Transcript
Transcript: Exploring Energy in Canada Series: Understanding Regional Energy Realities
[00:00:01 Text appears on screen that reads "Welcome" "Bienvenue".]
[00:00:06 The screen fades to Caroline Pitfield in a video chat panel.]
Caroline Pitfield (Executive Faculty Member at the Canada School of Public Service): Good afternoon. Welcome to today's event. The second on our Exploring Energy in Canada Learning Series called 'Understanding Regional Energy Realities'. I'm glad you're joining us. My name is Caroline Pitfield and I am an Executive Faculty Member here at the Canada School of Public Service. I'm very pleased to be here and happy to be moderating today's event. Before we begin, I do want to recognize that I'm speaking to you from the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe People.
In particular, I want to express my gratitude to generations of Algonquin people, past and present, as the original caretakers of the space I occupy. I'm very grateful to be here. Recognizing that you're watching this probably from different places across the country. I also want to pause for a minute to allow you to reflect on the traditional territory that you are on today and to recognize your own gratitude to the caretakers there. All right. So, with respect to today's event, there's a bit of a tee off. When we talk about energy in Canada, we often think of oil and gas and hydroelectricity powering our country's most populous urban centres.
But Canada, of course, is a vast, vast country comprised of disparate regions and populations with varying energy needs and solutions. Today, we are going to explore energy landscapes of three distinct regions in Canada: the North, Atlantic Canada and the Prairie region. Each of these regions has their own unique challenges and opportunities related to energy. We have three speakers today. Each of whom will speak specifically to a different energy context.
[00:02:05 Mark Heyck appears in a separate video chat panel.]
Mark Heyck is the Executive Director of the Arctic Energy Alliance, a not-for-profit society with a mandate to help communities, consumers, producers, regulators and policymakers work together to reduce the costs and environmental impacts of energy and utility services in the Northwest Territories. Mark also served three terms as a Yellowknife city councillor and two terms as mayor.
[00:02:31 Michelle Robichaud appears in a separate video chat panel.]
Michelle Robichaud is the President of the Atlantica Centre for Energy, which is an organization dedicated to increasing energy literacy and the sustainable growth and economic development of the regional energy sector. She also currently serves on the executive committee of the Atlantic Hydrogen Alliance and is a member of the National Nuclear Leadership Roundtable. Welcome, Michelle.
[00:02:54 Martin Boucher appears in a separate video chat panel.]
Last but not least, Martin Boucher, is NorQuest College's Research Chair in Sustainability, where he leads applied research on innovative strategies for accelerating the energy transition. He's also the founding president of Community Energy Cooperative Canada and a fellow at the Energy Futures Lab. Martin's work focuses primarily on community energy, small modular reactors, skills development and social innovation and clean energy solutions. So, in a moment, I'm going to give each of the speakers about 10 minutes to talk. And following their presentations, I will indulge in the facilitators privilege of asking a few questions before I turn to you and the audience to ask your own questions.
In anticipation of our Q&A, I would encourage you to submit questions for our panelists using the webcast interface. You can actually do that when the question occurs to you, rather than waiting for the Q&A or do it during the Q&A. Whatever works best for you. In order to submit your questions, you will click on the chat function icon, which is located at the top right corner of your screen. And you can submit that question in the official language of your choice. We're going to get to as many questions as time permits. We do have a lot of people joining us today. We may not get to all of them, but we're going to do our best. And with that, Mark, I'm going to ask you first. Tell us a little bit about the North.
Mark Heyck (Executive Director of Arctic Energy Alliance): For sure. Thank you very much, Caroline. Good morning to everyone out west. Good afternoon to everybody out east. Good morning. Good afternoon. It's a pleasure and thank you very much to the school for the invitation to present. We really value the opportunity to share our knowledge and our experience from northern Canada. So, I'm based now and coming to you from Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. But I thought I'd start by providing a little bit of the northern context in terms of the three northern territories. And then, I'll kind of focus in on the Northwest Territories specifically.
So, across the north, of course, we've got Yukon, we've got the Northwest Territories, we've got Nunavut, and they are all very distinct and diverse in terms of their energy mix, the attempts or efforts to mitigate climate change and adapt to climate change. The Yukon has power grids that cover almost the entire territory. The vast majority of the population in the Yukon is based in Whitehorse, about two thirds to 70% of the population. And almost the entire territory, with the exception of one community, is connected by all-season roads.
So, that's kind of the Yukon context and there's some advantages to that level of development and connectivity in the Yukon. I'll skip the Northwest Territories for the moment and jump to Nunavut. Nunavut, you've got, 28 communities, almost all of whom are microgrids unto themselves. Diesel power generation is the norm in all Nunavut communities. And of course, transportation is between communities is really restricted to air travel and to barge supplies in the summer and in the fall.
So, very little connectivity in contrast to the Yukon. Here in the Northwest Territories, we're kind of a happy medium between those two points. We have in the southern half of the territory where Yellowknife is located on the north side of Great Slave Lake and some regional centres in the southern part of the territory, we are connected to all-season roads and highway systems, and we have from an energy perspective, power grids that are based largely on hydroelectricity. So, on the south side of Great Slave Lake, we've got the Taltson hydro system, which feeds the communities of Fort Smith, Hay River, Fort Resolution and Enterprise.
On the north side of Great Slave Lake in Yellowknife here and the surrounding region, we've got the Snare Lake hydro system. So, those two systems, as I was saying, produce the vast, vast majority of the power that we use here. And the vast majority of that comes from clean, renewable hydroelectricity. In the northern half of the territory, it's a much different environment. So, basically, all of the communities in the northern half of the territory, some are connected only by air travel. There are winter road networks that, in our shortening ice road season, are connected for a month or two months to two road systems.
But otherwise, all of those communities in the northern half of the territory are really very quite isolated and remote. And from an energy perspective, they, similar to the Yukon, are microgrids unto themselves. In the Northwest Territories, in those smaller northern rural communities, diesel generation similar to again to Nunavut, is the norm for power generation. And in the Northwest Territories, when we're looking at climate change mitigation, which is what our organization Energy Alliance focuses on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, we often have to consider the capacity challenges that the communities face when they're trying to improve the energy performance of their community.
One thing I'll note here that I always think is an important starting point for the discussion when we're talking about climate change mitigation is the greenhouse gas profile of the Northwest Territories itself. We spend a lot of time talking about diesel generation for electricity and diesel heating fuel for space heating. But we have to recognize that about 80 to 90% of the greenhouse gas emissions in the Northwest Territories come from industry and transportation. So, those are two elements of that GHG profile that are largely out of the control of people here in the Northwest Territories.
So, again, I'm very glad to be talking to a national audience of people in the federal government because there's a lot of impacts that policy choices at the federal level have on what we're trying to do here in the Northwest Territories in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We often talk about urban versus rural distinctions. It means something a little bit different in the Northwest Territories and in northern Canada. We consider urban as Yellowknife, basically, and perhaps some of the regional centres. Yellowknife is a community of 20,000 people.
So, in certain parts of Canada, you would have what are considered extremely small communities that have populations bigger than Yellowknife. But outside of Yellowknife, we have the advantage, here in Yellowknife, of contractors and tradespeople and the ability to test out different technologies in the energy sector that simply doesn't exist in a lot of our communities. So, I attend a lot of energy-related conferences, and often there's discussion around technologies like small modular nuclear reactors, creating hydrogen for transportation and other applications, and I think it's important to remember that a lot of our communities that could be, have a population of anywhere from 100 to 300 people, there may not even be a certified oil burning mechanic in those communities.
