In mid-October, the air in Meaford, Ont., was in that magical in-between period — a slightly warm, apple-and-dew-tinged fall breeze pushing against a blue-grey sky on the cusp of winter. Yet many who live and farm on the escarpment that overlooks the 158-year-old town kept saying that “something stinks.” 

They don’t mean that literally. For many of the 11,000 people that live there, Meaford is perfect: a tiny, untouched, unindustrialized town on the southern coast of Georgian Bay. That water is their jewel, a deep, colossal pool that would be the fourth largest lake in Canada if it wasn’t just a bay that links to an actual Great Lake: Huron. 

To the east of Meaford, the rugged coast of the bay disappears into the horizon, bordering some of the largest wetlands and longest freshwater beaches Ontario has to offer. There are no tall, man-made structures on the horizon. Not a transmission line, pillar or pole in sight. To the west of the town, the shoreline is flanked by a clay-and-limestone escarpment — the only landform on the bay’s shoreline distracting from the water. It’s covered in a hue of autumnal trees broken up by roadways that lead to the bay, carrying fishermen, swimmers and sailors, as well as residents with cottages worthy of the pages of a design magazine.

In Meaford, Ont., a proposal by TC Energy to store energy by pumping water up from Georgian Bay into a reservoir and back again has made some in the community nervous, though others see opportunities.

“It’s quiet here,” one resident after another tells me — the kind of idyllic calm you can only find when an entire bay is your backyard. In fact, much of Meaford is a storied, historic town waiting to be discovered. Perhaps that’s why its slogan is “Set your sights on Meaford.” But now that an outsider has, many locals are nervous they will mess with perfection.

Currently, Meaford’s tranquility is interrupted by just one thing: the sporadic, booming echoes of gunshots and explosions at the top of the escarpment, at one of two Department of National Defence training facilities established during the Second World War. Up here, trees and tanks coexist in a flat, unruly woodland. When soldiers enact a live-fire battle simulation, locals say the shots can be heard all across the bay, disrupting everything from slumber to school. 

But the booms are uncommon these days; the military presence is slight and dwindling. For the most part, National Defence’s 20,000 acres are in a quiet, limbo state with nature encroaching, burying even further an unknown amount of unexploded ammunition that has collected here over the last seven decades. 

National Defence established a training facility in Meaford during the second world war. It owns 20,000 acres on the escarpment and uses it sporadically for live-fire battle simulations and other exercises.

Since 2019, National Defence has been in talks with TC Energy to allow the company to use around three per cent of its lands to build what it calls “Ontario’s battery,” harnessing the power of Georgian Bay. Already the owner of 48.4 per cent of Ontario’s largest nuclear power facility — Bruce Power, just over an hour drive west of Meaford — TC Energy wants this to be the site of “one of Canada’s largest climate change initiatives”: a $4.5-billion energy storage project that could power one million homes for 11 hours.

The technology is called pumped storage and has been in use around the world for 116 years. Here, it would work like this: every day, the company would draw — or pump — nearly 7,000 swimming pools worth of water out of the bay. It would move that water 150 metres up into a reservoir atop the escarpment, using excess power created at Bruce Power or perhaps from wind farms nearby. During the day, the water would pour back into the bay, rushing past turbines to generate electricity that run through underwater cables to feed the province’s grid, bringing power to rapidly growing southern Ontario.

Georgian Bay has never been disrupted by this sheer magnitude of human activity. It’s a delicately balanced ecosystem with few nutrients and a highly sensitive food web. The bay has so far remained relatively safe from pollution like excess algae. But, researchers say, the smallest of disturbances could cause the largest of disruptions. And TC Energy is not small, nor is the pumped storage facility it wants to build.

Perhaps that’s why those who live and spend time here are split between anxiety and hope, the possible harms to their beloved water facing off against the potential benefits of having a big corporation come to a small town.

The waters of Georgian Bay are a focal point no matter where you are in Meaford, always visible.

Those concerned about the project worry that moving huge quantities of water into and out of the bay might impact the water’s current, its temperature, the species in and around it and the stability of the escarpment. There’s a fear that first the construction and then the operation of the project will destroy the quiet bay: a prolonged slurp when the water is pulled up and an extra long flush when it’s pushed down.

But others see opportunities, if things go well. Most members of Meaford’s municipal council are cautiously hopeful about an infusion of cash, dreaming of a renovated hockey arena and an expanded sewage facility. Saugeen Ojibway Nation also talks about possibilities of scholarships, housing and a genuine partnership with an energy company — its chiefs say TC Energy is making efforts to include them in designing the project, and time will tell if it’s “damage control” or meaningful change.

After all, the Calgary-based company is known best for building oil and natural gas pipelines — and for how the environmental risks of its pipeline projects have often been ignored by governments meant to protect people and wildlife from industry.

And right now, the Ontario government is rather desperate.

Canada’s most populated province is staring down an energy supply crunch. The provincial energy operator has said the impending shutdown of some of Ontario’s nuclear plants means that as soon as 10 years from now, daily life here could include flickering lights, intermittent power outages and spotty internet.

There’s an obvious solution: more fossil-free renewable energy, like wind and solar. But that also poses a challenge of how to capture energy from the wind when it blows and the sun when it shines to use when it’s needed most. That’s why the Ontario government has asked the energy operator to get storage solutions — like very large batteries, made of either lithium or water — running on a very tight timeline.

It may just be the perfect time for TC Energy to set up a new foothold in Ontario.

TC Energy plans to use four per cent of National Defence lands in Meaford to build an artificial lake that will connect to Georgian Bay.

“This is, I think, inherently, a positive environmental story,” John Mikkelsen, TC Energy’s director of power and energy solutions, says. He believes pumped storage makes sense for a province with a lot of water and a looming energy shortage. “This project will enable Ontario to move off fossil fuels.”

“It’s a signature project for us to demonstrate our commitment to the energy transition,” Mikkelsen says. But given that TC Energy is still heavily invested in oil, gas and pipelines, not everyone is convinced environmental protection is top of mind.

To piece together four years of debate about the company’s proposal, The Narwhal interviewed dozens of Meaford residents, local politicians, several energy experts across North America and multiple Great Lakes researchers, as well as First Nations chiefs who spoke publicly about the project for the first time. The Narwhal also reviewed 2,000 pages of National Defence documents obtained through freedom of information legislation by Meaford residents. They reveal possible environmental impacts to the military lands if the project goes ahead as proposed, potentially including the permanent loss of 10 per cent of the species living on the project site and contamination of land and water by unexploded ammunition buried there.

What this all illustrates is a complicated story traversing an ever-evolving conversation about how projects designed to help the environment can also cause it harm — and who and what gets to balance that scale. The pumped storage proposal for Meaford has sparked a big question: can one of Canada’s largest oil and gas corporations deliver clean energy without putting Georgian Bay at risk?

Like so many questions, the answer depends on who you ask.

Researchers say Georgian Bay has remained relatively safe from disruptive human activity.

These are the people in the Meaford neighbourhood

From a boat, the foot of the escarpment looks luxurious: a row of cottages ranging from rustic to recently renovated. Halfway along the shoreline, cottages stop and trees begin, separated by an invisible boundary between public and military space marked solely by a bright red “Out of Bounds” sign. The gravel road that leads to these houses is interrupted by a different kind of red message. “Say No,” the signs stuck in the ground say. “Destroying Blue Does Not = Green.” 

A number of Meaford residents opposed the project as soon as TC Energy proposed it in 2019. They insist it wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction against the idea of storage — just the location of this one, and the company running it. Tom Buck, for instance, is repeatedly clear about this: he’s not against clean energy and this isn’t another not-in-my-backyard scuffle.

“No, no, this is different,” Buck insists. “This is about the big, blue thing in front of me and the company that wants to hurt it.” His eyes glimmer as he marvels at how the bright blue sky fades into the indigo water, not a ripple in sight. “Just look how clear it is.” And he’s right: there really is something magnetic about the bay.

Tom Buck is the head of Save Georgian Bay, a community organization that formed soon after TC Energy proposed a pumped storage facility in Meaford. The group is concerned about the potential impacts of the project on their homes, farms and the bay.

Buck spends half the year in Meaford, with plans to spend the rest of his life here. The former mayor of Farmington, Mich., inherited his home from his father, who spent every summer with his grandparents on the town’s beaches. “He loved this place so much he wanted to be right there, kind of looking over all of us,” Buck says. His father is buried halfway up the escarpment near his family’s almost century-old stone cottage. 

A dynamic personality with seemingly all of Meaford in his phone contacts, Buck has spent the past four years heading Save Georgian Bay. It’s an organization of cottagers, farmers, retired engineers and parents that mostly live on the escarpment in what they’ve dubbed “the impact zone” — the land right below TC Energy’s planned reservoir, or what Buck calls “the dark side of the project.” 

To them, the project is an impending environmental disaster. TC Energy’s maps of the project detail the creation of a 30-metre deep, 375-acre wide “large pond,” which Save Georgian Bay members suggest, by their own calculations, would impact 300 homes of about 1,000 people if it leaked or ruptured.

Allister McKay has a farm close to the National Defence lands and the site of the proposed TC Energy pumped storage project. He fears a leak in the reservoir that would flood farms downhill.  TC Energy says its design includes multiple “fail-safe features” to prevent this.

Pumped storage has been around since 1907 and there has only been one recorded burst of a reservoir in the way some Meaford residents fear. But worry still plagues Allister McKay, whose over 70-year-old farm is closest to the escarpment. His cattle graze right under the planned reservoir. “I didn’t know they were building that close,” the elderly farmer says. “If that thing overflowed, well, that’s that.” 

TC Energy’s plans for the pond include a closing akin to a sink plug at the bottom to allow water in and out. The pond will be linked to the bay by a large pipe that the company’s plans say will “gently” pull water up and down. At the lakebed, the pipe will be covered by “permanent fixed screens that will stop aquatic life from entering,” as well as sensors to control the speed at which water is released into the bay to minimize disturbance to the environment.

The plans also indicate a number of “fail-safe” features to control water in the reservoir, including spillways to return it to the bay if levels ever near capacity.

TC Energy plans to build a large reservoir (or pond) at the top of the escarpment and connect it to the Georgian Bay by way of an underground tunnel and underwater pipe. Illustration: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

While the company has assured Save Georgian Bay the project will not be visible from shore, the community group fears it will still be disruptive. Most of the group’s concerns are based on the sheer magnitude of the project, not recorded precedent. They believe the drilling into the clay escarpment could cause rocky avalanches into the bay. They worry the water might change temperature before it flows into the bay, which has been the case with hydroelectric reservoirs, altering the ecosystem. The project could release electromagnetic waves that spur health issues. They fear every up-and-down movement may cause a mini-earthquake-like shaking of the land. 

If that last one were true, Bob Baranski would notice in his newly-renovated cottage on the foot of the escarpment. His land is separated from the military property only by a big wired fence with a big “no trespassing” sign. 

Baranski has pored over TC Energy’s maps and designs, noting that his place is closest to the planned location of the pipe transferring water from the bay to the reservoir and back again. He believes he’d literally feel, hear or see the project from his dock or his floor-to-ceiling windows: that the water colour and clarity would change, maybe the flow too. 

“I don’t have proof of that, these are just my thoughts,” he says. “Energy projects like this one shouldn’t be this close to people’s houses.” At the very least, those people should be consulted, which he was not. Baranski learned of TC Energy’s plans from a sticky note posted on his door by a neighbour, asking if he’d heard about “the giant power plant they’re building beside you.” 

Bob Baranski’s house is right next to the National Defence lands and the location of the proposed underground pipe that would carry water between Georgian Bay and the reservoir at the top of the escarpment.

Mikkelsen says Meaford is an “ideal” location for this kind of project in Ontario. In an email, he outlines why: the site is in close proximity to the electricity grid, with perfect elevation, an existing water body and limited public access. None of his responses or TC Energy’s maps mention the homes under the project’s shadow. 

Mikkelsen has been with the company for more than 19 years and is ready to debunk every concern. The project will not change the temperature of the bay because the water simply moves up and down, he says. That movement will be unnoticeable and silent because the tunnel will be deep underwater and the water will be released horizontally, consistent with the bay’s flow. And the company is working on a “comprehensive plan” for construction, including geological studies, that will prioritize the health and safety of residents and the escarpment, he says.

But Baranski, McKay, Buck and dozens more who live there remain unconvinced despite four years of informational sessions and coffee chats with Mikkelsen and others at TC Energy. Buck calls the idea “an experiment that is risking Georgian Bay.” 

“We continue to discover things that don’t seem right about this project,” Buck says. “Week by week, there’s something.” 

“Like all the unexploded bombs buried up there,” says Baranski, gesturing to the lands above his cottage. “This just doesn’t pass the smell test.” 

Georgian Bay is a delicate ecosystem that connects to Lake Huron, a Great Lake. Despite assurances from TC Energy, residents fear negative impacts to the bay that would disrupt the region’s aquatic ecosystem. Map: Shawn Parkinson / The Narwhal

While Save Georgian Bay is motivated by the worst-case scenario, the chiefs of Chippewas of Nawash and Saugeen First Nations — Greg Nadjiwon and Conrad Ritchie — have spent the last four years trying to envision the best-case outcome. These two independent communities work together as Saugeen Ojibway Nation on issues that affect the larger territory. 

The unceded lands of the Chippewas of Nawash are an hour-long zig-zag drive away from Meaford: lefts and rights and deep curves along the coast, then through farms full of cows, sheep, horses, large dogs and at least one miniature horse. Continue through corridors of trees and you’ll end up at the unceded lands of the Chippewas of Nawash. The bay is here too, but peeking through bushes. This part of the shoreline is largely undeveloped — a stark contrast to the cottages in Meaford, where a few residents wondered in hushed tones what the two Ojibway nations think about TC Energy’s project. 

