Fairbanks Museum details decade of energy upgrades, opens Tang Science Annex

Adam Kane, executive director of the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium, told the House Energy & Digital Infrastructure Committee on Wednesday that the museum has spent the last decade pairing energy-efficiency work with climate-resilience projects and new construction.

The museum built a new Tang Science Annex and completed multiple energy upgrades because it could secure a patchwork of grants and private donations, Kane said. "We don't really have any money," he said, explaining the institution relied on outside funding to replace lighting with LEDs, add solar arrays, install heat pumps and build the new annex.

Kane summarized the museum's principal steps: in 2015 staff replaced roughly 400 fluorescent and incandescent fixtures with LEDs after a private donation and rebates from Efficiency Vermont; the museum installed a 10-kilowatt, net-metered solar array in its parking lot with a Green Mountain Power grant; it later bought community solar through Green Mountain Community Solar funded in part by a USDA Community Facilities Grant; and it helped fund a 60-kilowatt offsite array developed through a Northern Borders Regional Commission grant and private foundations.

The work culminated in the Tang Science Annex, which Kane described as roughly an $8,000,000 addition built with mass-timber cross-laminated eastern hemlock and heated and cooled by a ground-source geothermal system served by two 800-foot wells. Kane said the annex is the state's first mass-timber building using eastern hemlock CLT and that the project paired federal (Economic Development Administration) funds, Northern Borders Regional Commission dollars, state capital funds and private philanthropy.

The annex also included an array of resilience measures: a large solar parking canopy, level 2 EV chargers intended to keep visitors downtown for longer visits, buried power lines in the museum's backyard to improve electrical resiliency and to clear a Green Mountain Power right-of-way so the museum could use the yard for an addition, and building-envelope work on the historic museum to reduce flood risk. Kane said the museum used a National Park Service Save America's Treasures grant to install a comprehensive perimeter drainage and foundation-repair system on the historic building; that work helped the museum withstand an overnight storm that dropped eight inches of rain and would previously have flooded the basement.

Kane told the committee that the combined investments have reduced the museum's electricity cost trajectory and helped the institution grow its operations: he estimated cumulative direct electric-cost savings of at least about $170,000 and said the museum's net assets rose from roughly $3'$4 million a decade ago to about $15 million after the recent capital work and higher admissions.

Kane described remaining challenges: capital constraints requiring constant fundraising, permitting hurdles for energy projects (including work before the Public Utility Commission), and the technical difficulty of adding climate control to the historic, mostly brick and stone museum building. He also noted that the museum expected to recoup about 30% of some project costs through incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act but said that tax-credit timing remained uncertain and the museum was racing to claim credits where eligible.

Kane closed by inviting committee members to visit the site to see the new spaces and the conservation work.