So, those communities are dependent on people coming from regional centres often to maintain equipment that is in those communities to keep the lights on and to keep the heat going. That's another important point, I think, is that when we're talking about emerging technologies and looking at decarbonization and how we transition to a decarbonized future, for many of our communities, the ability to keep the lights on and the heat flowing is a life-or-death situation that there's very little room for error there. So, when we're testing novel technologies, we always have to ensure that there's a backup system available to make sure that we're still providing heat and still keeping the lights on and keeping electrical appliances running, things of that nature. So, that's an important thing to remember that we often try to stress.
One of the things I think that sets the Northwest Territories apart from much of Canada is the role that Indigenous governments and Indigenous communities play here. We have a much longer history of settled land claims than many parts of Canada, and that's led to very autonomous Indigenous, whether it's based in a community or in a region of the Northwest Territories, very autonomous Indigenous governments that work with the government of the Northwest Territories on a lot of different issues and initiatives, and that includes energy-related initiatives.
So, many of these Indigenous governments have historically set up development corporations, for example, that can look at things like independent power producing arrangements with the territorial government. They can look at setting up district heating systems within their communities to provide clean, renewable sources of energy for space heating. And so, it's a different governance environment, I would say, than many parts of Canada. And I think it actually gives us a lot of advantages in terms of the autonomy and the power that that Indigenous governments have here in the Northwest Territories.
I'm probably running out of time, so I'll just kind of speak a little bit to some of our efforts towards decarbonization. And I think this is important as well for an audience of folks who are with the federal government. Our options are limited in terms of transitioning to a low carbon economy future in many parts of the country. And the federal government has emphasized the advantages of heat pumps for example, which in places like British Columbia or Atlantic Canada, where you've got a more mild climate and much, much cheaper power rates. Those technologies are great and they're worked really, really well there. In an environment like the Northwest Territories, where we have very cold temperatures and very, very high power costs, it's not necessarily a good fit. So, when we're looking at alternatives and coming back to the point that we always have to make sure that the heat is on and the lights are on, we've looked at kind of practical fuel sources that we could transition to.
And one of the clear winners here in the Northwest Territories has been biomass for space heating and specifically wood pellets, which we source out of northern B.C. and northern Alberta. And basically, about 30% of the wood that goes through any sawmill ends up as waste pellets, chips, sawdust, things of that nature. And for a long time, that material was landfilled. When municipal landfills started saying no to these sawmills, they would then basically burn them on site. And somebody once, several years ago, got the bright idea we could pelletize this material and turn it into a commodity.
So, now across the Northwest territories, it really started here in Yellowknife about 15 years ago, we've seen widespread adoption of biomass for space heating and wood pellets in particular. And it basically reduces our heating costs by anywhere from 30 to 50%. It's that much cheaper. And biomass is considered a greenhouse gas neutral fuel source. So, we've put a big emphasis on that because it's a technology that's proven, that's understood, and that we can apply basically in any part of the Northwest Territories. And so, that's the kind of the practical aspect of when we're looking at decarbonization and transition to a low-carbon future. We are looking at those practical fuel sources that are proven, that we know we've got the capacity here in the Northwest Territories to maintain systems like that.
And now, we're looking at bigger district heating systems. Here in Yellowknife, for example, we're studying the possibility of transitioning our downtown core to a district heating system that would be based off of biomass heating with the potential to reduce our diesel heating consumption by about 7 million litres a year. So, those are some of the examples we, as an organization, attempt to focus a lot on capacity building because we need to build the skills and the expertise within our communities to make sure that we can take on these technologies and use these new technologies effectively. Thanks.
Caroline Pitfield: That's great, Mark. Thank you very much for that. Michelle, over to you to tell us a little bit about the Atlantic region.
Michelle Robichaud (President of the Atlantica Centre for Energy): Thanks, Caroline. I'm really pleased to be joining you here today from Saint John, New Brunswick, an industrial and energy centre in the region. I'm representing the Atlantica Centre for Energy. Just to give you a little background, we are made up of members from each of the four Atlantic provinces, including all four provincial governments. And we represent all forms of energy, from clean energy producers to heavy industrial users.
And we are a forum for collaboration, research, energy literacy and advocacy to really help the region maximize economic opportunities associated with energy. And I encourage you to visit our website atlanticaenergy.org for more information and energy literacy resources. And I'll start it with a pretty bold statement here today. We believe that Canada's energy superpower vision actually starts in the Atlantic region and other rural regions because there is significant potential to drive the country's future, energy and resource economy.
Prime Minister Carney has said he wants to have Canada be an energy superpower and that means more than export, that means more than sovereignty, it means more than energy security and resiliency for all Canadians. But to get there, I think we need to understand that rural and regional realities can vary drastically, and Atlantic Canada is a prime example of that difference. So, I'm going to start first by highlighting a bit of a stark reality about our region. New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador have a fundamentally different energy system than most of the rest of central and the big cities in Canada. We are electrified, we are dispersed and we are highly exposed unlike major urban centres. Most of us do not heat our homes with natural gas. Our winters are long and we rely on electricity, heating oil and not unlike the north biomass, including wood and wood pellets.
The more urban industrial areas in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have access to natural gas. But this is relatively new and expensive relative to the rest of Canada. In Newfoundland and Labrador, they're lucky to have large hydro. The rest of the provinces operate with a much more diverse and much more expensive grid system. Our growing population and severe climate events are really placing significant pressure on our great infrastructure. P.E.I., for example, has effectively maxed out its electricity import capacity through electrification and tremendous population growth in Canada. They will see from this winter. This is why, in large part, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia continue to use coal and other heavy fossil fuels for some electricity generation. But collectively, our small population is very diverse. About 2.6 million people. We have an aging and rural population and, in some cases, more than 50% rural. We are spread across harsh terrain and long distances and that makes both infrastructure and service delivery more expensive.
Lastly, we import nearly all of our natural gas through the U.S. We are at the end of the pipeline, which means we pay some of the highest energy prices in the country. We're the only region without east-west pipeline access for gas, oil, and we have limited redundancy in our grid infrastructure. Newfoundland produces offshore oil, but is down largely for international markets, in part because of regulatory limitations and the refining infrastructure. New Brunswick built the first LNG import terminal in Canada in Saint John, Brunswick, my hometown, which has been operating successfully for 15 years, primarily serving northeast U.S. electricity markets. So, we don't get that gas here in the Maritimes. In short, our location is strategic and we are Canada's gateway to global energy markets and we are electrified. However, we're also vulnerable to price shock and uniquely dependent on an energy system that wasn't designed with our geography or economy in mind.
But the energy picture for Atlantic Canada isn't all doom and gloom. Instead, I'd argue that we are ripe for cleaner energy growth opportunities at any region in Canada. Our diverse energy system is a strategic asset, and I've often said this, I think Atlantic Canada is a sleeping giant. As of 2024, just last year, the region has notched more than $40 billion in energy projects in our pipeline, scheduled to start construction by 2030. Obviously, this will create job, attract investment and sustain communities for generations. With so much diversity and potential, we have nuclear, hydro, coal, natural gas, natural gas reserves, the largest oil refinery in Canada, offshore oil reserves and growing wind, solar and clean fuel. Prince Edward Island, as an example, since I started off with a bit of a negative side of things. Prince Edward Island is often thought of as only an agriculture and tourism mecca. However, it generates nearly all of its electricity from wind and imported hydro and nuclear, making it one of the cleanest electricity grids in Canada.
