Aboriginal communities are becoming increasingly to play a role in planning for their energy needs, including managing their energy demand and developing local energy supplies. The drivers for their involvement in energy issues include interests or concerns regarding

• energy price volatility
• reliability of energy supplies
• local job creation
• harvesting a renewable local resource
• responding and adapting to climate change
• reducing the environmental impacts of energy use.

The Pembina Institute supports Aboriginal communities in their pursuit of lower energy costs, job creation, protection of the environment and local economic development through clean energy projects.

During the past decade, the Pembina Institute has worked with over 60 Aboriginal communities seeking ways to reduce their costs and emissions, and to increase local control and sustainability of their energy resources.

Our Services

The Pembina Institute has been actively working with Aboriginal communities across Canada to help them explore and pursue local alternative energy options.

Our work has included community energy planning — which has involved community consultations and workshops, energy baseline studies, pre-feasibility studies, resource monitoring and evaluation — technical training, and collaboration with federal, provincial and territorial governments to design programs directed at assisting Aboriginal communities pursue alternative energy projects.

Community Energy Planning

The Pembina Institute works with communities to help them identify and plan for their energy futures. Projects can include helping communities determine their own energy goals and objectives, completing detailed energy baseline studies that assess local energy current and future needs, identifying energy efficiency opportunities to improve cost savings and helping communities analyze options for renewable energy projects. These projects may be large-scale initiatives ranging from biodiesel production to utility-scale wind farms, or community-scale projects such as the solar air heating system recently installed by the Beaver Lake Cree Nation in their new recreational complex.

The Pembina Institute also strives to address barriers to implementing renewable energy projects by working on innovative solutions with a variety of stakeholders. For example, in 2005 we held an energy workshop in British Columbia with First Nations and associated organizations to identify barriers to past energy projects. We then initiated a discussion within the group to find ways to overcome these barriers.

Technical Training and Support

The Pembina Institute provides technical training and support and equips Aborginal communities interested in developing renewable energy resources on their land with the tools necessary to do so. This includes designing programs, such as the wind energy technical training course that the Pembina Institute developed and delivered for First Nations in Saskatchewan in 2006, co-authoring a manual on wind power development for First Nations in Ontario, and training community members in renewable energy software such as RETScreen.

The Pembina Institute has also assisted communities in writing proposals, conducted technical reviews, and facilitated discussions with local governments to move sustainable energy projects forward.

Resource Monitoring

Quantifying the quality of a local renewable resource is essential to developing projects such as wind, small hydro, biomass or solar.

The Pembina Institute has worked with Aboriginal communities to complete technical analyses using existing resource data as well as local traditional knowledge to identify candidate sites for resource development. We have also helped to install long-term monitoring equipment on these sites to assist in project feasibility studies.

Our Approach

Having completed energy planning projects with the Pembina Institute, many Aboriginal communities have gone on to pursue energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in their communities including

• solar air heating systems in Alberta and Manitoba
• mini-hydro systems in Ontario and British Columbia
• energy efficiency and fuel switching projects in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta
• large-scale wind energy in Quebec
• combined heat and power projects in Alberta.

We achieve this by working directly with communities to better understand their energy situation and goals, identify sustainable energy opportunities and work to build the local capacity needed to undertake successful projects. We also work with governments to develop policies that will foster sustainable development for Aboriginal communities.

For more information about our services, contact

Tim Weis, P.Eng.

• Senior Technical and Policy Advisor
• Email: timw(at)pembina.org
  Phone: 780-485-9610 Ext. 103