Here, there are trailer parks and modular homes. There’s a half-built hockey arena, a community garden and several neighbourhoods that are just sprouts of housing, foundation freshly laid. 

Saugeen and Chippewas of Nawash First Nations are willing to work with TC Energy to minimize harm on Georgian Bay. The company has offered them equity in the project, which could mean housing, education and social services for their nations.

“We’re playing catch-up,” says Nadjiwon as he drives around the community, explaining every structure. He’s the senior of the two chiefs — a tall, imposing figure whose last name is heavy with history, representing a lineage of Ojibway leaders that for generations have shaped the peninsula they call Neyaashiinigmiing, meaning “point of land surrounded on three sides by water.” Settlers know it as Cape Croker.

His love and respect for the bay is moving: he says he spends time here “every opportunity it calls.” Well before the TC Energy proposal, their people launched ongoing studies to tag and track fish, the same fish Nadjiwon harvests for Elders who cannot. 

Ritchie is a brand new chief, eager to usher in change. And major changes have been seen over his short tenure: this April, ownership of the eastern boundary of Sauble Beach, just west of Meaford, was returned to Saugeen First Nation after it won a long legal battle. 

Both chiefs have largely kept their thoughts to themselves, perhaps aware that in their decision rests the final fate of this debate. If they approve, TC Energy pushes on. If they disapprove, TC Energy leaves. “We’re not doing this project without them,” Mikkelsen says. “We’ve put it in writing: we will not do this project if we don’t have the support of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation. We will walk away.” 

Chief Greg Nadjiwon of Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation and Chief Conrad Ritchie of Saugeen First Nation believe the pumped storage project in Meaford is facilitating a better relationship with a big energy company than many Indigenous communities have had in the past.

In 2019, TC Energy executives approached both chiefs to talk about creating energy at Georgian Bay. “They were the first community we met,” Mikkelsen says. The company had just announced its $4.5-billion pumped storage plans for Meaford, after selling three Ontario gas plants for $2.8 billion. 

Fittingly, that first conversation was at a conference about free, prior and informed consent — the responsibility of industry and governments to meaningfully consult Indigenous Peoples about development on their territories, and receive consent and agreement on resource-sharing before embarking on any projects. It’s a right guaranteed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which Canada has adopted but Ontario has not.

“I didn’t know [the TC Energy executives] at all,” Nadjiwon says about that first conversation. “They just had this idea about stored energy.”

“We’re not naive. We’re stewards,” Chief Greg Nadjiwon of Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation says, adding that his nation will walk away if TC Energy’s pumped storage project is found to have harmful impacts on Georgian Bay.

As far as energy stories go, Indigenous Peoples are often an “afterthought,” Ritchie says. The two chiefs know what it’s like when a community’s wishes are ignored to build energy infrastructure: their nations weren’t asked when the province put the Bruce nuclear power plant on their territory in the 1960s, or when it sold the plant to TC Energy, a couple of pension funds and power unions in 2015, instead of them.

But that story is changing. There are multiple Indigenous-led and -owned power projects emerging in Ontario and over the last several years, the province’s energy operators have made efforts to partner with First Nations on new projects. In 2013, Saugeen and Chippewas bought a third of the transmission lines running from Bruce Power to Milton, Ont. 

So, like many Indigenous communities in Canada watching a surge of energy investments, their nations are thinking about how to receive a portion of the charge — both electrical and financial. 

“Our authority was recognized and acknowledged from the very beginning, the way things should have been with every project in our territory,” Ritchie says. “We were involved right from the get-go, not an afterthought, in helping shape, design and plan the project.”

“In a way, we were part of the narrative. Nobody was creating the narrative for us.” 

The shoreline of Georgian Bay along the unceded lands of Chippewas of Nawash First Nation is largely undeveloped (left), in contrast to the cottages on the water’s edge in Meaford (right).

Save Georgian Bay and the two chiefs might be approaching TC Energy differently, but their goals are the same: to minimize harm to Georgian Bay. To achieve this, the community group has time and money to spend. To boost its influence over the fate of the project, it has hired a consultancy group to help develop a communications strategy and codified Save Georgian Bay as a non-profit, able to collect donations and issue tax receipts. 

Meanwhile, Ritchie and Nadjiwon say engaging with TC Energy is their best way to protect the bay. They also acknowledge that part of why they are trying to work with the company is it could mean education, training and social services for their nations, not to mention housing. “We’re not naive. We’re stewards,” Nadjiwon says. “Usually, what we find and say falls on deaf ears. This time is different.” 

The chiefs estimate they’ve only examined five per cent of the design and agree there’s a lot more to review and understand. But after generations of being subjected to “a position of dependency” and serving as “administrators of our own misery,” Nadjiwon says consultation is welcome if it protects the bay. Saugeen Ojibway Nation’s first requirement is to conduct its own environmental assessment. 

TC Energy’s storage project: how it started

2018

TC Energy receives a federal permit to conduct studies to determine if the 4th Canadian Division Training Centre in Meaford, Ont., is a suitable site for pumped-water energy storage.

2019

Saugeen Ojibway Nation begins discussing the proposal with TC Energy, which also holds its first information session for Meaford residents.

2021

National Defence says a pumped storage project could be accommodated on the site if construction and operation don’t interfere with military operations.

2022

Save Georgian Bay lobbies against the project during Meaford’s municipal election.

Along with the nation’s study, TC Energy expects to undergo a provincial environmental assessment, triggered by the building of the underwater transmission line. There will also be a federal accounting of environmental risk, which the Impact Assessment Act demands of projects built on federal lands. In an email to The Narwhal, the defence department said that the impact assessment process “considers a wide range of potential issues including impacts of the project on fish and fish habitat, migratory birds, as well as potential impacts on Indigenous treaty rights.”

The company already has conditional approval from National Defence to assess the site for the project, while the federal department conducts its own study. Mikkelsen says a “rigorous and transparent” study will begin in January 2024 and will last three years. No construction will begin until all concerns, including environmental, are fully addressed, he says. 

Navigational buoys mark the boundary between National Defence lands and Meaford.

Will TC Energy’s past — or its money — affect its future in Georgian Bay?

There is a calm but ever-present note of caution in both chiefs’ voices when they talk about TC Energy in Nadjiwon’s office, surrounded by maps of their territories and pictures of their ancestors. While they repeatedly say the company is working well with them, both recognize attempts to forge a good relationship are partially what Nadjiwon calls “damage control” to fix a “not-so-pleasant history” with Indigenous communities and environmental harm.

Across North America, TC Energy is known for pipeline projects — some cancelled, some ongoing, many riddled with controversy over environmental hazards. Last December, for example, its Keystone pipeline, which connects oil producers in Western Canada to refineries in Texas, spilled almost 13,000 barrels of oil in rural Kansas because of faulty welding. 

In northern B.C., it is finalizing the Coastal GasLink pipeline, the route of which cuts through the territories of 20 First Nations as it carries methane-heavy natural gas from near the Alberta border to the western coast for export. The B.C. government has fined the company more than $800,000 for failing to fix dozens of environmental violations along the Coastal GasLink route, including those that threaten waterways and salmon habitat. But both the provincial and federal governments have also seemed hesitant to use their full powers to enforce compliance. 

While some First Nations along the route have signed agreements with the company, the opposition of Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs to the Coastal GasLink pipeline has also drawn national attention, particularly the multiple arrests of land defenders. TC Energy did not receive the free, prior and informed consent of the Hereditary Chiefs, who never surrendered the rights and responsibilities to govern the 22,000-square-kilometre territory — rights affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada in the landmark Delgamuukw decision. Yet the project was approved by the B.C. government: although it did impose conditions intended to protect the environment, TC Energy has repeatedly failed to meet those conditions, resulting in flooded lands, murky rivers and scarred wetlands.

“We were involved right from the get-go, not an afterthought, in helping shape, design and plan the project,” Chief Conrad Ritchie of Saugeen First Nation says. Together with the Chippewas of Nawash, his nation will conduct an independent environmental assessment of the Meaford lands TC Energy wants to build on.

This reputation is at the core of a deep mistrust of TC Energy among the members of Save Georgian Bay — talking to The Narwhal, one resident called the company “that big, bad pipeline builder.” And with that pipeline builder valued at over $50 billion, opponents of the project believe the company might be using its money to get people on board. 

For months, there have been rumours in Meaford that the First Nations have endorsed the project and agreed to accept money from TC Energy, which isn’t entirely wrong, but as is often the case with rumours, they lack nuance. 

“When we learned about the project, the first thing that came up wasn’t money, but the environment,” Ritchie says. 

That said, TC Energy has put forth a number — “we set a pretty high buy-in. I’ll go as far as to say, it will be a game-changer for us,” Nadjiwon says. While it hasn’t been said publicly, Mikkelsen told The Narwhal the First Nations will have a “significant equity ownership” in the project that will ensure they have management roles and profit. 

“We’re doing this together,” he said, calling the relationship “one of the most fulfilling things in my career.”  

But the chiefs remain cautious. “If this project were to cause damaging and detrimental impacts … we would walk away,” Nadjiwon says. “But, here, we’re addressing the concerns, as much as technology will allow.” 

The town of Meaford is almost 150 years old. For the last four, it has been deeply divided over the merits and risks of TC Energy’s pumped storage project.

While the chiefs are guarded about financial dealings, Meaford bears plenty of evidence of TC Energy’s dollars. Over the last four years, the company’s name has become an easy-to-find Waldo in town, appearing on hockey jerseys, in newspaper ads and on banners at charity runs and fundraisers in bowling clubs and churches. It has even sponsored local environmental initiatives, including the Great Lakes Plastics Cleanup.

“There is an expectation, I think, from any community that hosts any kind of project anywhere that the community receives the benefits associated with that,” Mikkelsen says, calling it “an important part of being a good neighbour, a trusted partner and an employer of choice.” 

But the benefits began before Meaford’s official OK, and members of Save Georgian Bay say the company has “invaded” their community trying to win over the town. Some worry it’s working on local politicians. 

In July, the town hired two consulting agencies — StrategyCorp and Ainley Group — to conduct a review of environmental studies and negotiate annual community benefits: right now, TC Energy’s offer is $1.5 million in lieu of property taxes, which Meaford is considering. The cost of hiring these agencies is estimated to be more than $3.5 million, paid by TC Energy, according to an Oct. 30 staff report. The company is also footing the bill for the city’s special legal counsel and negotiator on the project.

This flow of funds seems suspicious to some, given that one of the project’s early opponents is now a staunch supporter — Mayor Ross Kentner. 

Meaford politician Ross Kentner vocally opposed TC Energy’s pumped storage project as a councillor, but after becoming mayor in 2022, he decided to support it. He believes TC Energy could help the town.

As a councillor, Kentner was wary of the project, concerned about lack of consultation and whether the project was as green and efficient as advertised. He wrote a letter to National Defence expressing all this, and campaigned on his opposition to the project. But after his victory as mayor in the 2022 election, Kentner changed his mind.  

“There are many reasons for this,” Kentner, a former local radio personality, says in his distinct broadcaster voice. Kentner says he was convinced after talking with other municipal leaders, as well as Energy Minister Todd Smith. All of them persuaded him that Ontario’s energy needs grew drastically over the pandemic and are only getting bigger, and that “Meaford needs to try and play its part” in finding a solution. 

The mayor is upfront that he believes money matters, and that partnering with a large entity like TC Energy could offset pressure on council’s coffers. The Doug Ford government is heavily pushing municipalities to build housing and Meaford could use the financial help. Industrial taxes and grants could renovate roadways and help expand wastewater infrastructure. 

“With every project, that’s the case: there are community benefits,” Kentner says. He deferred queries about how the town defines or uses these benefits to the Ainley Group, which confirmed to The Narwhal that it is working with the town but didn’t answer specific questions. “If this region is Ontario’s new clean energy frontier, Meaford needs to fight for its fair share.” 

Kentner and councillors in favour of the project are quick to state the limitations of their influence. The military, higher levels of government and TC Energy all have more power and resources than tiny Meaford. “I’m a bit of a pragmatist, I think [the project] is very likely to happen whether we like it or not, and Meaford needs to be there,” Kentner says.

A majority of Meaford city council voted in favour of TC Energy’s pumped storage project, pending the results of provincial and federal environmental assessments of how it might affect the escarpment or Georgian Bay.

Meaford’s position on the project does matter though, at least theoretically. Twelve years ago, a Liberal provincial government lost its majority after two gas plants planned for unwilling communities were quietly cancelled. In the aftermath of the gas plant scandal, one Liberal staffer went to prison and the plants — one of them contracted to TC Energy — were relocated to towns that seemed happier to have them. 

Lessons learned from the biggest energy scandal in Ontario’s history are surely at play now. As Smith moves to approve more gas plants to face the energy crunch, the energy minister has said none will be built without municipal approval, calling support a “requirement.” He’s on record saying consent matters for clean energy projects, too. 

Smith was a member of a cross-party committee that released a study into the gas plant scandal, which found that over 80 municipalities that opposed wind projects ended up home to turbines anyway. The report suggested the province require companies that want to build energy projects to “[demonstrate] that they already have community support.” It also said Ontarians deserve “transparency and openness” in the site selection process.  

In a brief conversation with The Narwhal, Smith put the responsibility of ensuring local support on TC Energy, saying he believed the company has been “very involved in working with the community … very, very involved in getting municipal support as well for the project.” 