It shows that even our smallest province is leading the way in clean energy. And in New Brunswick, because it is so highly interconnected to neighbouring provinces and state, the diversity of its energy system enables that resiliency and certainly a bright location for export, especially into the U.S. northeast. Now, I know that's a bit of a touchy topic right now. The energy system is supported with Canada's largest oil refinery, and that generates 80% of the petroleum products actually going into the U.S. Newfoundland and Labrador has significant hydro that supports not only their grid, but also Quebec and westward and into the U.S. northeast. The province has also contributed significantly to Canada's GDP through its offshore oil and gas sector and with an example, over $1 billion in royalties went to Ottawa from the Hibernia project alone.
Nova Scotia is building a significant onshore wind to not only clean their grid, but also to develop clean hydrogen for export. And you might have also seen that there was a recent announcement that offshore wind was identified as a future project in the projects of national interest under the Building Canada Act. As a region, we are highly electrified. We have a high proportion of non-emitting electricity generation. We have clean fuels projects, which I look to talk about later, in place and under development, and there's more to come. We are ready for the transition. We are building an energy system for national benefit, but shouldering the burden locally with a small population. If Canada is going to be a true energy superpower, Atlantic Canada cannot be an afterthought. We are a critical corridor, a clean energy exporter, and a testbed for rural transmission strategies that the rest of the country will need to learn from.
So, I'm going to leave you with a few final points that might tease out some questions. New Brunswick hosts Canada's only nuclear generating station outside of Ontario, and it's the only site in the country currently under CNSC review for a new nuclear development, positioning our region at the forefront of small modular reactors development. Nova Scotia is on track to phase out coal by 2030. It is one of the most ambitious transitions in the country, and it's building the transmission and renewable project needed to make 80% clean power a reality.
Newfoundland and Labrador already produces more electricity than it uses, almost all from hydro and is preparing to add wind, hydrogen and more hydro, become a major clean energy exporter to both North America and Europe. Prince Edward Island, the smallest province, is set to become the first in Canada to have a 100% renewable electricity by 2030. Proof that even small rural regions can lead the way in clean energy. Taken together, Atlantic Canada is a clean energy powerhouse. We have the resources, expertise and partnership to help Canada achieve its energy security and climate goals. And we're ready to contribute. That's it for me, Caroline.
Caroline Pitfield: Thanks, Michelle. That was a great picture. I love the complexity upfront and I loved how you turn that complexity into such inspiring potential. So, thank you for that. Martin, tell us about the Prairies.
Martin Boucher (NorQuest College's Research Chair in Sustainability): Yeah. Thank you. Michelle got me all excited about the Atlantic matter.
Caroline Pitfield: Me too.
Martin Boucher: This is great. I'll kind of echo a little bit of Mark and Michelle in terms of how I'm framing a bit of the Prairies in the sense that it's diverse. It's like we're tasked with talking about these regions. And similarly to the North and Atlantic Canada, I'm going to talk about the Prairies, but it's actually quite a bit different from province to province. And I'll talk a little bit about the different resources, different ownership structures and what I'm seeing in terms of the different transition pathways.
And just a little bit more about me, I'm actually originally from Ottawa, met my wife in Manitoba, spent 10 years in Saskatchewan and just last year, I moved to Alberta. So, I'm trying to. So, hopefully, I can kind of make some links here. Okay, so I'll start off with Manitoba. So, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, so Manitoba is the greenest of the bunch. About 97% of the electricity comes from renewables, overwhelmingly hydropower. So, Manitoba Hydro is a vertically integrated crown utility, that not only powers the province, but also exports significant amounts of electricity.
So, it has surplus electricity in the province. Manitoba exports about 20 to 30% of its electricity annually, mainly to the U.S. Midwest and Saskatchewan. And there are intertie agreements between Saskatchewan and Manitoba. So, it's fairly green, but it doesn't come without its challenges. So, because there's such a heavy reliance on hydro, there's vulnerabilities to change in water flows affecting hydro reliability. The large hydro projects that we've seen in Manitoba have created some financial strain and affordability issues.
Manitoba Hydro has one of the highest debt levels that any Crown corporation in Canada. In 2023, the debt was about 24 billion. So, this is posing some financial strains and there's been some recent rate increases in Manitoba as a result. Unique, I would say, to all of the Prairies, is some of the Indigenous partnerships, and it plays out a bit differently from province to province. So, in Manitoba, some of the kind of unique… I'm not going to do justice in terms of all of the innovative projects in all of the provinces, but highlight a few that I find particularly interesting.
So, in Manitoba, there's some major projects like the Wuskwatim, 200-megawatt hydro project that was built in 2012, and Keeyask, 695-megawatt project built in 2022 that are built with Indigenous equity ownership. So, these agreements include profit sharing co-governance. There's been some controversy and challenges, but there's a lot of these attempts in Manitoba. So, Manitoba, I would say, if I'm going to be an overarching picture, really dominated by Crown corporation and not a diverse electricity grid or energy system.
It creates a bit of a crowded space for things like community energy to participate because there's one actor that's dominating the scene, versus Saskatchewan. Similar to Manitoba, Saskatchewan has a large monolithic Crown corporation called SaskPower. So, it's a vertically integrated Crown corporation. So, almost all of the generation, transmission and distribution is run through this Crown corporation. Customers don't choose the provider SaskPower plan essentially, except for Saskatoon is current. So, there's two municipalities in Saskatchewan, they own their own utility.
The challenge in Saskatchewan is coal, phase-out coal. There's federal regulations to phase-out coal by 2030. So, this has created a lot of transition challenges. One of the innovative things that Saskatchewan has done in 2024 was a carbon capture and utilization facility on its Boundary Dam 3 Station in Estevan. So, this is a coal power station. It's the world's first commercial scale coal-fired power plant, retrofitted with carbon capture and storage. And most of the CO2 is used for Enhanced Oil Recovery in nearby oil fields. So, right now, it's a demonstration project, a very expensive demonstration project. I'd like to say the most expensive electrons on the Saskatchewan grid are from the Boundary Dam 3 Station. However, there's potential opportunities for further learning. As with any technology, the first time is expensive and then hopefully there's learning opportunities, and that's something that the province is actively considering.
There's lots of growing renewable energy in Saskatchewan. In 2022, Saskatchewan added 387 megawatts of new wind and solar capacity. They have a goal at SaskPower for 50% renewable energy, electricity capacity by 2035. So, the province is very serious about small modular reactors, and you can say that this is quite new to Saskatchewan. So, this is brand new, never had SMRs, and all of a sudden, there's a strong interest. I think what explains a lot of the momentum interest in Saskatchewan for nuclear and SMRs is partly because of, I think, the uranium industry. So, Canada is the second-largest producer of uranium globally and most of that is in Saskatchewan.
