividend that every resident receives. Alaska also has valuable fishing grounds, providing more than half of the USA's commercial seafood, and a growing tourist industry, with around 2 million visitors a year attracted by wilderness areas such as Denali National Park, glaciers and wildlife. Minerals such as gold and zinc are also mined.

However, the challenges are severe. Temperatures on the North Slope fall below -30 °C in winter, putting workers at risk and making machinery fail. The ground is permafrost, so buildings and pipelines must be raised to stop them thawing it. The area is highly inaccessible: the sea at Prudhoe Bay is frozen for much of the year, the only road to the oil field is the largely gravel Dalton Highway, and the state capital, Juneau, has no road link to the rest of North America. All of this makes development extremely expensive. There are also environmental risks, as shown by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.

Many of these challenges have been overcome by technology. About half the pipeline is raised on supports with heat pipes to keep the permafrost frozen, and it is built in a zigzag to cope with temperature changes and earthquakes. Buildings stand on piles, and ice roads are used in winter. These solutions work, but they add enormously to costs, so development only goes ahead where the rewards are large.

Overall, I think the opportunities have outweighed the challenges in Alaska, because the wealth from oil has transformed the state and paid for the technology needed to overcome the cold, permafrost and remoteness. However, the balance is changing: oil production has fallen by about 75% since 1988, so Alaska's future depends on more sustainable opportunities such as fishing and tourism, which bring smaller but longer-lasting benefits.