“They’ve done a good job,” Smith said, noting TC Energy has made design alterations to address environmental concerns. The minister did not respond to additional questions about the risks posed by the project, which he is expected to decide on by the end of the month.  

TC Energy’s storage project: 2023 and beyond

February 2023

Meaford city council votes to conditionally support the project, pending TC Energy passing provincial and federal environmental assessments.

October 2023

WSP Canada is awarded a $105,000 contract to conduct an environmental assessment of the site, to be paid by TC Energy.

Nov. 30, 2023

Ontario Energy Minister Todd Smith is expected to approve pumped storage projects in Marmora and Meaford.

2030

TC Energy’s planned operation date for the storage project on Georgian Bay.

Buck says a mid-November trip from Meaford to Queen’s Park to meet the energy minister didn’t make the government’s evaluation process less opaque. In Buck’s view, Smith and his staff prioritized energy concerns over environmental impacts, shunting responsibility to regulators and environmental groups and, Buck says, “trusting TC Energy … to do a fine job.” 

“I felt a little dampened coming out of the meeting,” he says. “We felt a little bit dismissed.” 

Ontarians’ distrust of how energy decisions are made is something Mikkelsen seems hyper aware of. “One of [TC Energy’s] key goals is transparency … making sure these issues of trust and other things are addressed at the front end of the project.” There’s a calculation in his remarks: history shows lack of local opposition smooths the path to government approval. 

“We have a project that, I think, has a very strong support … which is very useful as you move through the regulatory process,” he says. “We think we’ve addressed, for the most part, any of the concerns we have, and we think we have a very minimal environmental footprint at the end of the day.” 

Mayor Ross Kentner believes giving TC Energy a “conditional yes” will ensure “minimal damage, maximum benefits” to the town, including the residents, fishermen, sailors and others that frequent the bay.

Kentner believes offering a conditional yes prioritizes “minimal damage, maximum benefit.” In its statement expressing willingness, council made that contingent on TC Energy passing “any applicable environmental and/or impact assessments” and guaranteeing long-term protection of the bay. 

The mayor says a partnership would allow Meaford to have some oversight over the most disruptive aspect of the project: the construction, which will take four years. The town could control when trucks travel, how many enter the escarpment at one time, how much material they carry and so forth.

Still, Kentner’s change in position is seen as a deceptive flip-flop by the Save Georgian Bay members who voted for him. 

The group pressed every democratic lever available to try and sway the vote against TC Energy. Despite fears of COVID-19 exposure, members went door-to-door to collect over 3,000 signatures against the project, meaning a third of the town — homeowners and seasonal residents included — publicly stated it wanted council to vote no. Council meetings about the project were held in Meaford Hall, a 114-year-old opera house with a capacity of 3,000, and even that wasn’t big enough. 

Emails, phone calls, letters: Save Georgian Bay did it all. Council still voted against them. 

Signs across the escarpment mark the boundary between National Defence lands and the rest of town.

National Defence’s Meaford site is covered in endangered species — and explosives 

Buck is almost hesitant to talk about his role in this narrative, aware of his privilege and dual citizenship. “To some degree, I know we’re background noise,” Buck says, with a hint of frustration. “But I also think we’re right.” The promise — and reality — of clean energy projects impact everyone in Ontario, so it shouldn’t matter who is opposing the project, he argues, but why. And Save Georgian Bay has evidence to back up its concerns. 

In July, Save Georgian Bay received 2,000 pages of National Defence documents through freedom of information legislation, which it shared with The Narwhal. The documents show four years of internal assessments of impacts, including contamination from undetonated explosives from years of live-fire training. There are also notes from dozens of meetings with TC Energy. 

Though many of the pages are redacted, the documents show officials note multiple times that even if the Defence Department gives TC Energy a clear green light, the federal environment minister would have to weigh in.

In the email to The Narwhal, a defence spokesperson said multiple federal departments will contribute opinions on the project, with the Impact Assessment Agency involving “Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, Health Canada, Parks Canada (for archaeology and heritage), Environment and Climate Change Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Transport Canada, as well as relevant provincial government stakeholders.”

Tom Buck, director of Save Georgian Bay, points to the area of the escarpment where the proposed TC Energy pumped storage project will be located. In July, the community group obtained National Defence documents that show the environmental risks the project poses, including destruction of 10 per cent of the species there.

The environmental risks listed in the documents obtained by Save Georgian Bay are many. They show defence officials have identified “potentially up to 30 federally-protected species at risk” on the Meaford site that may be impacted by construction of the reservoir. One is the western chorus frog, the same animal whose presence is one reason Environment Canada has paused the Ford government’s Highway 413 project for years. 

The documents list multiple harms that seem unavoidable with such a project. Officials note it “would require the destruction of the woodlot habitat.” They also document likely “adverse impacts on fish and fish habitat” from discharging water into the bay, which could require Fisheries and Oceans Canada to step in. There are also worries that the water discharge could cause “new erosion” and “increased water flow in areas that are inadequate to handle the volume.” 

Defence officials repeatedly note the project is estimated to “devastate” at least 10 per cent of the wildlife on the site, including migratory birds. Some species are unidentified as the military can’t assess terrain in the danger area as “no one has stepped foot in that area due to the extremely high [unexploded ordnance] threat.” 

“No trespassing” signs mark the perimeters of properties close to National Defence lands in Meaford, Ont. There is an unknown number of unexploded ordnances on the lands, including on the site TC Energy intends to build on.

The explosives buried all across the site are identified as a major worry, and cleanup would be a requirement for any project on these lands. Officials note explosives likely contaminated the soil with heavy metal toxins: “disturbing the soil” or using it to build the reservoir could contaminate land and water, potentially harming the health of the bay’s wildlife as well as the health of humans who get their drinking water from it — which is everyone around the bay. 

At multiple instances, officials note that TC Energy has “limited to no experience” working in ammunition-filled areas: “[National Defence] expressed that they have concerns with [TC Energy’s] proposed location given their lack of [unexploded ordnance] expertise, given their history of projects.” 

Defence officials were of the opinion that the company has not properly factored cleanup into its planning, which would be a significant expense that could extend the proposed four-year construction timeline by up to a decade.

“This could be a showstopper,” officials say.

When asked by The Narwhal how many undetonated explosives are on the site, a defence spokesperson replied via email that “it is very difficult to provide a tally and type of ammunition” since the site has “been in continuous use for military live fire training since World War II. It is reasonable to expect that the types of ammunition that could be found … include any and all ammunition that has been used by the Canadian army during that period.” 

The National Defence training grounds in Meaford were expropriated during the second world war from local families. Some of their descendants, like Nancy Primak, still live in the town and remember the history well.

Presented with the information in the documents, TC Energy’s Mikkelsen says the company has collected three years of data to understand all the environmental risks, which will be made public in the official assessment process, expected to begin in early 2024. He says the company will “mitigate and avoid” any impacts to species — “that’s a normal aspect of any project anywhere in Canada.” 

When asked by The Narwhal about how documented harm to water and species on other project sites has hurt the company’s reputation, Mikkelsen said he believes this project has been “very different.” He launches into a long list of everything TC Energy has done: from preliminary studies to public conversations.

He zeroes in on design changes he says were made after hearing local environmental concerns. One of the monitoring structures has been moved away from the shoreline and the tunnel’s opening has been buried underwater. Transmission lines across the bay were axed in favour of underwater cables. The speed of the water discharge has also been slowed down. 

One of the more notable changes, Mikkelsen says, is the decision to include screens on the underwater tunnels to stop fish from passing through. Nadjiwon says when he and Ritchie told TC Energy they were worried that water being pumped up to the reservoir would kill fish, the company added the screens and plans to “fine-tune that further.”

Mikkelsen says this change was also a lesson learned from Ludington, Mich., where one of the world’s oldest and largest pumped storage projects — also built on a Great Lakes basin —  had a detrimental impact on aquatic life. By one estimate, 150 million fish were killed every year in the first decade of operation, drawn through the turbines as they passed through the tunnel. One lawsuit and a US$172-million settlement later, the project now features a similar net stretching 2.5-miles, or four kilometres.

First Nations and Meaford residents all worry that fish could be killed by the underwater turbines of TC Energy’s pumped storage project. The company amended its design to include screens on the pipe that would carry water between Georgian Bay and the reservoir.

While Ludington is not Meaford, Mikkelsen believes studying the Michigan project was “instrumental in the state-of-the-art design that we are proposing, that will significantly improve the protection of fish, fish habitat and the water quality of Georgian Bay.” In fact, Mikkelsen believes all the design changes are “radical” because they demonstrated the company was “actually listening and incorporating the feedback.” 

“I think you have to build trust and I think the changes to the design had two effects: first, it addressed the issue directly, and second, it demonstrated to anyone that was paying attention that we listen,” he says.

In response to The Narwhal’s questions about the assessment of risk in the Department of Defence documents, he says the company is working with experts that study unexploded ordnances. Mikkelsen believes cleanup of the explosives is doable and will have “a positive environmental impact as a result of this project.” He says the company does not anticipate any delay because of past military activity.

According to National Defence, “The discussion surrounding the responsibility for [unexploded ordnance] clean-up, with a focus on preventing soil contamination and protecting wildlife both on land and in Georgian Bay, is ongoing [and] will feed into any future agreements that may be put in place should the project move forward. …” The email from a department spokesperson said that ”The commitment of the Government of Canada to addressing concerns and mitigating potential impacts remains unwavering.”

John Mikkelsen, TC Energy’s director of power and energy solutions, has become a familiar face in Meaford, assuring residents that all environmental concerns will be addressed. He says he too loves Georgian Bay and visits Killarney, Ont., every summer with his family. Photo: Supplied by TC Energy

As to the broader concerns of residents, Mikkelsen says much is still being figured out. Construction plans, he says, will be created with community consultation. Future geophysical studies will mitigate physical disruption to the escarpment. “We are conducting comprehensive computer modelling studies to validate that the design avoids negative environmental effects to Georgian Bay,” he says via email, reiterating that any environmental concerns will be addressed before the project moves forward.

In the absence of these answers, Buck and co. remain skeptical. “The company has made a lot of promises, including a promise to do no harm, but they can’t explain how they won’t do more harm,” he says. “They think they can build a perfect project. I know they can’t.” 

“It’s the fear of the unknown. We’ve never had anything like this before,” lifelong Meaford resident Harley Greenfield says. He is Meaford council’s longest-serving member, with almost 25 years of service, and was one of two that voted against the project in February. “Changes aren’t bad. But this project is so huge and this is the municipality of Meaford: we’re small.”

Nancy Primark’s parents lived on the military lands before they were expropriated and she swims or paddles the bay every day the weather allows. “We have no say,” she says. “But when they’re firing up there, my house shakes. And now they’re going to put a reservoir right there. I don’t understand how that’s safe.”

Allister Mckay, who has lived on his Meaford farm since 1956, worries that the construction and operation of the reservoir will forever change the escarpment. “It’s a huge amount of water,” he says. “I just don’t know how they can go about this.”

Save Georgian Bay aren’t alone in this sentiment. “I have mixed feelings,” says Adam Scott, an energy and environment consultant who grew up around Georgian Bay and knows it intimately as both a resident and researcher. His family has lived in the area for over a century and his parents are still on the other side of the water, opposite the escarpment where the project will sit. “I’d normally be supportive of a project like this but I’ll admit: I don’t trust TC Energy. As a company, they have a really bad record,” he says, pointing to Keystone’s spill history as one reason he doubts the power behemoth is acting in good faith.

Scott’s research into TC Energy’s record includes visiting communities during the proposal stage of Energy East, an oil pipeline that would have run from Alberta to Eastern Canada, but was cancelled. Scott says that as he went from community to community, he learned the company had “sprinkled” money on city councils along the route, money he says local officials can be hard pressed to refuse when it’s for “things a community needs.”

“The direct payments for items in advance of project approval is problematic,” Scott says.

Cottagers and farmers in Meaford are worried about the impact of TC Energy’s project on their land and the water that surrounds it.

But, again, Mikkelsen says financial support for even potential host communities is just the way things work with big energy projects. “At TC Energy, we believe seeing is believing,” he says, highlighting all the ways the company has changed the design after its community consultations. 

Scott points out, though, that there has been no independent, impartial review of the project as of yet, no thorough environmental study that would persuade him the company won’t “just vacuum up a lot of fish and harm the water.” 

“Maybe I’m also guilty of not-in-my-backyard syndrome,” Scott said. “But I wish we were talking about a more cut-and-dry industrial storage project and not one that involved one of the most troubling corporations sucking up Georgian Bay and pouring it back out.” 

There is something magnetic about Georgian Bay, which everyone in Meaford, Ont. says they want to protect.

That big blue thing at stake

Driving around Georgian Bay with either Buck or Chief Nadjiwon is to see the environment from a different perspective but with the same crystal focus on the water. Both stop constantly to point out various parts of the bay and escarpment that look unremarkable to an outsider but which they insist is special for a memory, a fish, a view. 

The two men are deeply tied to this region by lineage and also by the deep sense of service felt by those who carry the weight of everything that can go right, or wrong. Each man knows he can’t control Ontario’s energy demands, TC Energy’s plans or the military’s decisions but still believes he can influence the conversation. 

Residents often point to a dip between the trees at the top of the escarpment to show where TC Energy wants to build a reservoir and pumped storage facility.

Both plan to keep doing so in the months that follow, with TC Energy very close to getting a green light from the province.