So, there's like industry and research and all that wraps around uranium. So, I think that's partly why there's this interest, but there's a promise for… so, the approach that Saskatchewan is taking is to not be first, is to kind of wait for Ontario and the Darlington SMR, there's interest in doing the same SMR that Ontario is doing and learn from what works and what doesn't work from that experience. And then, so there's a lot and I'm not going to do this justice, but there's a lot of really innovative things happening in terms of Indigenous partnerships in Saskatchewan.
As one example, SaskPower recently has procurement rounds that require for Indigenous equity participation. The Meadow Lake Tribal Council, for example, is now a majority owner in renewable energy project contracted by SaskPower. Saskatchewan is actually home to the First Nations Power Authority, which was an innovative model. It started off being Saskatchewan-focused and now, the FNPA is doing a lot of really wonderful national work.
And so, unlike Manitoba, in Saskatchewan, there's a power supply gap. So, its growing population, growing industry. They have to phase-out coal. So, there's a gap that they're trying to address. There's a little bit more opportunity for things like community energy and we see a little bit of that pop up. So, just to give an overview of Saskatchewan, coal phase-out, renewable buildout. They're pondering the future of CCUS, developing some gas peaker plants as their renewable energy kind of gets rolled out. And then, it looks quite promising that there's going to be SMRs in the horizon, but all of that is to be determined.
Okay. And last but not least, we have Alberta. So, Alberta is unique to Canada. I'm learning a lot of Alberta. So, I've been here for the past year and it's a fully deregulated wholesale electricity market. So, generators are privately owned. The prices are set by the market. There are tons of actors and companies and it used to be the case that you could find people that understood the electricity system and the energy system in Alberta. You cannot find a single person that understands the electricity system in Alberta just because there's just so many actors.
There's so much innovation and so much going on. So, it requires, what I would say, a lot of collaboration, a lot of partnerships. That seems to be the model to move things forward. Until fairly recently, Alberta was a big growth area for renewable energy and there's been some recent legislative changes that have significantly slowed that down. But in 2023, Alberta added 2.2 gigawatts of new wind, solar and storage, and it accounted for at that year, about 92% of all renewable growth in Canada for that year. So, it's quite significant. That's changed recently, but there was a lot of growth in that space.
Most of the development is large corporations and I'm referring to the renewable energy space. It's been a bit difficult for communities, cooperatives to compete with large firms. There has been some really neat innovations, and I'd love to go out and go through the laundry list of all kinds of cool stuff that's going on in terms of community energy. One of them, though, is Edmonton is home to the first kind of virtual power plants in the country. So, Blatchford, it's a neighbourhood in Edmonton, they partnered with EPCOR, which is a utility here, and they have a virtual power plant with storage. So, there's this net metering thing. So, really innovative project.
So, I mentioned that from the perspective of that's a feature of the market system that it allows for. So, there's challenges and complexities, but the market system allows for these kinds of innovations to pop up. I can't not talk about Alberta without talking about oil and gas culture and energy culture, I think, that exists here. So, the oil and gas sector is quite significant. I think most folks would be aware of that. But kind of coming from Ottawa, one of the things that I would want my past Ottawa self or my fellow Ottawa friends to be aware of is the extent to which that energy and oil and gas is part of identity and pride in Alberta, that doesn't exist in the same way in other provinces.
There's practical reasons for that. Roughly about 15 to 20% of Alberta's GDP is tied to directly to oil and gas. Oil and gas has been generational. We have families and livelihoods and businesses and things like that; folks out there are tied to this. It very much shapes politics and culture. Resistance to federal climate policy, strong emphasis on provincial autonomy and deep ties to energy companies and communities.
And it goes I think what we're seeing now, it's moving beyond oil and gas. And I think there's an identity to see Alberta as an energy hub. So, Alberta is really positioning itself for all kinds of potentially big wins in the energy space. So, there's also a very strong interest in small modular reactors. They don't want to be first movers in this space. They're waiting for Ontario. Everyone is waiting for Ontario right now and Darlington to see how that project pans out. But there's very strong interest in SMRs. One of the big projects is the Pathways Alliance.
So, this is a carbon capture utilization project that's a consortium of the six largest oilsands companies to do a carbon capture and storage utilization in the oilsands. So, there's a lot of interest in that space. And then, I'm not going to go too much in detail on this for in terms of time, but also hydrogen. So, Canada's first hydrogen hub is in Edmonton and there's a really strong interest in really kind of building that out. So, Alberta, very dynamic, fast-moving place, lots of fun to kind of be in. But yeah, it's a very dynamic space.
So, just about in closing, similar to, I think the points that Mark and Michelle raised, the Prairies are quite a bit different from province to province. They're particularly like the utility structures and things like that. Manitoba is largely hydro Crown-dominated. Saskatchewan, much more mixed, has a power supply gap again, Crown-dominated. And then, Alberta is very deregulated, very fast-moving and lots of big projects potentially underway. So, thank you very much and happy to take any questions.
Caroline Pitfield: Thanks so much for that, Martin. I actually especially appreciate your observation on the tie with the identity part of it. I think sometimes we do forget that we throw facts, we throw science, we forget the identity part, which can be quite visceral, but also quite influential in terms of where we go and how we get there. So, as I said earlier, I'm going to indulge a little bit of facilitators privilege and have a couple of questions for each of you, and then we're going to turn it over to the Q&A. I might just plug the Q&A one more time before I do that and remind you that the chat function, you can use that to submit your questions.
It's at the top right-hand corner of your screen. You can submit your question in French or English to all or one of our speakers. So, we wait for those questions to come in. Mark, I was going to go to you first. You talked a fair amount about some of the challenges of decarbonization in the north, what that looks like, very evocative language about making sure people don't freeze effectively some of the challenges there.
I wonder if you might explore for us a little bit more some of the equity issues that are involved in that decarbonization thing. So, as we move to that decarbonization place, how do we make sure that that that doesn't maybe create challenges to cost of living or inequities in society that are going to make it that much more difficult? Another thing I heard you say quite a lot when you talked, and I'd be interested about, maybe it relates to this is the question of capacity building. So, those two things, if you could lean in there.
Mark Heyck: Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate Michelle and Martin's comments. One of the things that absolutely fascinates me, I'm not an economist, but utility economics absolutely fascinates me. And it's the issues facing utilities. There're some global issues that they're all facing, but they also differ depending on where in the country or the world they're operating. One of the things we've observed is that we've got a small population of about 43,000 people in its entirety in the Northwest Territories here. And we have very, very high power costs. And of course, our utility model was established decades ago.
And the idea was this centralized generation model where the power was distributed and revenues were generated. And that model comes with a lot of fixed costs associated with operating those systems. What we've seen in more recent years is some people have chosen to invest in solar for their homes for example. And so, those folks are removing themselves from that utility system to a degree at least. And the people who can do that, of course, are the ones who are from higher income brackets, higher income households, who can most easily afford to make that switch.
What that does at the end of the day, by removing that revenue from the overall utility system, it shrinks the rate base and it increases the cost pressure on everybody else. So, those who can least afford to make those changes are left bearing the cost of that traditional utility model. So, that's something we're grappling with, as an organization, and I won't speak on behalf of the government of the Northwest Territories, but there is a renewed focus on assisting low-income households in particular with that transition. Because higher income households are much more easily positioned to make the transition than lower income households.
