FNPA hosts first community energy forum in Saskatoon
- Fraser Needham | November 21, 2015
The First Nations Power Authority seeks to link Indigenous communities and industry leaders with the ultimate goal of capitalizing on expanding energy markets.
The not-for-profit corporation held its first community energy forum in Saskatoon on November 17 with about 90 people in attendance.
The event was co-hosted by the Saskatchewan Office of The Treaty Commissioner.
Leah Nelson Guay is the CEO of FNPA.
She says with SaskPower opening up its grid system to alternate sources of energy, now is a good time for any number of First Nations to get into the business of providing power in the province.
“Why we are here and what this forum is all about is to link First Nations economic development authorities with industry leaders as part of facilitating potential partnerships between the two in some of these new energy markets,” Nelson Guay says.
Albert Durocher, the manager of the Flying Dust Band Holding Corporation, was one of the keynote speakers at the conference.
The Meadow Lake-area First Nation currently owns nine-quarter sections of land in southeastern Saskatchewan and has partnered with Crescent Point Energy to extract oil and gas in the area.
However, the Flying Dust band is also currently exploring the potential of using flare gas produced by this economic activity as a potential clean power source.
As part of the project, carbon dioxide would be removed from the flare gas and Flying Dust believes as much as 20 megawatts of clean power could be produced from the site, which would make it the largest of its kind in the province.
The FDB Holding Corporation has put forward an unsolicited power proposal to SaskPower that, if approved, would see a five megawatts demonstration project go forward at the site.
Durocher says that by March Flying Dust should have some indication from the Crown utility as to whether the demonstration project will go ahead or not.
He says because the band realizes oil and gas production does have some negative environmental effects in the area, they want to lessen some of this impact while at the same time pursuing new economic development opportunities.
“Having an oil and gas company does put us in a bit of a tough situation,” Durocher says. “Where we’re wanting to be environmental stewards of the land, we’re also pumping oil and gas out of the earth. So, for us to lessen our impact from this, because we need it as an economic development driver, we’ve decided to get into flare gas to lessen that environmental impact that we have, that footprint I guess.”
Durocher says exploring the business of using flare gas as a source of clean energy has been a steep learning curve over the past few years, which has meant getting in contact with the right people including those at FNPA.
“What we’ve learned is that when you get into an industry like this, you need to have the proper technical expertise,” he says. “So, we’ve learned to get through the system and find the proper people. So, we’ve found some pretty good people in Western Canada who are dealing in flare gas already. We’ve had many discussions with them. Some of them want to be partners, some of them are just interested in what we are doing.”
The First Nations Power Authority has a number of projects on the go in Saskatchewan including two demonstration solar projects in the far northern communities of Fond du Lac and Hatchet Lake.
These projects have the capacity to provide 50 kilowatts of power to the local schools in each community with potential annual savings of between $8,000 to $10,000 on power bills.