On Nov. 30, Minister Smith is expected to announce his decision on two proposed pumped storage projects. Along with Meaford, he’s evaluating a proposal in Marmora and Lake, a couple hours east of Toronto, where an old iron-ore mine pit would form one of the reservoirs for what’s known as a closed loop pumped storage system. It’s a less controversial idea since the same water that naturally fills that pit will be pumped up to a higher reservoir and poured back down through a pipeline repeatedly, never drawing from another body of water. 

Although Meaford is more contentious, Mikkelsen believes the project will get Smith’s approval. “The minister likes this project because, from a social, economic, Indigenous reconciliation perspective, this is the kind of project that Ontario really, really wants,” he says. Operation will begin in 2030 if everything goes to plan, though these things rarely do.

Both Chief Greg Nadjiwon of Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation and Tom Buck, director of Save Georgian Bay, say they are centering the concerns of their communities — and the bay.

Both Nadjiwon and Buck also know they might not be around to witness how the question at hand is answered.   

“Let’s say, I’ll be fertilizing the land by the time it’s reality,” Nadjiwon says. 

“I love my community. I wouldn’t do anything to put it in jeopardy,” he says softly, taking a long pause as he looks at a boat docked on the shoreline on a perfectly still day. “I can’t say anymore.” 

Buck is more forceful, struck with emotion as he reflects on dedicating so much time to opposing this project. “This land cannot be offended like this,” he says repeatedly, with tears in his eyes. “It just can’t.”  

As everyone waits for the energy minister to make his decision, there’s an anxiety that even the bay can’t quell. Maybe because that big, blue thing is exactly what’s at stake.Update Nov. 23 at 10:03 a.m. ET: This story was updated to add additional comments from the Department of National Defence. Updated Nov. 30 at 7:51 a.m. ET: This story was update to reflect that the municipality of Meaford has not yet accepted TC Energy’s community benefits offer.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The City of Winnipeg is taking its next steps towards a net-zero emissions future; a committee of council unanimously approved an ambitious, multi-billion dollar ‘roadmap’ Tuesday, with hopes of getting there by 2050.

The Community Energy Investment Roadmap was commissioned by council in 2020. Meant to accompany the city’s broader guiding documents (OurWinnipeg2045 and the 2018 Climate Action Plan), the roadmap outlines a series of targets for reducing emissions in five sectors, as well as recommendations to help make the goals of the plan a reality. Along with the roadmap , the committee approved a plan to request annual progress reports from each department affected, and a motion to discuss hiring two additional employees to tackle work outlined in the report at the next budgetary consultations.

Climate and environment advocates lauded the report at a water, waste, riverbank management and environment committee meeting Tuesday, celebrating its detailed financial modelling and holistic approach to emissions reduction.

“Universally, there is a lot of joy amongst (the climate advocacy) community as a consequence of receiving this report,” Climate Change Connection executive director Curtis Hull said during Tuesday’s meeting. The roadmap “is phenomenal; it’s exactly what we need right now.”

Still, the report is only a first step towards reaching the city’s emissions target. More work will be needed to detail how the roadmap can be accomplished and funded at a municipal level.

What’s in the report?

Winnipeg, like much of Manitoba, relies on hydroelectric power for the majority of its energy, making it one of the cleaner power grids in the country. To effectively curb the city’s emissions profile, the report recommends spending $23 billion over the next 30 years on a “reduce, improve, switch” approach in five key sectors, first reducing energy consumption, then improving efficiency of energy production and finally switching to low-carbon, low-emission energy sources.

The report focuses primarily on the city’s two largest emitters: transportation and natural gas heating. 

Transportation accounts for the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Winnipeg — a city dominated by personal vehicle use and solo car trips. The roadmap highlights a federal commitment that will require all new car and passenger truck sales to be zero-emission by 2035 — but reducing emissions from vehicles will take more than just electric cars.

The roadmap recommends fully electrifying transit by 2035, increasing the share of trips made by transit or active transportation by 2050, and electrifying both municipal car fleets and private commercial vehicles between 2035 and 2050.

To get there, the roadmap outlines recommendations for building denser neighbourhoods with “superblocks” that limit vehicle traffic and ensure residents  can access all their necessities within a 15-minute walk. The plan also recommends working with Manitoba Hydro and local businesses to develop charging stations in convenient locations around the city, investing $20 per person in active transportation infrastructure to make walking and cycling a safer and more reliable option, and pushing forward on the existing transit master plan to ensure all neighbourhoods are accessible by public transit. 

Solo car trips are the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Winnipeg. Curbing those emissions will require both electric cars and a commitment to active and public transportation. Photo: John Woods / The Canadian Press

Homes, businesses, institutions and industrial buildings contribute about 44 per cent of the city’s emissions, the roadmap notes, with about 93 per cent of those emissions traced back to natural gas heating. Curbing those emissions would require “deep retrofits” to improve energy and thermal efficiency, while also switching to efficient electric heat pumps (which work by exchanging heat from outdoor and indoor air). 

The roadmap recommends retrofitting all residential buildings constructed before 1980 by 2035; remaining  homes would then be retrofitted by 2050. Commercial and industrial buildings should be retrofitted to improve energy efficiency by 50 per cent and rely on electric heat pumps by 2050. The roadmap also recommends substantially increasing the efficiency of new builds by lobbying the province to adopt net-zero building codes over the next three years.

As for other emissions sources, the roadmap sets a target of 78 per cent waste diversion by 2050, largely through organics collection and a reduction in construction waste, as well as a 25 per cent reduction of wastewater through improvements such as leak detection and encouraging a change in consumption habits.

Shifting to electric power for heating and fuel will put extra pressure on the city’s energy grid. Though efficiency upgrades, particularly in buildings, will help curb some of that increased power demand, the roadmap recommends diversifying the clean energy grid with rooftop solar power (installed on new buildings, parking lots and in community solar gardens), geothermal district energy (harnessing heat from sewer pipes and ground source heat pumps, for example), and biogas collection from landfills. By 2050, the roadmap recommends diverting 100 per cent of methane emissions from landfills for power generation and ensuring 50 per cent of any building’s annual electricity load comes from renewable sources other than hydro, in order to diversify the clean grid.

Where is Winnipeg now?

The roadmap updates Winnipeg’s greenhouse gas emissions profile with data from the 2016 census, and found that Winnipeggers created a total 4.79 million tonnes of carbon dioxide or equivalent emissions that year, an average of 6.2 tonnes per person. That’s the equivalent of each person in Winnipeg driving a gas-powered car from Vancouver to PEI and back — twice.

Of those emissions, the roadmap notes 48 per cent come from transportation, another 39 per cent come from natural gas heating in commercial and residential buildings, six per cent comes from waste and five per cent from industrial activities.

Natural gas heating produces nearly half of Winnipeg’s carbon dioxide emissions, reaching net-zero will require the city to shift to electric heat pumps. Photo: Mike Aporius / Winnipeg Free Press

Under a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario, total emissions would increase by nine per cent overall by 2050 (though per capita emissions are expected to drop slightly to 4.9 tonnes of CO2 or equivalent emissions due to a decreased need for heating in a warming climate and minor changes to vehicle and building efficiency). The net-zero scenario would bring those emissions down to 0.3 tonnes per capita by 2050.

Laura Cameron, policy analyst with the International Institute for Sustainable Development, said the roadmap’s overall target of net-zero emissions by 2050 “really can’t be negotiated” if the city is to keep in line with Canada’s commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement to help limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

“It’s really important that Winnipeg is taking that seriously,” Cameron said.

“Certainly it’s not an easy job to figure out how we get there but it looks like, from the priority areas in the plan, that the city is really addressing these big areas — and big opportunities — that come with the transition.”

How do we get there?

The roadmap recommends a slate of working groups and programs that could help achieve targets set out in each sector. Notably, the roadmap insists achieving the city’s climate targets will take “full participation from the entire society.”

As part of this holistic approach, the report suggests Winnipeg develop an annual carbon budget — essentially a limit on cumulative emissions the city can create in a given year — to align financial budgets with emission reduction targets. This model is based on the global carbon budget, which outlines the amount of carbon emissions that can be tolerated each year in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. The roadmap also recommends Winnipeg apply a “climate lens” through which all policies and investments can be tested, and that the city track greenhouse gas emissions on an annual basis. Finally, the report recommends expanding the office of sustainability, adding staff who can develop pilot projects, connect with working groups and help decarbonize municipal systems.

The climate lens, which will integrate the roadmap into all layers of city hall decision-making, has been roundly celebrated by climate advocates. During 2021 budget consultations, Laura Tyler, executive director of Sustainable Building Manitoba, helped spearhead an open letter calling for climate action from the municipality that garnered signatures from more than 90 organizations. The demands of that letter, she said, are covered by the roadmap.

“One of the things we need to all get better at as a community is working together on things,” said Tyler.

“What’s positive about [the roadmap] is that it’s not a single issue, it’s something that affects us all. There are all these opportunities for us to work together as an ecosystem to move things along.”

How much will it cost?

Implementing the roadmap will require a $23-billion investment over the next 28 years, averaging around $800 million annually, or about one per cent of Manitoba’s GDP.

Despite the high price tag, the roadmap notes the investments pay for themselves “two times over,” generating savings of $53.7 billion through avoided carbon costs, reduced energy costs, avoided maintenance costs and nearly $5 billion in revenue by 2050.

By shifting away from carbon heating and fuel, the report predicts a 56 per cent reduction in energy costs for individual households compared to a business-as-usual scenario.

The shift in energy sources and focus on building retrofits is also expected to generate 103,000 “person-years of employment” between now and 2050, creating opportunities for partnerships with local universities, colleges and trades programs as new employment sectors emerge.

Overall, the roadmap is expected to net $35.6 billion in community benefits.

Curtis Hull, executive director of Climate Change Connection, worries the city’s net-zero plan could be hobbled by the provincial government. Photo: Ruth Bonneville / Winnipeg Free Press

Curtis Hull notes the cost of inaction is far greater; as carbon prices reach $170 per tonne of CO2 emissions in 2030, the cost of heat and fuel on individual households is expected to rise accordingly, disproportionately impacting low-income households who may face the choice between “staying warm and staying fed.”

The report also notes climate-related disasters, such as floods, fires and storms, will become more prominent should the climate continue to warm, and provinces will be expected to spend increasing amounts on disaster relief. Already in the last decade, Canada’s spending on disaster costs has increased from one to five per cent of its GDP.

In Winnipeg, the report estimates the cost of climate damages in a business-as-usual scenario could reach $30.5 billion by 2050; in a net-zero scenario, the cost of damages over the same time would be just shy of $12 billion.

What’s missing?

Climate action groups have unanimously praised the report as evidence the city is taking the issue seriously; still, they note the report needs buy-in from community members, the provincial government and the city itself through budgetary support.

“We need to be aware of the fact that it’s not a done deal,” Tyler said. “Until there are people hired and there’s budget allocated, this is just another plan on the shelf.”

Tyler called the roadmap a “renewed commitment” to climate action at a municipal level, but noted the city will need to move quickly to consult with working groups, lobby the province and begin putting recommendations of the report into action.

“It’s hard enough to live in the existential crisis of knowing that you’re living on a planet that’s headed in the wrong direction … But to watch your leaders do nothing about it is a very specific form of grief.”

Laura Tyler, Sustainable Building Manitoba

On the topic of low-emission buildings, for example, she noted the city will need to to avoid “adding to the problem” by creating new builds that will need retrofitting down the line.

At Climate Change Connection, Hull said the report succeeds in outlining the scope of work that needs to be done, but cautions “it would be naive to think that the city can do this alone.” He noted the city is “hobbled” by provincial legislation, such as outdated building codes and narrow energy efficiency mandates, that will require review to set the roadmap into motion.

Hull added he would like to see the Crown corporation Efficiency Manitoba manage implementation of the roadmap, but the corporation is currently limited by its legislated goal of reducing provincial electricity consumption by 1.5 per cent and natural gas by 0.75 per cent annually.

What did the committee decide?

The committee voted unanimously to implement the report, research how to apply its recommendations in financial decisions and to use its analysis and recommendations to update the climate action plan and climate resiliency strategy. The committee is also recommending two new staff positions — a senior planner and a green building specialist — be added to the 2023 budget process, and that the municipal staff office be allowed to find and accept grants (up to $500,000 each) that can help implement the roadmap.

The roadmap recommends spending at least $20 per person on active transportation infrastructure to help make walking and cycling a more common mode of transportation in the city. Photo: Mikaela Mackenzie / Winnipeg Free Press

For accountability, the committee has also approved a directive that would ask departments impacted by the report to prepare annual submissions related to work on the goals outlined in the roadmap.

These steps mark an ambitious shift in Winnipeg’s city policy, and have given hope to Winnipeg’s climate advocates.

“It’s hard enough to live in the existential crisis of knowing that you’re living on a planet that’s headed in the wrong direction, that we’re destroying this incredible ecosystem,” Tyler said.

“But to watch your leaders do nothing about it is a very specific form of grief. So to have that layer of grief soothed even a little bit is really important, and I’m really grateful.”

What’s next?

The recommendations will need to be discussed at an executive policy committee meeting before being presented to council as a whole later in the summer. Budgetary approval for the proposed new staff positions will be considered in the 2023 budget process.

Beyond city council, policy analyst Laura Cameron said now is the time to get communities educated and involved in climate solutions in order to make sure the roadmap remains a priority for years to come.