We've developed a few programs specifically geared towards low-income households where our staff, we have residential energy advisors who conduct home energy evaluations. They can go into homes with the homeowner or the tenant, point out various elements where energy performance can be improved and energy costs can be brought down. Just for reference to say, I just got a power bill yesterday actually, so I did the rough math in preparation for today, we're paying about 39.5 cents a kilowatt hour for power here, so yeah, by the reaction on Mark's face (laughs).
And Alberta's deregulated market can get a little wonky too, but that's probably about the most affordable energy in the Northwest Territories. It only goes up from there. So, we are making concerted efforts to focus on that sector of the population. I'll do a quick plug here. There's an organization called Efficiency Canada that's holding a Home Energy Justice Conference in Ottawa. I believe it's the second week of October. And Efficiency Canada itself has done a lot of work focusing in from a policy perspective on the low-income segment of the Canadian population.
So, that's an element that we're working on. The other aspect you asked, Caroline, about capacity building. One of the things that we recognize, again, we're a small population in a very vast territory. And I think it first came into focus when COVID hit, where we realized how vulnerable we are to supply chain issues, because basically all of our fuel is coming from southern Canada, all of our food, all of our building materials, and I think that brought into sharper focus the need for self-sufficiency. And so, we've had several bad forest fire seasons in the north, as many other parts of the country have experienced. What that's resulted in is, for example, millions of hectares of fire-killed trees. So, we have a ready fuel source there that can be harvested in a responsible way using proper forest management practices, where we could actually begin extracting some of the energy from local resources to provide our heating, to provide our power without being 100% dependent on southern Canada and whatever else might be happening in the world.
So, along with that drive towards self-sufficiency, we've realized that we also need to build the skills and the expertise here to be able to take advantage of that. So, as an organization, the Arctic Energy Alliance has invested a lot of time and resources in creating training programs. Most recently, and something that would seem fairly basic, we've been offering chainsaw safety training courses for people in communities who want to harvest their own wood, may want to start a small wood harvesting business in their community.
And so, in fact, in a couple of weeks, we'll be offering this in a community called Fort Simpson in the southwestern corner of the territory. We'll have 15 participants. We'll have a certified instructor. They will spend three days learning about safe wood harvesting practices, and there's also a component to that training around how to start a small business and a third component around fire smarting your community.
So, we're starting to see the confluence of climate change mitigation and adaptation, where we're trying to build as many of these skills into our people in the North so that we can be more self-sufficient, so that we can be more resilient, particularly as climate change is barreling towards us, if it's not already here. Thanks.
Caroline Pitfield: Thanks, Mark. There're so many interesting things in what you just said. So, it occurs to me, Michelle and Martin, as I go to you, if you want to respond or add anything that Mark said, if you've got similar observations, feel free to do that. I don't want you to feel pigeonholed by my question. My question to you is going to be in response to your comment about the super ambitious timelines in Nova Scotia and moving away from coal.
I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit more and maybe lean into the people part of that, the economic, the social implications. Mark, I hear you when you say utility economics, oddly fascinating. I think it could be one of those things that Canadians in particular think about and need to think about. So, Michelle, that transition to coal in Nova Scotia. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Michelle Robichaud: Yeah, happy to talk about that. Certainly, the transition is underway here. New Brunswick has one remaining coal plant and Nova Scotia has set significant part of our electricity system. And as I mentioned in Prince Edward Island, for example, while they don't have coal, they do still have diesel. But wind provides about a third of their electricity supply on the island.
The rest of it typically comes from transmission from New Brunswick, which is based on hydro and nuclear. Nova Scotia has recently come out with what they call their Clean Power Plan, which is going to be to phase-out coal and reach 80% renewable electricity by 2030. If any of you have the opportunity to fly from Halifax to St. John's, Newfoundland, one, you'll be extremely impressed with how much forest is there. But two, how many wind farms are going out. You can actually see them and certainly they've been very aggressive, as has New Brunswick, in adding renewables.
Another major project is adding what they're calling a Reliability Intertie between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. And I should just mention that all of the clean energy projects that are currently underway in the Maritimes in particular have Indigenous equity ownership or partnership. There's a significant acknowledgment that is a really important part of clean energy future.
So, when we look at renewables as a percentage of generation, it's certainly increasing the share very, very quickly. The (inaudible) coal unit in New Brunswick is in the northern part of the province. It's a strategic energy asset there. And in order to meet the federal clean electricity target, that plant will be converting to biomass. And they're actually doing an innovative new technology that has not yet been done, but it's called the torrefied pellet, which will also be building a new market here for that biomass, which is good news to our forestry sector here, which is obviously a key part of our industry.
But when we talk about the economic or the social impact of that transition, because it is a huge economic burden, but as I mentioned earlier, the energy sector is really the backbone of Atlantic Canadian economy and certainly the main export for New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador. And I'm not just talking about electricity there, but oil and gas as well. And we're starting to see, I think, Nova Scotia has been able to export a significant amount of their electricity as well.
But those impacted regions are absolutely preparing a workforce transition program. They are looking to retrain workers for roles in clean energy and trades. As I mentioned, our population is aging, so we are trying to teach new, I guess those who are going into post-secondary school, about opportunities. We have a program called 'Fuel 4 the Future' that we're currently running with the government of Nova Scotia to really teach young people about what are the opportunities in clean fuels.
And I would say that that program was actually initiated from the federal government and NRCan Clean Fuels funding program, which Nova Scotia has actually kind of initiated or duplicated. And there, they have their own clean fuels program now. So, it's an important part of their future. We've also done a lot of research around supply chain and workforce development for new nuclear, hydrogen and wind and both onshore and offshore wind. And I think that's important to recognize that onshore wind still has some supply chain issues. And the most recent study actually that was released with round port infrastructure that will support the buildout of the offshore energy sector. That's a really great study that's been done by Net Zero Atlantic. I highly encourage anyone to check them out. I can also follow up with a list of all of this great research that have been done.
Another key piece of that economic or social piece is affordability. And I certainly echo some of the concerns that Mark indicated. While we don't have the crisis behind us in the north, it's still an affordability issue for me because we feel that the region is disproportionately balancing some of these national emission reduction targets. And that's really focused here in Atlantic Canada. And as I mentioned, we have a pretty small population. And to the public policy makers who are in the audience today, when thinking about that policy, I encourage you to think about these rural regions. And certainly, electricity affordability is a growing concern both for home but also for businesses. And as we're looking at ratepayers that are shouldering the cost of aging assets, debt servicing, you want to talk about utilities. We can talk a lot about that here in our region. We have some debt issues.
And there's very few people to help pay for some of that on top of really transitioning the economy. And I certainly say on the brighter side, we see that transition as an economic opportunity, but also regional collaboration has to be a part of that. So, there's opportunities for sharing grid, joint planning that we hope will optimize our future grid resiliency.
Caroline Pitfield: Thanks so much for that, Michelle. Martin, I'm going to turn to you with question a moment, but I would say the same thing. If you heard something from Mark or Michelle that you want to build on, I think we'd all love to hear your insights on that as well. What I was going to ask you is to build a little bit further on some of the comments you made about alternative ownership models. You talked about the identity of energy in the Prairies, we think about these large corporations that are housed there as well. But you also mentioned community ownership, you mentioned Indigenous ownership. You alluded to some of the benefits. And I think in one instance you also alluded to a challenge. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about the benefits and then the challenges that you see with these alternate ownership models for energy?
