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PBS NewsHour segments often end with little fact-blurbs as text overlays, and the January 22, 2023 How an Alaska village’s switch to renewable energy helps local Native economies ends with the printed factoid:

Alaska's per capita energy consumption is the fourth highest in the U.S. due to its small population, harsh winters, and energy-intensive industries:

SOURCE: US Energy Information Administration

Why would the smallness of Alaska's population be a factor in its per-capita energy consumption ranking?

screenshot from PBS NewsHour's January 22, 2023 "How an Alaska village’s switch to renewable energy helps local Native economies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8vdpcpLlDg

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Energy consumption for transport

The problem actually is not the small population, but the population density.

This is an increasingly specialised society. Small settlements that contain the entire life with all the possible activities do not exist any longer. For example finding a specialist for every possible medical condition in a small place is impossible, people will have often to travel long distances just to visit a doctor. But it is not limited to that, work, businesses and government services will often require to travel long distances.

Energy consumption by transport and population density are strictly correlated it is well known. This is just the first result by a search with the keywords correlation transport energy population density.

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  • Interesting! transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/… "Two main factors explain why transport-related energy consumption increases exponentially as urban density decreases: 1) There is a shift from collective and non-motorized forms of transportation toward automobile use, implying a fast increase in energy use.2) The average commuting distance increases, implying a non-linear growth of energy consumption with return trips."
    – uhoh
    Commented Jan 25, 2023 at 21:37
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Considering the quote you posted in your question - "due to its small population, harsh winters, and energy-intensive industries".

In addition to harsh winters I'd add lengthy cold periods and the need to keep warm. This would necessitate the need to use energy for prolonged periods not just to keep warm but to survive. I can envisage heating not being turned off during the cold session, which would include parts of autumn and spring.

I'm no expert on Alaska and I don't know what industries the State has, but if it does have energy intensive industries that use a lot of energy for a prolonged period energy usage can quickly accumulate. I'm assuming the military with its bases, the oil and gas sector and the mining industry would factor into this. If one then simply divides the total energy consumed within the State by a small population number, a large number ensues, the units of which would be watts/person. Hence a large per-capita energy usage.

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  • I think I see, so the large size of the energy-intensive industry (linked to the size of the customer base) divided by the small size of the population drives (in part) the large per-capita usage.
    – uhoh
    Commented Jan 25, 2023 at 10:27
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    @uhoh exactly. Alaska has some big energy users and very few people. A lot of what the energy uses is sent out of Alaska - think about the heated oil pipelines, for example. Those people aren't using much of the energy the state consumes, but the "per capita energy use" doesn't take that into account.
    – Móż
    Commented Jan 27, 2023 at 0:49
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A better way to look at this, is to judge the reliability of the source.

"Nassim Nicholas Taleb" has written about this. Specifically, that these factoids are nonsense: e.g a news outlet will announce "the market went up because of A", then a few minutes later "the market went down because of A". The author will have no good reason for knowing (no research), but feels compelled to give a reason.

References

You can read more in the book “The Black swan” — (Nassim Nicholas Taleb).

Excerpt (probably not the best)

“You need a story to displace a story. Metaphors and stories are far more potent (alas) than ideas; they are also easier to remember and more fun to read. If I have to go after what I call the narrative disciplines, my best tool is a narrative. Ideas come and go, stories stay.” ― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

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  • links to supporting sources or specific citations would help.
    – uhoh
    Commented Feb 1, 2023 at 10:30

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