“It needs to be able to withstand political changes at the city level, and the city needs to be able to work with different jurisdictions and different levels of government,” she said. “This work is just the beginning, this work needs to be resourced and supported from now to 2050 and beyond.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Doug Ford isn’t known to use a lot of statistics. He generally stays rosy in his public comments, relying on promises and wide assurances as opposed to cold, hard facts. And since climate change rarely came up during the campaign, he didn’t need to have a set of numbers handy about how he planned to address it. So it was interesting to hear Ford use one statistic over and over again: that transitioning Ontario’s steel industry from coal-powered furnaces to electric ones would reduce emissions equivalent to removing one million cars off Ontario’s roads. 

The Narwhal decided to do the math with a little help from Dave Sawyer, an environmental economist with the Canadian Climate Institute. We discovered that the emissions reductions from this transition would actually be more than what Ford was touting repeatedly — double, actually.

Let’s assume, Sawyer says, that an average Ontario household drives 16,000 kilometres annually, emitting close to three tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions from their car. Ontario’s two largest steel plants emit a collective six megatonnes (or six million tonnes) of emissions in the same time period. 

That means transitioning Ontario’s steel plant furnaces to electricity will be the equivalent of removing two million cars from the road, not just one. 

This doesn’t mean Ford is 100 per cent wrong. The Ontario Progressive Conservatives have offered a $500 million contribution to the almost $1.8 billion price tag of phasing out coal-fired steelmaking, with the federal government giving $400 million (it’s unclear where the rest of the money will come from). So maybe Ford is only taking credit for the emissions reductions that will come from already earmarked government funding — which seems confusing. We can’t say for sure, since the Ontario PC Party didn’t respond to The Narwhal’s request to clarify its calculations. This phase-out was one of few climate initiatives in the Ford government’s pre-election budget proposal, so expect to hear this number often. Ontario’s steel industry is the largest source of emissions in this province, so we’ll keep monitoring the progress on this and the possible impacts on industry, and the environment.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The majority of British Columbians want the province to prioritize renewable energy development over LNG, according to a recent survey conducted on behalf of Clean Energy Canada, a think tank based at Simon Fraser University.

The survey found 61 per cent of British Columbians want the province to invest in renewables like hydroelectric power, hydrogen and clean technology. Less than a quarter of respondents said they’d prefer a focus on LNG.

“It’s clear that the public wants to invest in a clean economy,” Merran Smith, executive director at Clean Energy Canada, told The Narwhal. “They’re seeing the way the world is going. Many countries have committed to … net-zero emissions by 2050, and that means they’re looking for clean and renewable energy sources.” 

Almost 80 per cent of respondents said the government should make sure all future LNG developments are subject to emissions requirements that fit within B.C.’s climate plan and its target of reducing emissions 40 per cent below 2007 levels by 2030.  

The survey also found that about one in five British Columbians think the fight against climate change should be the province’s main focus, with 61 per cent agreeing it needs to be among the government’s priorities. 

Marc Lee, senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said the results of the survey are promising. 

“I think the public is actually way ahead of the call [to move away] from fossil fuels,” he said. “We need to talk about systemic solutions and, by and large, the public is ready to go there.”

B.C. invests in clean energy while subsidizing LNG industry

B.C. has been steadily increasing its investments in clean energy but continues to subsidize the nascent LNG industry to the tune of billions of dollars. There are seven LNG facilities at different stages of planning, proposal and construction in the province.

The province has long justified its investment in LNG by saying B.C. will produce the “cleanest LNG in the world” and LNG is a “transition fuel” that will help other countries move away from other fossil fuels. But as The Narwhal has previously reported, calling LNG a transition fuel is misleading because the total emissions associated with production, transport and liquefaction are similar to burning coal. And as demand for LNG decreases globally, the future of the industry is increasingly tenuous. 

The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy was unable to tell The Narwhal prior to publication how the province’s investment in clean energy compares to its investment in LNG. However, the ministry noted the province allocated $902 million over three years in 2019 and an additional $419 million over three years in 2020 to the CleanBC initiative. This funding supports clean energy initiatives including electric vehicle charging stations, efficiency renovations and retrofits and incentives for industrial operations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

As The Narwhal previously reported, the province’s investments in just one LNG project through subsidies and tax credits could add up to more than $5 billion, according to a senior B.C. official.  

Despite an uncertain future for LNG demand globally, B.C. continues to increase its investment in the industry, citing it as a transition fuel despite research showing that LNG emissions are comparable with those of burning coal. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

In 2019, the province entered into an agreement with LNG Canada — the province’s largest LNG facility, which is under construction in Kitimat — that includes a 20-year deferral on provincial sales tax on construction, which adds up to an annual tax break of between $17 and $21 million. The province is also giving the facility a discounted rate on electricity, which will save LNG Canada between $32 and $59 million a year. And the facility will be exempted from any increases to the provincial carbon tax, an annual tax break of $62 million. 

As The Narwhal recently reported, the province also offers natural gas companies royalty credits that decrease the revenue B.C. collects on LNG production. Over the past four years, B.C. received $1 billion less than it would have without the credits.

These provincial incentives are in addition to federal support, including a $220 million investment to help fund the installation of energy-efficient gas turbines that will facilitate the liquefaction process.  

In a report written for the Corporate Mapping Project, Lee said the agreement between B.C. and LNG Canada lays out a framework for how the province can similarly support other proposed LNG projects, such as Woodfibre LNG, Kitimat LNG, Cedar LNG and a proposed expansion to FortisBC’s Tilbury LNG facility. 

Smith said all the investment in LNG might be for naught as more than 100 countries have made net-zero pledges for 2050, including some of the main markets for B.C. LNG like Korea and Japan. China, another key market, has made a net-zero commitment for 2060. 

“It really brings into question whether they will actually want LNG,” she said. “I think that we are going to see a global demand for gas continually decline, because renewables are so much cheaper and cost-effective for some of the emerging economies like India.”

She added the survey shows that people in B.C. are ready for the transition to new, cleaner technologies, both at home and for potential export.

Almost 75 per cent of respondents said they would support policies that make LNG and other “pollution-intensive products and activities” more expensive if those policies also include ways to make greener alternatives cheaper and more accessible.

“There is a growing global demand for [clean energy exports],” Smith said. “British Columbians want to be part of that economy. That’s the economy of today and of the future. Those are jobs that will last.”

Those exports include minerals needed to produce electric vehicle batteries, hydroelectricity and manufactured products like heat pumps. 

LNG Canada will make B.C.’s climate targets impossible to achieve

Last month, B.C. released its first Climate Accountability Report, which set a new emissions reduction target of 16 per cent below 2007 levels by 2025. It also reaffirmed its commitment to the 2030 target and said it would develop legislation to make sure B.C. reaches net-zero emissions by 2050.

But critics say the province’s investment in LNG will make meeting these targets impossible.

According to a Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives report published last summer, the LNG Canada facility would be responsible for 13 megatonnes of emissions annually when operating at full capacity. That’s equivalent to putting more than 2.8 million cars on the road for a year. The facility has a projected lifespan of 40 years, which means it would still be open for business in 2050, when the province is expected to achieve net-zero emissions.

At B.C.’s current rate of investment in LNG, the province will not be able to meet its 2050 net-zero emissions target. Critics such as Andrew Radzik, energy campaigner for Georgia Strait Alliance, say that B.C.’s support of LNG is antithetical to its climate goals. Graph: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

As Lee pointed out in a recent critique of the province’s accountability report, “LNG Canada, anticipated to start in 2025, will become the province’s largest point source emitter of GHGs the day it opens.”

In a statement provided to The Narwhal, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy said emissions produced by the LNG industry have to be compatible with the province’s climate action plans. This means that when LNG Canada starts operations, the province will have to find ways to reduce emissions in other sectors to offset the overnight increase. The ministry maintained it is working to reduce emissions throughout the natural gas industry. 

“We’re working with industry and the federal government to reduce methane emissions from upstream extraction, production and liquefaction of natural gas and incentivizing cleaner production,” the statement said.

Read more: Fact check: are B.C.’s LNG ambitions compatible with its climate goals?

But despite these promises to “clean up” the industry, critics say continuing to support LNG is incompatible with B.C.’s promises for strong climate action.  

“We cannot expand fracking and go ahead with the unbuilt LNG Canada project and still meet our climate goals,” Andrew Radzik, energy campaigner for Georgia Strait Alliance, wrote in a Stand.earth response to the province’s accountability report. 

“This is a moment of truth for the premier: he can be a real leader, taking the decisions we need for a stable climate, or he can support fracking and LNG. We no longer have time to pretend we can do both.”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Perched on top of a hill near the Wedzin Kwa river in Smithers, B.C., is the town’s first multi-unit passive house building. The Harding Heights affordable housing complex is an example of B.C.’s commitment to encouraging net-zero new buildings and other energy-efficiency initiatives. 

That commitment earned the province top spot on the Canadian Provincial Energy Efficiency Scorecard for the second year in a row. 

Passive house buildings, which are certified by the Passive House Institute, must meet a series of strict requirements to minimize energy consumption. They may have heat pumps, triple-glazed windows and insulation that nearly eliminates heat loss.

“It’s definitely the most energy-efficient building in town,” said Judy Hofsink, building manager of Harding Heights, which opened in 2018.

Hofsink said Harding Heights is so efficient at trapping solar heat, some tenants need to open their windows even though there’s snow on the ground. “It might be a little bit too warm because of the passive energy, but it is a really great building,” Hofsink said.

Harding Heights in Smithers, B.C., is the province’s first certified passive house development. Photo: Camus Photography

The scorecard, compiled by Efficiency Canada, rates the provinces on their energy-efficiency policies, programs and plans. Quebec came in second followed by Nova Scotia, while Saskatchewan came in last. The territories weren’t rated due to a lack of publicly available data. Despite B.C.’s successes, it only earned 58 out of a possible 100 points. 

The evaluation was done on a provincial level because each jurisdiction has control over energy-efficiency policy areas such as public utility regulation and building energy codes.

“With climate change, energy efficiency is a huge part of the solution that is often neglected by policy leaders,” said Brendan Haley, policy director at Efficiency Canada and co-author of the scorecard, which was released on Nov. 17.

“It’s not as flashy as batteries and solar panels and that’s really why we do this — we’re trying to put energy efficiency on the map as a really important policy solution. It’s one that everyone can participate in, in every single province.”

B.C.’s building ‘step code’ an example to the country

The building sector is responsible for more than a quarter of Canada’s energy demand, according to the International Energy Agency. By constructing energy-efficient buildings and retrofitting existing buildings, the country can eliminate up to 28 per cent of its total energy needs, the agency says. But to do so, experts say the provinces need to modernize building codes, which are standards builders must meet when constructing new buildings or renovating existing ones.  

In 2017, B.C. introduced the voluntary BC Energy Step Code to encourage builders and local governments to adopt energy-efficient construction techniques. 

The step code provides five tiers builders can choose to meet. At level one, the building is slightly more efficient than the mandatory building code and at level four it is 40 per cent more efficient. Level five, which will be mandatory in 2032, is net-zero energy ready. In other words, builders don’t have to install the solar panels, but they have to design for their future installation.

B.C.’s building step code encourages energy-efficient construction techniques and experts say that it sets an example for the rest of Canada. Photo: Deb Rousseau

“Traditionally, building code is just a minimum standard — the worst house you can legally build,” Haley said. “The step code created a series of steps, or performance tiers, signaling where the market needs to go.” 

Tom-Pierre Frappé-Sénéclauze, director for buildings and urban solutions at the Pembina Institute, called the step code “an elegant solution to a log jam that all building codes have.”

He explained that the step code is designed in a way that creates space for builders to reach energy-efficiency targets by whatever innovative methods they choose. Instead of a code that “tells you the inches of insulation and how long the screws need to be,” the step code says, “how you get there, we don’t really care, we just want to make sure that you reduce energy [consumption].”

Haley said B.C.’s step code is an example to the rest of the country. “We’re really hoping that we see all the other provinces adopting a kind of a B.C.-style building code in future years.”

Frappé-Sénéclauze cautioned that the code, while encouraging, still permits buildings to have a carbon footprint. “The step code allows you to build new buildings that are connected to [natural] gas,” he explained. 

He would like to see the code include a target for eliminating all greenhouse gas emissions. “Lesson number one, we’re in a climate emergency. We’re in a hole — stop digging.”

B.C. could adopt property assessed clean energy financing like other provinces 

B.C.’s leadership on new construction will pave the way for reducing future provincial energy consumption, but the province has room for improvement in renovations and retrofits, according to the scorecard. 

Haley said the province can join other provinces — such as Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia — in supporting retrofitting financing. Property assessed clean energy financing allows the cost of an energy-efficiency renovation to be paid back over time through an increase in property taxes. According to a recent Pembina Institute report, provincial legislation is required to give local governments the authority to incorporate the energy-efficiency financing.

Tom-Pierre Frappé-Sénéclauze is in favour of implementing property assessed clean energy financing but says it needs to be paired with strict regulations so buildings reduce their energy footprints. Photo: Science in HD / Unsplash

“The whole idea there is that you can enable municipalities to use the property tax system to pay off building upgrades,” Haley said. “The benefit of doing that is that it’s really the building that is getting the benefit of those upgrades, regardless of who lives in it.” 

He gave the example of a homeowner who might be reluctant to upgrade a house in case they move. “You can tie that payment to the building itself, and then whoever happens to be using that building will pay it off over time, which will allow those energy upgrades to be financed over a much longer time period, perhaps even 20 or 30 years.”

Haley added that the system enables “radical energy-efficiency measures [that] achieve the types of savings that we really need for climate change.”

Frappé-Sénéclauze said implementing property assessed clean energy financing would be a positive step forward, but it needs to be paired with strict regulations to ensure buildings — especially large commercial and industrial buildings — reduce their energy footprints. 