Martin Boucher: Yeah, I'm hyperventilating over here. There's a bunch of topics I want to pick up on what Mark and Michelle were talking about.
Caroline Pitfield: You can go there first if you want, Martin. You can go there first. I don't mind.
Martin Boucher: Just energy affordability, yeah, I think Atlantic Canada, that's where it's the most stark, referring to Mark's point about Efficiency Canada, their scorecard highlighted Atlantic Canada as one of the areas where there is the most amount of energy poverty. But then, after that, it's the Prairies, so Saskatchewan and Alberta. So, we have sort moderate prices, I guess I'm referring right now to Saskatchewan and Alberta in terms of cost, but we have very cold winters and we have very big houses and energy inefficient building stocks. So, some of the most energy inefficient building stock in the country, unfortunately, is in Saskatchewan and Alberta. So, the highest per capita emissions, the award, goes to Saskatchewan. So, that creates this tension in terms of energy costs.
And one of the areas, one of the things, because I know we have a lot of federal public service folks on this call, I would nudge folks to be sort of curious about, so there's a lot of really good policy that serves middle income folks, particularly related to energy efficiency, like the Greener Homes program or like the really low-income folks. But there's these folks in between that aren't like super poor or middle class, and these are like renters and things like that that are kind of getting squeezed a little bit with the energy costs. And I see that quite a bit in Alberta. So, I'd add a little bit to the discussion around the kind of policies that we would think about that support that.
And then, yeah, Mark was talking about utility, the business model for utilities. And I actually think that's like a core axis. It's an existential threat to the business model of utilities when you do things like distributed generation. I think sometimes we put pressure on utilities without kind of being empathetic to that business challenge. And it's like we have to deal with that core business challenge and there's ways that we can move forward with it.
But yeah, there's certainly some challenges there and I think Mark was talking about, I've written some papers on this, the cross-subsidy that happens if you have like a distributed generation program where some folks can participate, other folks can't. But if that's a feature of the business model, then I think we can be really… I think if we want to move forward with more community energy, more distributed generation, I think the source code for this is be really curious about the business model that we have for our utilities and part of their mandates at the provincial level and things like that.
So, the community energy in corporate. So, I do a lot of work with cooperatives, renewable energy cooperatives. I started an organization that represents renewable energy cooperatives from coast to coast. I certainly think that there are opportunities for different ownership models in the energy transition, and that's part of the motivation for me being engaged in cooperatives. One of the things that I would encourage policymakers to be curious about, and from my experience, both in engaging at the provincial and federal level, is that co-op ownership generally, but certainly specifically to the energy transition is often not on the radar.
So, when I speak with policy folks and I tell them about co-ops and it's all about the governance model and how things are structured, folks are typically really empathetic. But it's often open and excited about it, but it's often not, I would say, in the policy toolkit or like front and centre in terms of an option that could support that starting to change. But I would say I think there's opportunity there. Co-ops have in the Prairies, at least in Saskatchewan and Alberta, have a long history. The co-operative movement in Saskatchewan, particularly in the rural areas. And there's two renewable energy cooperatives in Saskatchewan, depending on how you define it, renewable energy cooperative is about three in Alberta.
And then, there's also retail co-op. So, the only retail co-ops in the country exist in Alberta. Again, that's a feature of the market system. So, yeah, I think there's opportunities there to be curious about different ownership models and how folks are engaged. And in terms of the research on this, when folks are, if it's Indigenous, it doesn't have to be co-ops, but if it's Indigenous folks participate in small municipalities, a cooperative structure, you tend to get more folks alliance when there's a resistance to new technologies, when folks are included owning part of things. It allows things to move with more alignment, we'll say. But yeah, that's all I have for now. But thank you, Caroline.
Caroline Pitfield: Thank you. I think you're all ready to jump in and build on each other's comments, but I'd like to make sure that we keep the last half hour for our audience's questions. And we do have quite a few of those. And I'm going to start with a few questions here that are kind of ground setting and making sure everyone's on the same page.
So, the first one is a question about small nuclear power plants. These small reactors you talked about. Questions. People want to know a little bit more about those. They want to know, are they green energy? How are they better? So, maybe rapidly. I think you all alluded to it. Martin, I might go to you because I think you said the most about it. Can you tell us a little bit about those the small reactors as you were talking?
Martin Boucher: Yeah. So, the history of nuclear energy isn't great. They've been over budget and over time 100% of the time in Canada. And that story has also played out globally. So, the nuclear industry has adapted. And actually, I'd like to say they've learned from the renewable energy sector where if you do things in a modular, smaller scale, you potentially can learn. So, one of the reasons why nuclear tends to be quite expensive is because you do bespoke custom, highly complex projects. Any time you do a project like that, it's really hard to predict cost and time constraints.
So, the logic here is like, if we have one model that's smaller, we can partly build it in a factory, we're replicating it. So, every time we build a nuclear plant, it's a new nuclear plant, a new design and all this. So, this is the logic of SMRs, is that, if we scale it down, if we modularize it, we can contain the cost, we can implement it, maybe a little bit more quickly. So, that's been the industry's response to some of that. It's been decades since we've built a nuclear power plant in Canada.
So, the promise of SMRs is this ability for the industry and even regulators and things like that to learn and get things done quicker and cheaper. So, that's the promise. There's the Darlington SMR that looks like it will be built and we're going to be able to learn what those costs are. So, in my perspective on SMRs, is I think we should just be curious and open to see where some of the costs kind of landed. Is the other benefit, that's to say from a climate change perspective, is just the magnitude of electricity generated in such a small package. So, if it plays out, that this is in fact something we can roll out quickly and in a cost-effective way. That shows there's a lot of promise to really reduce our emissions and accelerate the amount of electricity we have on the grid.
Michelle Robichaud: Caroline, if you're okay, I'd love to add to that. I spent a lot of time talking about small modular reactors here in New Brunswick. There is a pan-Canadian strategy for bringing on SMRs to Canada's electricity grid. In Alberta, I understand that there's a real opportunity there to help with industrial power. The feature of smart is actually they are small and not the large reactors that we have now are 6, 7, 800 or 1000 megawatt. Small means they can be anywhere from a micro, which is a couple of megawatts up to about 150.
I think the one in Darlington is about 300. But there's a difference between advanced reactors and the current reactors. So, in Ontario, what they're building is basically a smaller version of a CANDU reactor, which Canada is like first class in the world with our CANDU reactors. So, basically, this new reactor is not of the next generation. The next version, I think, of SMRs are going to be an advance, which is what they call fourth generation. And there are some really unique attributes to small modular reactors, as an advanced fourth generation reactor, and that's really that it can ramp up and ramp down very, very quickly.
So, what it does, it supports renewable. So, if you add on wind and solar, you can have this SMR that ramps up to match it. When we lose our wind, what is the saying? If you don't like the weather in Atlantic Canada or in New Brunswick, wait 5 minutes, it changes. So, that's a really great attribute there. It also has the opportunity to produce medical isotopes. So, a really great opportunity for Canada's bioscience sector. If we look at the modular component, Martin really talked about that. There's a great opportunity for First Nations, small communities to get involved in the supply chain there. We've done some work here in New Brunswick on that. So, I highly recommend folks, if they're interested, to learn a little bit more.
