GNWT sets tentative Taltson expansion date with new funding

The NWT government has been given up to $25 million in new federal funding toward its planned expansion of the Taltson hydro system.

The money, from Ottawa’s Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund, was announced by NWT Liberal MP Michael McLeod in Yellowknife on Wednesday.

The territory hopes it can complete the work by 2033, though that date is not final as many variables remain.

Taltson is a large hydro plant in the South Slave. Expanding its capacity and connecting it to other parts of the territory would offer cheaper, cleaner power to more people – and to industry, too. Some exploration companies have said Taltson’s power would make the North Slave region more attractive for new mines.

However, the expansion project is expected to cost well over $1 billion, which means it almost certainly can’t go ahead without a huge federal investment.

Ottawa has repeatedly said it is close to finding the money. On Wednesday, McLeod said the latest $25 million was “another step towards making this project a reality.”

NWT infrastructure minister Caroline Wawzonek said the money brought the territory “closer to a future where energy security in the NWT is real.”

Expanding Taltson would bring 11 communities and more than 70 percent of the territory’s population into one unified grid, Wawzonek said. Right now, the territory is a patchwork of isolated microgrids.

The minister said the new money will “support the project to arrive at a shovel-ready state,” including paying for work toward its environmental assessment and “defining the commercial arrangements with our Indigenous partners.”

“That work will be fairly complicated in terms of developing an understanding of who’s doing what part, what role everyone’s going to have, what kind of inputs, outputs,” Wawzonek said.

“We also, of course, need to take this through an environmental assessment process. Those are not uncomplicated matters and this is a pretty significant project, so it’ll get us through that.”

‘Reasonable timeline’

Wednesday’s announcement took place to a backdrop of collective power anxiety in the Northwest Territories.

The NWT Power Corporation has said it needs to hike rates by 25 percent year on year to meet higher diesel and natural gas costs.

While the power corporation’s request must be accepted by a regulator before the full extent of that increase can be passed on to customers, Wawzonek and other ministers have said they realize the territory must meaningfully shift how it generates its energy.

“The GNWT is live and taking steps to change our energy future, not only with short-term responses but also with a long-term vision, and this project is a key example of that,” the minister said on Wednesday.

“We need to set ambitious goals on this one,” she said of expanding Taltson. “We can’t afford to let this opportunity go to waste.”

Asked when the GNWT expects the Taltson hydro expansion to be completed, Wawzonek said “as soon as possible” and added it would “be really nice” for the project to be ready for construction to start by the end of her government’s current four-year term, in 2027.

Senior GNWT engineer David Mahon, elaborating on a possible timeline, said: “We would like to be in operation in 2033.”

“This is a big project and the construction window is probably about five years,” he said, which would mean construction starting in 2028 at the latest to hit the 2033 target.

Allowing for time to complete regulatory work, Mahon said that felt like “a fairly conservative, fairly reasonable timeline” for the expansion project.

Pressed on when Ottawa would commit the hundreds of millions of dollars needed in the next decade under that timeline, McLeod said there was “good support from the federal government” for the project, which was being “looked at very favourably.”

The MP, who will step down at the next election after representing the NWT since 2015, said he believed projects like the Taltson expansion would not only create construction work but eventually create jobs “in the mines they will enable.”