“There’s no way that we’re going to see the kind of retrofits that we need to reduce our carbon pollution and protect our assets spontaneously just because we’ve made lending available to people.”

B.C. leads Canada in electric vehicle registrations

B.C.’s commitment to electric vehicles also earned it top points on the scorecard. The province leads the country in new electric vehicle registrations, thanks in part to its progressive electric vehicle rebate program, investments in charging infrastructure and recent legislation that requires all new vehicles sold by 2040 to be electric. 

On Thursday, the province announced it had doubled the rebate for home and workplace charging stations. 

B.C. has the highest number of electric vehicle registrations in Canada. Photo: Andrew Roberts / Unsplash

“B.C. has the strongest uptake in electric vehicle adoption across Canada, and we’re positioning ourselves to become leaders in the EV industry,” Minister of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation Bruce Ralston said in a statement. “We’re making it easier and more affordable for people to make the switch to electric vehicles and supporting new jobs for electricians and trades workers across B.C.”

The province has also partnered with its two main energy providers, BC Hydro and FortisBC, on programs aimed at ensuring those vehicles have the required charging infrastructure. According to the scorecard, provincial programs have supported the installation of more than 1,300 public and residential charging stations to date.

Haley also pointed to Vancouver’s recent Climate Action Emergency Plan, which was approved the same day the scorecard came out, as an example of commitment to energy-efficient transportation in B.C. 

The plan says the city will make it easier for residents to walk, bike or take public transit by encouraging neighbourhoods to be more self-sufficient and designing travel pathways that focus on these methods of transport. The city will also charge people to drive into the downtown core. According to the city, the same model in London, England, reduced vehicle traffic by 40 per cent and increased the amount of people coming into the city centre by nearly 25 per cent.

Site C dam cost B.C. points on scorecard

B.C.’s investment in the Site C dam — which has experienced delays and cost overruns — lost the province some points on the scorecard, which suggests B.C. should prioritize energy reduction over building new infrastructure. 

Haley would like to see all provinces take this energy-savings approach before considering new energy-supply infrastructure, whether that’s a new dam or a natural gas pipeline. He pointed out that some U.S. states have even legislated this requirement.

B.C. lost points for its investment in the Site C dam. Photo: Jayce Hawkins / The Narwhal

“Unfortunately, that was not done in B.C. to build the Site C hydroelectric dam and it was also not done in Newfoundland and Labrador to build the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric dam.”

But, he added, there is hope. 

The Utilities Commission Act now requires BC Hydro to submit a plan explaining why it is unable to meet energy demands through energy-efficiency programs before it can develop any new infrastructure. 

Systemic racism may contribute to lack of energy-efficiency programs for Indigenous communities 

Haley noted that provincial spending on Indigenous energy-efficiency programs was surprisingly low given the province’s commitment to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. 

The report includes a clear statement on the divide between settler and Indigenous communities: “Indigenous populations could not be receiving adequate and equal energy-efficiency services due to systemic racism and program approaches that do not consider specific community needs or the importance of negotiation and partnership with independent Indigenous nations.”

The scorecard does acknowledge provincial programs like BC Hydro’s Indigenous Communities Conservation Program, which provides communities with training on energy-efficiency technologies, rebates on upgrades and free products like weather stripping and energy-efficient lightbulbs. 

But Haley said energy-efficiency initiatives should be more inclusive and could play a role in what he said should be the national agenda: “reconciliation and fighting colonialism.” 

The BC Indigenous Clean Energy Initiative helps administer provincial and federal funds to Indigenous communities for energy-efficiency projects. But Cole Sayers, a member of the Hupacasath First Nation and director of the initiative, said communities face several barriers in accessing those funds. 

He said to receive funds, communities usually have to prepare a planning document, but many Indigenous communities face extreme poverty and are unable to finance the work required to prepare those documents. 

He also said there’s a lack of adequate funding to ensure communities receive the training necessary to maintain energy-efficiency technologies such as heat pumps and solar panels. “In our projects, we stress that there has to be that capacity training,” Sayers said. 

Another important factor is educating community members about energy usage and how not to be wasteful, he said. “A really important part of the conversation that often gets left out is altering behaviour. And that’s not just First Nations — it’s everyone.” 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

BC Hydro customers will save an initial $116 million a year if the B.C. government cancels construction of the Site C dam and the savings will only grow over time, according to a new report from U.S. energy economist Robert McCullough.  

McCullough, who provided expert advice on the Site C project to B.C. cabinet in 2017, says stopping the Peace River hydro project now will also avoid significant geotechnical risks that BC Hydro hasn’t been able to resolve. Those risks were only disclosed to British Columbians on July 31. 

Profound geotechnical problems, related to the dam’s faulty foundation, mean BC Hydro does not know how much it will cost to complete the publicly funded project, which is already billions of dollars over budget, or when it might be finished. 

“Site C started on the wrong foot and has stayed on that foot ever since,” McCullough told The Narwhal. 

Unlike other major hydro dams in B.C. and in U.S. west coast states, which were built in narrow rocky canyons, the Site C dam is being constructed on far less reliable shale, noted McCullough, who wrote the report for the Peace Valley Landowner Association, representing landowners who will lose their homes and farmland to the dam’s reservoir.

Arlene Boon harvesting vegetables in her market garden. The Site C dam would flood valuable northern agricultural land in a valley that has some of Canada’s richest soil. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

“The banks are unstable and there is substantial tectonic activity in that area. The surface under the structure is shale — which adds significant risk as well,” wrote McCullough, an expert on power projects and former officer for a large hydroelectric facility in Portland, Oregon.

McCullough conservatively estimated it will cost $2.1 billion more to complete the dam, for a total price tag of almost $13 billion. That makes the project uneconomical, he said. 

“The people of B.C. have a giant fiasco on their hands with Site C,” Ken Boon, president of the Peace Valley Landowner Association, told The Narwhal. 

“I think we have to hold the government’s feet to the fire, to put politics and their own special interests aside and just look out for the interests of the public.”

Ken Boon, president of the Peace Valley Landowner Association, in the kitchen of the third generation farmhouse he shares with his wife, Arlene. The Boon’s fields will be flooded by the Site C dam or lost to the relocation of a provincial highway out of the flood zone. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

Energy economist asked to answer one question

Boon said new information about the Site C dam’s rising cost and unresolved geotechnical issues prompted the association to ask McCullough to reassess the financial viability of continuing the project.

In December 2017, the NDP government said its top two decision criteria for deciding to proceed with dam construction were the impact on ratepayers and the fiscal impacts and risks.

So the association asked McCullough to answer one question: “Is it in the best interests of British Columbians to immediately cancel or continue construction of Site C?”

The answer, McCullough said in an interview, is unequivocal: even though BC Hydro has spent $5 billion on the dam, the public utility will save money if the project is stopped and energy is procured from other sources. Those sources include wind and solar power, whose costs are dropping all the time. 

McCullough urged the B.C. government not to fall into what economists call the “sunk cost fallacy,” equating it to buying an old car that needs constant, expensive repairs. 

“The explanation about why you have to spend more and more money in keeping it running is that you’ve already spent so much money on it,” McCullough said. “At some point, it’s just cheaper to buy a new car.”

“We’re in this situation of having sunk a huge amount of money into a project that is not panning out — when we could simply close this book, open a new one, have the same amount of energy and far less risk.”

Clearing along the Peace River in preparation for Site C dam construction, July 12, 2018. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

McCullough’s report was dovetailed by a C.D. Howe Institute “Intelligence Memo” to “British Columbia’s next government.” The memo says the costs of the Site C dam likely exceeded the cost of alternative “carbon-cost adjusted” natural gas turbines as of January 2019 and the case for the project is “getting weaker.” 

The project’s new geotechnical and operational challenges suggest that “a significant budget increase can be expected,” says the memo, written by A. J. Goulding, president of London Economics International and an advisor to provincially owned hydro companies, and Mugwe Kiragu, a senior consultant at London Economics International who has a wide range of experience in modelling power system costs. 

“Even assuming a conservative estimate of budget increases, the economics still favour cancellation and replacement with an equivalent carbon-cost adjusted CCGT [combined cycled natural gas turbines],” the memo says. It notes that replacement with storage-backed wind capacity “becomes more cost-competitive the longer the project is delayed.” 

The Site C dam is “marginally economic” at current costs, according to the memo. “Our analysis shows that any meaningful cost increase makes cancellation a better choice,” Goulding and Kiragu state.

Site C dam concrete a potential problem

The Site C dam is set to flood 128 kilometres of the Peace River and its tributaries, forcing families from their homes and destroying some of Canada’s best farmland, habitat for more than 100 species at risk of extinction, and Indigenous gravesites and traditional hunting and trapping grounds.

The dam was announced in 2010 as a $6.6 billion project. It was given final approval in 2014 with a $8.7 billion budget and greenlighted in 2017 by the new NDP government with a $10.7 billion budget. 

At a new price tag of $12.8 billion, McCullough calculates power from the Site C dam will cost $94 per megawatt hour to produce. 

The power will most likely be sold to the U.S. for $40 per megawatt hour given B.C.’s significant energy surplus, McCullough said. 

“In this case, BC Hydro loses 57.7 per cent on each megawatt hour produced by Site C.” 

McCullough’s report zeroes in on a number of project risks, including the use of roller compacted concrete in construction, which he described as a “cost effective alternative to traditional construction methods.”

Instead of building the dam with cement that is cast in place, “roller compressed cement more closely resembles a layer cake, with layers being laid down sequentially and compressed,” the report said.

Although the use of roller-compacted concrete is an accepted construction practice, McCullough said a number of articles have questioned the reliability of the concrete if exposed to tectonic shocks, such as the earthquake that shook the Site C dam construction site in November 2018, forcing workers to evacuate. 

The Site C project is located in a wider area known to be filled with faults that can become critically stressed during fracking operations for gas. In 2017 and 2018, more than 10,000 earthquakes occurred in the wider area, where fracking is prevalent and known to be triggering earthquakes. 

The Old Fort road, crumpled by a November 2018 landslide on the notoriously unstable slopes of the Peace River. Photo: Jayce Hawkins / The Narwhal

McCullough said the articles’ authors found a significant risk of sliding or cracking, depending on the nature and preparation of the surface under the roller compacted concrete.

There is also a potential for leaks between the layers.  

“We have added another component to this, which is the surface we’re building this on is itself slippery,” McCullough said.

“The shale is not a solid rocky valley, like we’re looking at with the other major British Columbian dams, but something that can liquify or solidify, depending on geological conditions … we’ve taken a layer cake and put it on top of an uneven and slippery surface.”

‘It doesn’t make sense economically to proceed’

A number of factors make it uneconomical to finish the dam, even though 48 per cent of the project has officially been completed, McCullough said. That number drops to 43 per cent when the currently identified geotechnical problems are addressed, he said, noting there may be even bigger problems that have not yet been publicly disclosed. 

Factors include escalating construction costs, unresolved geotechnical issues and risks with seismic activity, falling costs for wind and solar power, dropping interest rates and “the deterioration of Site C’s ability to compete in energy markets.” 

Boon said the landowners were shocked to discover “how poor the economics of Site C still are.”

“Even if you discount all the money that has been spent already, and moving ahead with the money that has to be spent to complete the project — not including possible massive overruns because of foundation problems — it still doesn’t make sense economically to proceed.”

To write the report, McCullough said he had to comb through numerical data dating back to the beginning of the project because there is “astonishingly little information” publicly available. 

He said it is very strange that BC Hydro hasn’t mentioned what percentage of the project has been completed by particular dates, because that information is part of software used for all major infrastructure projects.

“A decision like this in a U.S. state would have been far more public.” 

Read more: Site C dam secrecy ‘extraordinary’, international hydro construction expert tells court proceeding

Boon said he was encouraged by Horgan’s comment during the Oct. 13 leaders’ debate for the provincial election, when the NDP leader was asked by moderator Shachi Kurl if the Site C project is the NDP’s “dumpster fire,” and if he would cancel the project. (The NDP have repeatedly characterized the BC Liberals’ handling of financially troubled ICBC as a dumpster fire.) 

Horgan told debate viewers he is awaiting the results of a report from Peter Milburn, whom he appointed in July to examine the geotechnical issues and economics of the Site C project.

“When we see that report we’ll make a decision,” Horgan said. “I’m not going to foreclose anything at this point in time.” 

But, pressed by Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau on Thursday during a CKNW leaders’ debate, Horgan refused to commit to cancelling the project if experts determine that it should not go ahead.

“I am disappointed John Horgan is continuing to ignore the evidence and refusing to provide British Columbians with a clear answer about his party’s plan in regards to Site C,” Furstenau said in a news release. 

“To me, it is very clear that the job of elected officials is to listen to experts and make decisions that are in the best interest of all British Columbians, not just your political party.”

Boon said he wants to see Milburn’s entire report when it is complete, not a “polished, condensed version.” 

“Economically, the people of British Columbia have lost a lot of money on the Site C project, no matter what happens moving forward,” Boon said.

“It might seem very bizarre to people to have all this work done and to scrap it, but at the end of the day that’s the only choice we may have economically.” 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

A natural gas field nearing depletion in northeastern B.C. could see new life as a reliable source of renewable energy for remote communities that today depend on fossil fuels for heat and electricity.

Fort Nelson First Nation recently secured a key provincial permit for the geothermal rights to 6,800 hectares of land in the Clarke Lake gas field, setting the stage for a drilling program later this year to prove that a commercial-scale geothermal power plant is within reach for the area.