And then, the other piece of the new generation of reactors is that they are what they call 'walk-away safe'. So, at the end of the day, they don't use water. So, they're using either (inaudible) salt or molten salt and the reactor will shut itself down. So, it has multiple components. There's a reactor that is being looked at here in New Brunswick called ARC Clean Technology. They've just received their vendor design review to from the CNSC. That's being looked at in Alberta right now. They've signed some MOUs. It's really exciting but it will be a first of a kind, which means it is going to be much more expensive, Martin.
But as we build out and build up that supply chain, build up the technology, the idea is that you can roll it out and roll it out globally. So, Canada truly can be a leader in nuclear once again as we were with CANDU with some of these other new technologies. And I think it's a really exciting field and I'm glad that that was one of the first questions that were out.
Caroline Pitfield: Mark, if you have anything to say about this on the reactors.
Mark Heyck: I'll just jump in quickly here and I'll say upfront, I guess I'm not sure it's a technology that's super applicable in the northern context. I talked earlier about capacity issues. It's been interesting. I think probably the first time I saw a presentation about small modular nuclear reactors, was about 15 years ago. And I've seen many presentations since then, and we always seem to be about 10 years out from the first one coming on. It's like this weird floating time dynamic where no matter where we are into the future, we're always about 10 years out.
So, I wonder, I think we need to do some hard cost benefit analysis of what is currently feasible in terms of technology. Intermittent renewables have their challenges. Can storage address some of those challenges? Climate change is such a looming threat to the planet that we really want to be doing everything we can, on as many fronts as we can. But again, in terms of the north, where it's a small population, where we have our own capacity challenges, that's something that we, I think is probably outside the realm of a realistic solution for us.
The other thing I'll mention that's kind of unique to the north, culturally we have a lot of hard feelings about the byproducts of mining for example. So, as an example, Port Radium was established on the shore of Great Bear Lake in the 1930s, initially to mine radium for X-ray purposes. At the time, the byproduct of that mining was something called pitchblende, and it was basically just spread around the mine site. Turns out that pitchblende contained a lot of uranium, which a few years later became very, very valuable for multiple reasons. The legacy of that is to this day, there are areas around Great Bear Lake where the snow doesn't freeze.
There's still active radiation happening there. So, that sticks in the mind of people. There's a community also now called Déline that was termed the 'Village of Widows' many years ago because there were Dene or carriers for that mining operation. And the rates of cancer in that community were far above what we would see anywhere else in the Northwest Territories. Similarly, here in Yellowknife, some of you may be familiar with the Giant Mine. This was a gold mine here established in the 1930s.
The byproduct of that, the way they process the ore was arsenic trioxide. The solution of the mining company for decades was to store this arsenic trioxide, which is a highly toxic substance, underground. To the point where now, even though that mine shut down about 20 years ago, we've got about 270,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide stored underground beneath our city.
So, those memories, even though they're a little bit in the past, they stay in the culture and I know we've had people come to Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories to talk about nuclear power. And the reaction is quite visceral because people do have that recollection of the legacy of some of these things. But as I said, because climate change is such a looming threat, we really should be trying everything we can. Solutions are going to look different in different parts of the country.
Caroline Pitfield: There's so much richness in this conversation, and we're coming close to time. I think we do have time for one more question. I'm going to try to combine a couple of things. So, some interest in the possibility of a more interconnection between these different energy grids, whatever they may be. And maybe, Mark, specifically for you, a question about a project that links Nunavut and Manitoba. Kivalliq, maybe is the name. So, some interest there in terms of where that project's at. And then, for all of you, maybe some interest in whether there is more that can be done to interconnect these different systems?
Mark Heyck: Absolutely. That was a really interesting bit of news that came out of, I think it was the premiers' meetings most recently. And that has often been a challenge for us in Nunavut and certainly in the Northwest Territories. And I believe that conversations are now happening between the Yukon and British Columbia as well, because we don't have any connections that that runs south. So, we've got our mini grids or micro-grids within the territories, but there's no connection to the South. That poses challenges for the reliability and the affordability of power in the Northern Territories.
But it also holds us back from our economic potential because there's huge potential for hydro resources, for example, in the Northwest Territories, that the Taltson system that I was talking about earlier on the south side of Great Slave Lake. They're basically spilling water because they've got more power than they can use in the communities in south Slave. The challenge for us is the cost of those connections. So, most recently, there's been talk in the NWT about connecting the Taltson system on the south of the lake, south side of Great Slave Lake with the Snare system on the north side of the lake.
The current cost estimates are about 2 to $3 billion to make that connection. We're a population of 43,000 people. We'd like to think there's going to be future mining activity, rare earth minerals, things of that nature, but none of that's guaranteed. So, the scale of those investments is pretty mind-boggling for the population that we have here. However, as we talk, this conversation has become come more into focus in the last few months, certainly in terms of self-sufficiency of Canada as a nation and the ability to connect these various systems in different parts of the country.
I think it is something and I appreciate the fact that we are talking about these nation-building projects and some of that news is starting to trickle out of Ottawa. So, I do think there's potential for that and I think that is one element that across the north, we would very much like to see far more connectivity with our southern counterparts. Thanks.
Caroline Pitfield: Thank you, Mark. Michelle and Martin, would you like to add to that interconnectivity?
Michelle Robichaud: Certainly. I don't know if, Martin, if you want to go to connect with Mark's comments first.
Martin Boucher: I just had a short comment. It's similar to so much to what you're saying, Mark. I'd like to say that we have, with our 10 provinces from the electricity perspective, it's like we have 10 different countries because the electricity systems are so different. Most of our trade is north-south, not east-west. And that's actually kind of unique to the world. And part of that, I think when you go to Europe, there's more electricity traded between countries in Europe than there are between our provinces.
And part of that is a feature of confederation and the kind of autonomy that we have for our provinces. And also, a feature of the fact that we're such a big country. But it does actually feel like now is the time that we should really put this on the table. I think there's a lot of alignment on the provincial side and the federal side to really come together on this. So, it is exciting to see that momentum. But I'll turn it to Michelle.
Michelle Robichaud: Yeah. I think if I take a step back and think about the scale of the investment that's going to be required as we transition our electricity system, not only towards a cleaner, greener system, but also the growth and development opportunities and economic development, over the next decade and beyond, I can certainly see that investment is going to be unprecedented. And then, you look at projects, for example, in Atlantic Canada, we're looking at massive offshore wind, hydrogen.
There's going to be a huge investment piece, but none of that is going to happen if we don't have a plan how we can connect those things together. So, you might have heard something about an Eastern Energy Partnership with the premiers in Atlantic Canada. So, there's talk coming out of those in terms of where's the market for some of these big energy projects and how do we get it to that market. I would say, Martin, you alluded to it that Canada is quite unique in terms of not having regional or national system that trades east-west or within your own country.
But we definitely trade north-south with the US. And in fact, in New Brunswick, for example, we are the only supplier of electricity to northern part of the State of Maine. So, there's an interdependence there that isn't going to change, I don't think, any time soon. Also, if we look at the system that we have for LNG here in Atlantic Canada or even natural gas, it's that flow that goes into the U.S.
