(file photo/paNOW)

By Susan McNeil

Clean Energy

Meadow Lake and PBCN tribal councils get funding for green projects

Jul 13, 2022 | 5:00 PM

Building capacity for a regional focus on renewable energy and an 816 kW solar farm is part of a $6 million announcement for the Meadow Lake Tribal Council.

MLTC and Mee-Toos Forest Products (owned by Peter Ballantyne group of companies) received federal dollars for a new green initiative, announced in Regina several days ago.

“Our partners on these projects are focused on deploying renewable energy, displacing coal-based electricity, and training the next generation of Indigenous clean energy leaders,” said Hon. Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Natural Resources.

“Both western science and traditional ecological knowledge are clear: climate change represents the greatest challenge to our generation and to those generations that are coming.”

Mee-Toos will use around $2 million to replace propane heating systems in schools in Pelican Narrows and Deschambault Lake with biofuels. Using biofuels has been shown to reduce fossil fuel use by 90 per cent.

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For First Nations, some of the benefits are more practical, said Gary Merasty, head of Peter Ballantyne’s group of companies.

“Our communities struggle on a daily basis with energy security,” he said. “This impacts fair and reasonable access, cost, reliability to our communities – which has huge and broad impacts, has impacts on home heating, it has impacts on traditional pursuits, whether it’s pursuing traditional activities of hunting, fishing, and trapping.”

Merasty also said that trying to solve an issue like access to energy can be difficult when it comes to services in small communities with different compositions and spread across large spaces.

“The demographic conflict, where your population is younger versus the rest of Canada, they’re older. Then you have the jurisdictional chaos sometimes that, that happens. Well, who’s responsible, feds or province?” he asked.

Mee-Toos has been working on de-centralizing things and making them part of the communities the company serves. The bio-mass project is expected to match well with Mee-Toos as a forestry company.

Chief Richard Ben of the Meadow Lake Tribal Council said they are looking forward to the two projects they’ll be working on.

“We are excited to grow our capacity in renewable energy production with participation in renewable energy economy.”

MLTC will use $4.3 million of the federal investment dollars to “develop a regional approach to renewable energy, energy-efficient, and conservation capacity building that is led by the Indigenous communities for Indigenous communities.”

The Tribal Council and its nine First Nation members will entirely own a solar farm to be built in southern Saskatchewan on First Nations land.

They plan to use it as a steppingstone to create other renewable energy projects.

The First Nations Power Authority, which includes the Prince Albert Grand Council as an owner, along with the MLTC and PBCN, was given $1 million for energy planning for communities that have no current natural gas supply from Sask Energy.

Guy Lonechild spoke on behalf of the FNPA and its goals.

“It’s about Indigenous-led, it’s about ensuring that Indigenous people are at the forefront of fighting climate change, about working through First Nations on a nation-to-nation basis with provincial and territorial and national governments and Crown corporations, and partnership with Sask Power Corporation, Sask Energy,” he said.

Lonechild also pointed out a member of the Kinistin First Nation, Joshua Thomas, who will be a fully-fledged engineer in several months, has been given the job of leading the group’s Community Energy Planning Initiative for First Nations in the north without natural gas.

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com