Geothermal energy could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the Fort Nelson region, where electricity is currently generated from natural gas or imported from Alberta, which is heavily reliant on fossil fuels for power. It could also provide access to great stores of heat that could be used by industry, for tourism, or to keep local homes toasty in the winter.

“Greenhouse production is an obvious opportunity to explore. Everyone is pretty excited about producing fresh food in our region in the middle of winter,” Fort Nelson First Nation Chief Sharleen Gale told The Narwhal in an email.

Geothermal energy is contained in hot rocks and water deep underground. Unlike renewables such as solar and wind, geothermal can provide a constant power stream, making it an attractive source of baseload energy.

The challenge is finding the right conditions for production.

Geothermal energy is taking off globally, so why not in Canada?

Study finds potential for electricity and heat production

“It’s easy to figure out where it’s windy and sunny on the surface, but it’s kind of hard to figure out where there’s hot permeable rocks two kilometres underground,” explained Steve Grasby, a research scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada.

Typically, geothermal power not only requires heat, but also water, which absorbs heat by flowing through permeable rock. As long as the water, or in some cases steam, flows at a high enough rate, it can be drawn to the surface through a well where heat energy can be extracted and either transformed into electricity at a power plant or used as direct heat to warm greenhouses for food production or buildings during cold winter months, a common use in Iceland.

The geothermal greenhouses at Garðyrkjustöð Ingibjargar have been in operation since the 1930s. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Researchers working on a project for Geoscience BC, an independent, non-profit research organization, have already been able to model the Clarke Lake reservoir and simulate the flow of hot water from the underground aquifer. 

A subsequent “pre-feasibility” study determined there is potential to produce both heat and electricity from the geothermal resource in the Clarke Lake gas field. The study offered rough estimates, within 50 per cent accuracy, that a 15 megawatt project could cost between $139 million and $285 million and take 12 to 24 years to payback.

“We do see it as one of the higher potential parts of the country and I think well worth the exploration effort,” said Grasby.

Map of the Clarke Lake geothermal study area. BC Hydro transmission lines are shown in yellow. Map: Geoscience BC

Geothermal exploration can carry significant economic risks: in a worst case, millions could be spent drilling a test well only to find high heat but no fluid to carry that energy to the surface.

In the Clarke Lake area, data collected from gas revealed high temperatures well below the surface, helping to bolster the odds of success. But the presence of high enough water flows can only be confirmed through drilling. 

In a statement, Bruce Ralston, the minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, said the recently issued provincial permit “gives the Fort Nelson First Nation the certainty it needs to attract investment and move forward with developing a geothermal energy project that will reduce climate pollution while creating new jobs and opportunities.”

Geothermal plant could be up and running by 2024

Alongside likely benefits for the climate and food security, the project’s economic opportunities are a welcome prospect for the Fort Nelson First Nation, which is partnering with the Saulteau First Nation to bring geothermal energy to the province’s northeast. 

“Our region is economically depressed and our people are under employed. We need opportunities through project ownership,” said Gale. “We have seen what happens as a people with industrial development when we are not fully involved.” 

Though a number of permits are still needed, Fort Nelson First Nation and its partner are planning to drill a test production well and injection well later this year.

“We know the geothermal resource exists through all the data that’s been collected but it has to be proven … so the development can be commercially financed,” said John Ebell, project manager of the Clarke Lake geothermal undertaking and a founder and owner of the Barkley Project Group.

The test production well, which will be some 2,500 metres deep and about 13 inches wide at the bottom, will run for two weeks to a month, enough time to prove the project is viable, said Ebell.

If all goes according to plan, a geothermal plant could be running by 2024.

“I have a lot of confidence in the Clarke Lake project so I have no doubt we’re going to make it across the finish line,” Ebell said.

Gale hopes it can serve as an example for other communities, as well.

“Geothermal energy is available in other northern Indigenous communities. Fort Nelson First Nation and our partner Saulteau First Nation hope that what we accomplish will be an inspiration to other communities,” she said.

Why a Small Alberta Oil and Gas Town is Pursuing Geothermal Power

‘You have to risk money to drill holes’

There are a number of areas with geothermal potential in B.C. — from the hot sedimentary basin in the northeast to the volcanic belt in the southwest — and some other communities are already actively exploring the possibility of capturing that energy from deep within the earth. 

Projects are underway south of Terrace, where the Kitselas First Nation has partnered with the Borealis GeoPower on the Lakelse project, and south of Valemount, where the same company is working with the Valemount Geothermal Society on the Canoe Reach project.

Meanwhile in Saskatchewan, the DEEP Earth Energy Production project has already drilled test wells to depths over 3,000 metres. 

Drilling that deep comes with its challenges but Canada is well positioned given the drilling expertise that already exists as part of the oil and gas industry and could be applied to geothermal.

The Fort Nelson First Nation is considering transforming a depleted gas field into a geothermal energy project. This idled Cabin gas plant is located northeast of Fort Nelson. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

The Achilles’ heel of geothermal is the financial risk of exploration. Just one test well for the Clarke Lake project is expected to cost around $12 million. While Natural Resources Canada gave Fort Nelson First Nation $1 million to assess the Clarke Lake resource last year, Ebell expects to face some funding challenges since the geothermal resource is not yet proven. 

“You have to risk money to drill holes and if you don’t find a good resource you’ve lost all that,” said Grasby, who’s hoping his team’s research in the Garibaldi Volcanic Belt will help reduce the risks of exploration.

The goal is to find new ways to better predict the location of those sought-after hot, permeable aquifers and in doing so encourage more industry investment in exploration.

“Geothermal won’t work everywhere, there are parts of Canada that we know are very low temperature and the thermal resources aren’t there, but in places that we do have the right temperatures, it could be a very good source of energy,” said Grasby — even if it’s just for the heat.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

There have been delays, exemptions, backtracking and threats of lawsuits — but the Pan-Canadian Framework is ever so slowly inching the country towards a low-carbon future.

Unfortunately, the same can’t exactly be said about the country’s 292 off-grid communities, most of which are Indigenous. Roughly 86 per cent of off-grid communities are primarily dependent on diesel for generating electricity.

The federal government recently allocated $220 million over six years to help such communities transition to renewables, a marked increase from the $9 million doled out over the past decade. But calculations indicate that it’s not nearly enough to deal with the 450 megawatts of installed diesel in Canada.

“It’s really a drop in the bucket,” said Nicholas Mercer, PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo and expert on off-grid diesel-reliant communities. “Over six years, that works out to less than five megawatts per year, and that’s only if you’re investing in infrastructure.”

Mercer said the current trajectory will only address around six per cent of annual demand, potentially leaving hundreds of communities dependent on diesel. And that’s a hugely concerning possibility for environmental, social and economic reasons.

Nunavut pays $60 million a year in diesel subsidies

The one and only upside to diesel generation is that it has extremely cheap upfront costs.

Mercer said that diesel in an off-grid community costs around $1,500 per installed kilowatt, whereas a solar or wind installation ranges between $7,000 and $8,000. That means that a 100-kilowatt diesel generator comes at about $150,000, compared to $700,000 or $800,000 for the same capacity from renewables.

That can be a significant benefit in a cash-strapped community — but it’s the only one, and it dooms communities to a string of downsides.

Diesel fuel costs a ton of money for communities. While the average Canadian consumer pays between seven and 17 cents per kilowatt-hour, the unsubsidized cost of diesel is about $1.30. As a result, governments have to heavily subsidize communities. A recently published report from the World Wildlife Fund Canada found that the Government of Nunavut pays $60.5 million every year in diesel subsidies.

The Pembina Institute reports that Canada’s off-grid communities collectively consume between 90 million and 120 million litres of diesel on an annual basis. That’s enough diesel to run all of Toronto’s Go Train system for five and a half years.

While related greenhouse emissions aren’t huge — after all, the communities and electricity demands are fairly small — the use of diesel results in a per-capita electricity carbon footprint that’s over double the national average.

There’s also enormous risk of diesel spills. Recent investigative work by Christopher Pollon indicated that 2015 saw 830 diesel spills in five provinces — and those are only the ones we know about. Attawapiskat First Nation in Northern Ontario is still cleaning up a spill of almost 30,000 litres of diesel from 1979. These can lead to a wide range of human health effects, including cancer.

Finally, there are the social impacts. Diesel generators tend to be old and unreliable, leading to frequent power outages; Mercer said that Pikangikum First Nation in Northern Ontario loses about 20 per cent of classroom education time because of outages. Many are also faced with “load restriction,” which occurs when peak demand reaches 75 per cent of generation capacity and severely restricts potential jobs and growth.

“You can’t build new homes and connect them to the grid, you can’t add new businesses to create opportunity for the community, you can’t invest in infrastructure upgrades,” Mercer said. “You can’t do anything that will increase load. This is a major issue in Canada.”

Capacity training key for remote communities

Dave Lovekin, senior analyst for Pembina Institute specializing in renewable policies for remote communities, said the design of the new funding is also important because it specifically carves out money for capacity training, something which had previously only been lumped together with the overall program. This means that communities will be able to receive money specifically for training and education so that local residents can fix, maintain and order spare parts themselves.

Judith Sayers, president of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, said that Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations near Tofino serve as a great example of this in action — they built two small-scale hydro projects in partnership with the Barkley Group and are now working on a third on their own.

“They’ve built enough capacity that they have enough confidence to do this one on their own,” she said in an interview. “That’s what we want to see, right?”

As chief of Hupacasath First Nation, Sayers oversaw the construction of the 6.5 megawatt China Creek run-of-river hydro project. Unlike many First Nations which were only accepting royalty agreements, Hupacasath retained a majority ownership stake in the project and sell excess electricity to BC Hydro.

Approval of Site C dampens potential for Indigenous-owned renewables

Experts said that kind of Indigenous participation and ownership of renewable projects is a crucial part of success.

But Mercer noted that both the state and private sector can often view Indigenous communities as “testing grounds” for technologies or the “low-hanging fruit” of greenhouse gas reductions, which can come across as forcing projects on a community and undermining political self-determination.

“Often, communities are bombarded with consultants and companies that come and say ‘hey, have we got the technology solution for you,’” Lovekin added. “Communities are often over capacity and have a tough time getting past the sales pitch and determining which technology will actually work. It’s a valid concern and communities need more support in this regard to lead instead of dealing with consultation fatigue.”

In British Columbia, there’s yet another obstacle. Sayers said that since the provincial NDP government gave the go-ahead to the Site C dam, BC Hydro has quit taking any applications for new renewable projects that would sell power to the grid. So while First Nations can still build projects that help them transition away from diesel and become grid-independent, they’ll lose out on a lot of potential jobs and revenue due to not being able to sell excess electricity.

“There are so many First Nations that want to develop clean energy,” Sayers said. “Because the government has started to build Site C, they no longer need clean energy. It’s a barrier right now to do anything in an economic way. There’s none. There’s no opportunity.”

The BC Utilities Commission’s final report on Site C concluded that a mixture of alternative energy sources such as wind, geothermal and solar could generate the sufficient amounts of electricity at lower rates for residents.

Still need policy support and new funding

As with many of the government’s climate policies, experts are taking a wait-and-see approach.

Lovekin said he’ll be watching to see what other funding announcements come, noting that more money for projects may be available via the Arctic Energy Fund and Canada Infrastructure Bank.

But he suggests that policies are generally missing to support the funding.

“Actual policy to mandate a certain target of renewables or a production incentive is something we’d like to see,” he said. “Right now, what the federal government has announced are programs to support diesel transition, but no specific policy. We’d like to see a combination of both.”

Contrary to what many people might think, there’s really no major technological challenges impeding the ability for remote communities to transition to renewables: solutions are all available and can be tweaked to particular locations. The only issues are lack of upfront capital and community capacity — both of which could be resolved with far more federal investments.

“When you start looking at some of the other countries and their challenges, we should be able to do this with the kind of technology and money we have available in our country,” Sayers said.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

When the winning bids for Alberta’s renewable power auction were announced in December, jaws dropped.

The winning projects were approved at a record-breaking low price of 3.7 cents per kilowatt hour — the lowest price for electricity anywhere in Canada.

“This is a game changer. Even the most optimistic observers were shocked at how low the price turned out to be,” said Binnu Jeyakumar, electricity program director at the Pembina Institute.

My, how the times have changed.

Nearly a decade ago a leaked voice recording showed federal money earmarked for wind projects was quietly redirected to subsidize Alberta’s oil patch. About a year later the fledgling Canadian wind industry was left high and dry with a federal budget that saw renewable energy as merely a method of greening the oilsands.

That all changed with the introduction of the NDP government’s Climate Leadership Plan in November 2015. The plan called for all coal-fueled generating plants to be phased out by 2030. Coal generating plants now produce about half of the province’s electricity.

Renewable energy producers were so eager to get in on the action that when the government agency that manages Alberta’s electrical grid put up for auction 400 megawatts of renewable power last year, bids by 12 companies totalled 10 times that much.

In the end, 600 megawatts — four projects with a total price tag of $1 billion — were approved.

The recent winning bids revealed keen competition when it comes to price. The successful bidders will produce wind power at prices much lower than Ontario, and lower even than natural gas powered plants.

No wonder Premier Rachel Notley could hardly contain her glee as they announced the auction results to the news media in mid-December.

“The naysayers predicted that the price of this renewable energy would probably come in high, about eight cents per kilowatt hour,” Notley said. “In fact, our process was so competitive and so many companies wanted to invest we got a 20-year price of 3.7 cents per kilowatt hour.”