And the Maritimes are effectively cut off from Canada by the U.S. So, there's a little piece that connects us at least into the Maritimes. But Nova Scotia is in the process of setting up its own independent electricity system operator. It's going to be a big shift from how the current province runs the grid. So, in Nova Scotia, it's a private utility that does transmission distribution. In New Brunswick, it's the Crown Corporation. And this goes back to that conversation we were having earlier. But I think and then with P.E.I. in particular, their needs are pretty drastic and very urgent.
I would say that you're going to see a little bit more cooperation within the Maritimes. Even though there's a lot of cooperation already happening within the utilities, I think you're going to see even more with some of that buildout. I do think it would be extremely beneficial to bring Quebec and Ontario into that conversation. Newfoundland and Labrador is just recently connected to the North American electricity system as well with the cable that runs from Newfoundland and Labrador to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, a really important component of Nova Scotia to get a hold of 500 megawatts.
So, again, not all of that interconnectedness is happening here. It's just a matter of cooperating on. If we're going to have this major buildout of new energy, how do we make the best use? Atlantica Centre for Energy has been a huge proponent of regional cooperation. That's one of the things that why we exist today is to really facilitate some of those conversations within Atlantic Canada. But I think it's a bit of a bigger issue now with the rest of Canada. And I think we need to continue to talk about how we encourage those relationships and sharing the information.
Caroline Pitfield: Thank you all for that. I feel a real sense of seize the moment here. Lots of great ideas, lots of potential, and it does really feel like now is the time. Unfortunately, now is also the time for me to start wrapping us up. We've got about 10 minutes, but before we close, I want to give you all the opportunity to say one last thing and I might frame it this way. Over 40% of federal public servants work either from the NCR here in Ottawa. Most of the rest work in big cities: Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver. Relatively fewer public servants work in your regions.
As we come to a close, I want to give you the opportunity to speak to public servants. What is one thing you would like all of us working on these issues to keep in mind about your region in this space, in this area? Maybe we'll go in reverse order. Martin, we'll start with you and we'll finish off with Mark. Is that unfair? Maybe that's unfair. I'll let you speak as you're ready to speak. I want to hear a word from each of you.
Martin Boucher: I was trying to collect my thoughts and try to link it up to Mark and Michelle. But I just have a few points that I get. If I like harking back to my growing up in Ottawa and learning a little bit about living in other parts of Canada, I think if I was to speak to public servants in these sorts of urban areas, I would say there is a big rural urban divide. I didn't talk a lot about that in the Prairies. I think Mark and Michelle talked about that. That's also a very big thing, and there's big differences.
Indigenous ownership, definitely in the North and the Prairies, is quite significant. We didn't talk too much about that but this can be a big growth area, I think, in the energy transition in Canada. And then, kind of back to my point about like Alberta and the energy identity and things like that. And I think that's an important, I would say, thing to consider as we collaborate together, move forward with, I think, a big vision for energy in Canada.
Caroline Pitfield: Thanks so much, Martin. Sorry, I put you on the spot there. Michelle, are you good to go next?
Michelle Robichaud: Yes, for sure. So, I guess if I were to have a bit of a call to action for our public servants, I'd encourage you to challenge your assumptions about Atlantic Canada. I understand that sometimes it's easier to have a broad policy or to think about it on average, but that doesn't always work. There's definitely not one-size-fits-all solution, and there might be other avenues to help out smaller regions. And actually, to be honest, I'll give a little credit to a couple of different organizations.
The federal NRCan, shout out for the HRS program, really recognized an opportunity for a fast transition. There was some great responses programing in there that understood the unique needs here in Atlantic Canada. In Nova Scotia, for example, the Mi'kmaw communities collaborated on some shared energy priorities, including grid-scale battery.
They partnered with Nova Scotia Power, the private sector utility and the Canada Infrastructure Bank really stepped in to help with their first equity partnership deal and supporting that and supporting those 13 Mi'kmaw communities. So, those are unique and responsive type programing.
I think it is an excellent opportunity to take advantage of the rural-urban divide, as Mark mentioned. And just one last thought. We invite collaboration. We invite you to reach out. We're happy to be a conduit. At Atlantica Centre for Energy, that's what we do. Pick up the phone. Send us an email. We're a small region. So, we should be pretty easy to access. So, if you can't find an Atlantica expert, please call us. It's literally my job to help connect you with the right people that can help you to understand what's going on in Atlantic Canada. So, don't be shy. Reach out. We're friendly out here. I would love to have a conversation.
Caroline Pitfield: Thanks, Michelle. Mark?
Mark Heyck: Great. Thanks, Caroline. Well, thanks very much, everybody, for your attention and attendance over the last hour and a half. It's been great. I guess one of the main takeaways I think from the discussion here today is the incredible diversity in the energy field from coast to coast to coast in Canada. And so, I would say in defence of asymmetrical federalism, I think when it comes to program design and delivery at the federal level, I'll give one example of a program that we found a lot of challenges with, and that was the Greener Homes Program.
This is a program from Natural Resources Canada. The thinking behind it was excellent, looking at improving the energy efficiency of Canadian homes. However, that program had a prerequisite that a home had to have, or a homeowner had to have a home energy evaluation conducted by a certified residential energy advisor in order to qualify for the program. Our organization is the only organization in all of the Northwest Territories that has those certified residential energy advisors.
And so, and they're all based here in Yellowknife. So, we have communities that are 2-3000 kilometres north of us. And so, it created a major barrier for people who might have been otherwise interested in accessing that program to bring down their energy costs or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, because it would cost us thousands of dollars to send somebody just to meet that one prerequisite of that program.
Now, credit where credit is due. That version 2.0 of the Greener Homes Program is coming out. It's focusing on affordability and lower income households. They've taken that feedback and that, as I understand it, is no longer a prerequisite. So, it's great to see that kind of shift in thinking based on the experience of that one program. And I also wanted to give credit to some of the work that Natural Resources Canada and Crown-Indigenous relations have done together.
They created this umbrella funding program called 'Wah-ila-toos'. That's basically a single window where a community or an organization that's interested in a clean energy project or an energy efficiency project, they can bring it to the Wah-ila-toos team. And that team will route it to whatever funding program within the federal government is most appropriate to that particular project. So, those kinds of examples of evolving to meet the needs of the clients on the ground are fantastic.
And I guess, just as a closing point, I think we all recognize that one-size-fits-all in a country that's as big and diverse as Canada, often doesn't work. So, that flexible approach is beneficial and certainly much appreciated from those of us who are in some of the more far-flung parts of the country. Thanks.
Caroline Pitfield: I would say unfortunately we are at the end of time. This concludes our discussion. And I was going to pull on the much-appreciated thread and say thank you so much, Mark, Michelle and Martin for this discussion today. That's both on behalf of myself, the school, the organizing team at the school, and the public servants listening in today. I think this topic sometimes seems daunting. It seems complicated. And yet, you made it seem so exciting, so inspiring, and mostly so possible. So, that seize the moment thing is really coming to mind for me. I also hear you, Michelle, in terms of willing to be a source of information for people. So, thank you for that as well in advance. One little plug for the school. If you do want to continue this conversation, I would invite you to check out our web site. We do have some future upcoming events in this series on Exploring Energy in Canada, as well as some products that might help you better understand this area. But thank you so much. I really enjoyed that.
Michelle Robichaud: Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.
Mark Heyck: Thank you.
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