The Yellowknives Dene First Nation’s economic development wing is assessing whether it can build a renewable energy project to help power the Yellowknife area and future mines.
Representatives of Det’on Cho presented the basics of their idea at the Arctic360 conference in Toronto on Wednesday.
The Yellowknife area is mostly powered by hydro, though recent years of low water have meant increased reliance on diesel generators at the city’s Jackfish power plant.
Det’on Cho is examining whether it could build the likes of wind, solar or a small-scale nuclear reactor that would offer more power to industry as well as a new source of supply for Ndılǫ, Dettah and Yellowknife.
“We’re still in the very early stages of trying to get money to do the feasibility,” said Mark Lewis, Det’on Cho’s president and chief executive officer.
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“The grander ultimate goal would be the Yellowknife area in general, whether it’s tying back into the grid or using [the project] for storage or data centres, fibre-optic resources and things like that. The potential for it seems to be continuing to grow.”
The NWT government is already trying to convince the federal government to find hundreds of millions of dollars to connect its Taltson hydro facility, in the South Slave, to Yellowknife and the North Slave.
While the territory has tentatively set a target of 2033 to complete that project, there remain uncertainties about whether the Taltson expansion will get the cash it needs.
Det’on Cho sees a gap in the market where an organization of its size could acquire a smaller slice of federal funding to study an energy project’s feasibility, then possibly seek larger private investment for the work itself.
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The company said entering the renewables sector would be a way of diversifying the First Nation’s income streams – which currently centre on a range of support services offered to the mining industry – while offering a power option to companies trying to open critical minerals mines east of Yellowknife.
“We’re really looking to remove barriers to entry related to renewable energy demand for the critical minerals sector,” Det’on Cho Environmental managing director Claire Tincombe told conference delegates. “There are a number of barriers to entry for working in the Northwest Territories, and energy is one of them.”
Det’on Cho is working with Vancouver-based consultants Northern Energy Capital to come up with options.
Ultimately, the company hopes it can produce a project that “could be exported and is scalable to other areas of the territory,” Lewis said. Det’on Cho gave the example of Haeckel Hill, a wind turbine project recently established in the Yukon.
“There’s a gap not only in energy, but also in the expertise of energy in the North,” said Tincombe.
“We can help to start a snowball effect in terms of other smaller-scale projects. We have lots of ideas and passion around it, but we can’t commit to what this looks like yet. We’re figuring that out.”
Det’on Cho presented its idea during a session that also featured a proposal to build a permanent bridge to Nahanni Butte.
The small Dehcho community is cut off from NWT Highway 7 by the Liard River. Residents use a winter road or a ferry to get across, but cannot do so for weeks at a time during freeze-up and break-up.
Nahanni Butte councillor Marlene Matou said a bridge could “transform the community’s economy.” The bridge project is also at an early stage.