My, how the times have changed. https://t.co/8xDfO3OEFE

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 15, 2018

More wind projects in Alberta to come

In early February the government announced two more bidding competitions will get underway by the end of March with winners to be announced in December.

Round 2, for 300 megawatts, will require bidders to have a minimum of 15 to 25 per cent Indigenous equity ownership.

For round 3, 400 megawatts will be up for auction with the lowest cost the most important determinant.

Robert Hornung, president of the Canadian Wind Energy Association, was among the first to respond with kudos for Alberta’s renewable electricity program.

“Today’s announcement is a clear signal that Alberta is ‘open for business’ for renewables,” Hornung stated in the media release, praising the province’s “clarity and consistency.”

Alberta’s electricity market appeals to renewable energy developers for several reasons — even aside from its abundance of wind, sunshine and open spaces.

Notably, Alberta’s power generation and transmission is not owned and managed by a Crown corporation. Instead, mostly private, for-profit companies provide electricity to Albertans, allowing more room for new entrants to the market. Government-appointed agencies oversee their operations and ensure generating plants and transmission lines keep up with demand for electricity.

And unlike many other provinces, Alberta does not rely on hydro to generate electricity; it has usually been too expensive compared to the power-generation mainstays, coal and natural gas.

The combination of these factors means Alberta presents a big opportunity for wind and solar producers.

Wind projects a boon to local communities

Three companies will spend a total of $1 billion on the wind farms, which will have the capacity to produce electricity for 255,000 homes.

All the winning bids, announced in December, were for wind projects. Edmonton’s Capital Power, which was a big player during the coal era, was awarded a 201 megawatt project in southeast Alberta; EDP Renewables of Portugal won a 248 megawatt project also in southeast Alberta; and ENEL Green Power North America, a division of a Rome-based global power company was awarded projects of 115 and 31 megawatts near Pincher Creek in southwest Alberta.

The projects will be a boon to local communities because they will pay municipal taxes, fees to landowners, as well as provide jobs particularly during the construction phase.

“We are very pleased about this project,” said Joan Hughson, deputy reeve of Forty-Mile County which stretches southwest of Medicine Hat to the U.S border and includes about 3,500 residents. “This will be a very big boost for our tax revenue because there is little industry here; it’s mostly farming.”

According to Jerry Bellika, a spokesman for Capital Power of Edmonton, its project, which features 56 wind turbines, will generate about $2 million a year in taxes for the county. Thirty landowners will receive annual payments for the use of their land. In addition, neighbouring landowners will receive “goodwill payments.”  

The $300 million project still needs approval from the Alberta Utilities Commission but construction is expected to begin later this year and be complete by the end of 2019.

Rome-based Enel Green Power has a North American division headquartered in Massachusetts,  and already has a wind farm near Pincher Creek in the southwest corner of Alberta and will be building two more in the area at the cost of $209 million.

When asked about plans to engage with the local community about the projects a representative was vague about exactly what the company planned to do.

“We are committed to hiring locally when the workforce is available…we also always look for ways to support critical community initiatives such as infrastructure, education, recreation , and more,”  she wrote in an email.

EDP Renewables did not reply to a request for information.

Binnu Jeyakumar of the Pembina Institute said how the companies engage with and contribute to the local communities will be among the key factors when it comes to determining  if these renewable energy projects are successful.

“Good community engagement will be critical to building good will,” she said.  “Because there are a lot more renewable projects to come.”

By 2030 it is anticipated that 30 per cent of the grid will be powered by renewables.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Alberta’s plan for the replacement of coal energy with natural gas and renewables was announced in 2015, but still questions as to who will provide the new power remain unanswered.

Walter Hossli, who has been working with solar panel manufacturers, potential investors, and green energy groups to promote community energy projects, says they want the government to move much more quickly on that sector than it has.

“Everyone is sitting on their hands not knowing what the rules will be…maybe the government just doesn’t know what it’s doing on this file,” said Hossli. “There’s this go big or go home mentality because the system has been geared to larger scale electricity producers.”

The phase-out of coal-generated electricity by 2030 is a main pillar of the Alberta government’s Climate Leadership Action Plan. If the government operates according to plan, in 13 years natural gas will account for 70 per cent of the province’s electricity, while generation by renewables — mostly wind and solar — will have increased significantly to make up the remaining 30 per cent.

Currently, coal accounts for 50 per cent of electricity generation, the highest of any province.

Overabundance of Interest from Renewable Producers

A government request for proposals for renewable projects aroused a lot of interest; a total of 400 megawatts of electrical power were on the table for this round of contracts. Bids amounting to ten times that much were received.

Four hundred megawatts is only about 1.5 per cent of total electricity generation in Alberta, so many more renewable projects will have to be integrated into the system if the government’s goal is to be reached.

But there are still lots of questions about the NDP government’s policies designed to achieve that goal: Will the renewable sector be turned over to the corporations that dominated the coal era? Or will they lose out to international players?

Will there be room for smaller scale community renewable energy that gives people more control of their electricity usage and costs?

Those are some of the key issues arising as the government is set to announce in December the first batch of successful bidders for renewable energy projects.

“There’s this go big or go home mentality because the system has been geared to larger scale electricity producers.” https://t.co/2A5nGVJC7Q

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) December 4, 2017

Patchwork of Electrical Companies

To fully understand the switch that the government is attempting, it is important to remember that unlike other provinces, Alberta’s power generation and transmission is not owned and managed by a crown corporation.

Instead, mostly private, for-profit companies provide electricity to Albertans. Government appointed agencies oversee their operations and ensure generating plants and transmission lines keep up with demand for electricity.

The main agency is the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) which now manages the bidding process for renewable projects.

According to spokesperson Erin Powell, the system operator will rank the proposals and then turn the list over to Alberta’s minister of energy who will make the final decisions next month.

The agency wouldn’t disclose what companies entered the bidding competition. But there’s no question that big players from the coal era that now have to transition to natural gas and renewables — notably TransAlta and ATCO — are among the bidders.

Suncor, the biggest oilsands producer, is also investing in wind projects. Municipally-owned power companies such as Calgary’s Enmax are developing wind and solar projects along with their natural gas powered generating stations.

“Incumbents definitely have an advantage,” said Binnu Jeyakumar, electricity program director at the Pembina Institute.

“They are familiar with the system in place and know the province. But there are also lots of international companies that have a great deal of expertise with renewables.”

Wind projects will likely be awarded the lion’s share, said Jeyakumar.

“Wind is by far the cheapest renewable in Canada, only natural gas is cheaper right now but we don’t know what will happen with the price of natural gas in the future. It could go up,” she added. “Proponents of solar projects may get a share but wind will dominate.”

And there’s plenty of wind in southern Alberta which is already home to a few wind farms.

One of the key factors Jeyakumar says Pembina will be watching is how winning bidders plan to engage communities that will be affected by wind farms.

“They will be in rural areas, and it’s important that not just the owners of the land where the wind farm is located, but other people close to the project share in the benefits,” said Jeyakumar.

Small-Scale, Community Energy Not a Priority for Government

There’s another piece that is part of the push for renewable energy in Alberta that’s fallen under the radar.

Plans for community energy and micro-energy which could see solar and wind power produced for the benefit of small groups of local investors — neighbourhoods, towns, farms, First Nations or large institutions such as a universities—  are not being developed by Alberta Energy, one of the most dominant government ministries, but by the environment ministry.

That seems to indicate that those sorts of projects are not high on the government’s agenda because all the expertise in the electrical energy field is concentrated in Alberta Energy.

So it’s not surprising that stakeholders in the community renewables sector are still waiting for the government to come up with policy and regulations so they can move ahead with projects.

“Ideally, we would like to see about 20 per cent of the renewable pie go to community energy,” Hossli said.

In Germany, where renewable energy accounts for 35 per cent of all energy produced, most of the solar and wind projects are owned by citizen cooperatives, Hossli noted.

The Alberta Green Economy Network is also pushing for more community energy and would like to see the government implement a feed-in tariff for the projects, which would guarantee a price for energy produced and sold to the grid to encourage up-front investment.

It could be difficult for community groups to raise the necessary funds for local renewable energy projects without this kind of program in place.

Last summer the government conducted a survey of 158 stakeholders asking for input on community energy generation; 54 responded.

According to the final report, “Many participants believe the market currently favours traditional players who generate electricity using coal and gas. They perceive an unlevel playing field that advantages large scale, incumbent producers of energy.”

The government followed up the survey with a one-day symposium for stakeholders and experts last July. But to date no further steps have been taken to advance community energy or micro-generation projects in Alberta.

Meanwhile, large scale renewable energy projects are moving ahead, with the first batch expected to be operational by 2019.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

The rain comes down in a dense mist as John Ebell shows off the construction site of the Nicknaqueet River Hydro project, high on a hillside above the Wannock River in Rivers Inlet, a fjord on the central coast of B.C.

It’s the perfect weather, he says, to illustrate why a small-scale hydroelectric project is so perfect for the area.

“There’s a lot of rainfall here, and there’s a lot of mountains,” Ebell, project manager with the Barkley Project Group, told DeSmog Canada. “So we have drop, and we have rainfall. That’s a perfect combination for hydropower.”

The river below is home to all five Pacific species of salmon, including some of the biggest chinook* in the world. So traditional hydropower — with a dam, a reservoir and inherent risks to spawning grounds — was not acceptable to the community.

They decided on run-of-river, a less intrusive method that involves diverting some of the river’s flow to power a turbine, then returning it to the source.

“This project will displace 97 per cent of the community’s energy needs on an annual basis,” Ebell said.

“The Wuikinuxv Nation is setting a great example demonstrating renewable energy. They’re showing that it’s clean and it’s feasible and it’s possible to displace diesel with renewable energy.”

At the moment, those needs are met by diesel fuel, imported by barge and stored in two huge diesel tanks, rusting at the mouth of the Wannock River. For decades, they have served as a reminder of the community’s dependence on diesel.

A 2011 Natural Resources Canada report showed about 90 per cent of the electricity generated in remote communities in B.C. comes from diesel, at an annual cost of more than $3 million per year. In Nunavut, that cost skyrockets to more than $40 million.

The 2017 federal budget set aside $715 million over 11 years to help communities get off diesel, either by generating their own renewable power or by hooking up to the grid. The latter wasn’t an option for the Wuikinuxv, however, which learned in late 2013 that BC Hydro would not be providing their isolated community with electricity — despite plans to do so. That’s when the nation’s attention turned to the idea of locally generated, renewable electricity as a way of surviving off the grid.

Total costs for the Rivers Inlet hydro project came to $9.8 million. The province of B.C. provided nearly $600,000 to the community through the First Nations Clean Energy Business Fund and now-defunct Community Energy Leadership Fund, while the remainder was supplied through federal funds.

Diesel Cost Community $1 Million Each Year

“It’s literally a million dollars a year that went to the generator,” Wuikinuxv Elder George Johnson said.

In a community of under 80 people, that is a significant annual investment that diverted money from other projects.

“It’s hard to live out here because we’re so isolated,” George’s stepson, Gordon Moody, who is working as the project’s site safety supervisor, said.

“Everything costs a lot. So cutting costs is a big deal for us.”

Johnson and other Wuikinuxv community leaders have been pushing for the project since the 1960s.

Now, sitting in his carving studio, he smiles widely.

“It’s finally here,” he says.

Project Costs Included Minimizing Impacts on Bears, Salmon

According to the Barkley Group, the project will require an estimated $160,000 in annual maintenance and operation costs. The annual cost includes wages for three part-time employees.

Some of the construction costs, however, were voluntary additions to help reduce the project’s short- and long-term footprint.

For example, drawing on expertise from Raincoast grizzly researcher Megan Adams, the project’s access road was built with a purposely sinuous design, giving bears more time to hear an approaching vehicle.

Slash is stacked perpendicular to the road, giving bears extra escape routes. And in order to keep the area bear-friendly after the project is complete, berry bushes will be encouraged along the transmission line, and remote sensing instruments will keep visits to the site to a minimum.

Ebell looks around the construction site uneasily, apologizing for the state of it. But by construction site standards, it is remarkably tidy and minimal; the narrow road opens up to a slightly wider area that has been cleared to allow room for machines and workers.

The trees on either side stand untouched, and Ebell says once construction is completed this winter, the area will be replanted. All of the cleared area has a purpose, with seemingly little wasted space.

Salmon are also being protected. The entire project takes place above the highest point salmon reach in the stream, meaning their spawning grounds will have as much water when it comes online as they do currently.

Locally Produced Power a Sign of Things to Come

The Nature Conservancy of Canada donated six hectares of former industrial land, which had been set aside for protection, to the project, saying it was “confident the project team has taken all necessary steps to minimize impact on the conservation values of the project lands.”

In an e-mailed statement, a spokesperson for the conservancy explained the organization’s reasoning behind the donation.

“The Wuikinuxv community will benefit considerably from having a reliable, sustainable, locally produced power source, and the environmental gains to be made by transitioning the community off of diesel power is an overall conservation win.”

The project is a sign of things to come up the coast. Other communities — Hesquiaht First Nation in Hot Springs Cove and Dzawada̱ʼenux̱w First Nation in Kingcome Inlet — have projects in the feasibility assessment stages, meaning the coming years should see even more communities coming off diesel power.

“The Wuikinuxv First Nation is setting a great example demonstrating renewable energy,” Ebell says. “They’re showing that it’s clean, that it’s feasible, and that it’s possible to displace diesel with renewable energy.”

* Update: November 7, 2017 4:00pm pst. This article has been updated to reflect the fact that the Wannock River is home to the world’s biggest chinook salmon, not sockeye as previous stated.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.