Is There Another Way?

Renewables Ready But Will Take Large-Scale Investment for the North to Shift

Deline2.jpg John Curran/NNSL photo

Two images, considered together, illustrate the difficult spot that Northern communities are in when it comes to energy. The first: The constantly updating satellite photos showing less and less ice in the Arctic.

A second image to consider: The diesel generator. It’s a staple of almost every single community scattered across the North, because it is one of the only ways to bring power to the remote parts of the territory.

That these two images exist side by side in the North is emblematic of the paradox, the contradiction that much of the North finds itself in: climate change is perhaps the most serious long-term challenge that the region needs to meet – but at the same time, per capita energy usage can be up to nearly twice the national average. 

In a North where basic survival tests the limits of affordability, but where climate change could potentially be at its most devastating, what will be the catalyst to drive the transformation of the energy sector? What possibilities – and responsibilities – do Northern communities have to adopt alternative energy practices, and who will pay for them? 

Opportunity for Renewables

There is tremendous opportunity for growth in the renewable energy sector in the Canadian North. So far, a significant infusion of capital has been the missing piece to the growth of renewables in the North. “Although renewable energy projects are technically viable in Nunavut,” write Konstantino Karanasios and Paul Parker in a 2016 study of renewable energy in Nunavut, “there is a lack of territorial programs supporting such high capital cost alternatives, due to limited financing.” 

“It absolutely makes sense to invest in renewable and hybrid energy systems in the Arctic,” said Victoria Herrmann, director of the Arctic Institute, in an interview with Futurism in 2017. In her interpretation, the dearth of renewable energy in the North, coupled with the absolute necessity of energy there, makes it an investment that could provide large returns. “For those living in the Arctic, petroleum fuel isn’t about global commodity markets: it’s about survival. Solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources are not just possible there, they’re profitable.

The time is certainly coming when that investment will be more crucially needed than it is today. More than half of the diesel-fired plants that provide power to each of Nunavut’s communities, are now approaching (or in some cases have already surpassed) the end of their design lifespan; federal money is helping the territory to upgrade some of the oldest plants – but at a certain point the rule of diminishing returns will take over. 

But Nunavut faces unique challenges that the other territories have either already dealt with, or deal with in a muted capacity. “The common challenges for a renewable North are compounded in Nunavut,” reads a report, produced by the three territorial governments, called ‘A Northern Vision: A Stronger North and a Better Canada.’ 

In it Nunavut’s hurdles are summarized as follows, “Limited electrical grid connectivity, limited transportation infrastructure, cold climate, limited demand, sparse population, dependency on fossil fuels and human capacity issues remain persistent deterrents to the growth of renewable energy in the most remote territory.”

One thing Nunavut does have? Sunlight, and a lot of it. For good chunks of the year, the sun is shining for nearly the entire day. As solar technology being produced in the south improves – think, for instance, of the high-profile promises by Elon Musk and Tesla to power entire territories with solar power – Nunavut stands to gain a great deal through investment in solar. 

Another thing that’s abundant in the North is the potential to turn all that water into power. “In the North, there are abundant resources of river currents and tidal currents,” says Christopher Sauer, co-founder of the Ocean Renewable Power Company. “Canada is like the Kuwait of marine renewable energy.” Sauer argues that the biggest obstacle to the growth of renewable energy in the North is both funding and the conditions: the work required to set up renewable energy systems are often hampered, he says, by harsh conditions that can wreak havoc on above-ground systems. 

“Being under the water has its own challenges, but we don’t get 75-degree centigrade swings in the temperature in the water,” he says. “In a way, marine renewable energy systems are kind of insulated or protected from the harsh conditions of the North, which is the big advantage.” 

Political Will is Key

The reality of the problem, however, is that it is less one about technicalities and more one about policies; it’s not that the North lacks the technical know-how to start the shift towards renewable energies, but that it lacks the capital.

That’s a particularly pressing problem, as the territory is also starting to grow its carbon footprint. “Nunavut is increasing its greenhouse gas emissions dramatically over time,” says Darryl McMahon, principal at RESTCo. For McMahon, the time has come for the North to take the problem of climate change seriously. “We talk about the canary in a coalmine when we talk about climate change,” he says. “But we’re at the point where the canary is dead. We have to decide whether or not we want to save the miners.” 

Others, like Carl McLean, Nunatsiavut Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources in Newfoundland, are less dramatic when they talk about the shift that will be required. For McLean, the goal should be to begin the transition away from diesel, not to replace it entirely. “We’re certainly not going to get rid of the diesel plants in the community,” he said, speaking in Ottawa this spring. “But hopefully we’re going to lessen the costs for our residents and improve their way of life … What we’re trying to do is reduce our reliance on diesel.” 

McMahon has an interesting outlook on the problem. McMahon works with a team called RESTCo, who – to build on his bird metaphor – want to kill two birds with one stone and tackle the problem of renewable energy at the same time as they tackle the problem of housing in the North.

McMahon and RESTCo have developed an entire housing system that they say could be implemented in a way that would help mitigate the effects of climate change (McMahon is one of those people who believes we’re well past the point of turning back climate change) while also reducing Northern dependency on diesel. 

The system, which RESTCo calls, unsurprisingly, “the RESTCo House,” is a system of houses that are built with a special insulated panel that McMahon and the team developed with researchers at Carleton University. The idea is that with a low-cost panel that can be used to build houses, you can create homes that require less energy to be heated and can also be relocated easily; McMahon seems to believe, earnestly, that climate change will literally uproot Northern communities. 

Entire communities could be built with RESTCo homes, he says. The homes themselves run mostly on solar panels. “The panels have dropped by price by something like 80 per cent in the last 15 years,” he says. “We’re at the point where in the south, we’re not investing in natural gas plants anymore, we’re investing in solar plants and energy storage instead.” 

That, to him, is what it will take before any form of progress can be declared: when communities actually start tangibly reducing their reliance on diesel. “There’s very little actual concrete difference happening on the ground yet,” he says – only a lot of talk, and the occasional bit of money thrown at a project. “Spending money is not a measure of success.”

Proof of Concept

For the renewable energy sector in Canada’s far North, the present situation is a bit like being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea: on the one hand, it has been hard to overcome reliance on diesel-fired power; on the other, there is not yet enough capital to finance significant efforts to green up the grid. 

But those are not insurmountable problems, and there is an argument to be made that Canada could stand to look to its Arctic neighbours and aim to build a Northern energy sector that is as strong and sustainable as countries like Norway and Denmark.

In the 1970s, at the height of the oil crisis, Iceland invested heavily in geothermal energy – a sector which is now a major staple of their economy, while 99 per cent of home heating now comes from renewable sources. Both Iceland and Norway now export excess energy. It is a proof of concept of sorts: this sort of thing could be possible in the Canadian North. 

There’s an economic argument to be made that a similar path should be pursued by Canadian governments; Ragnheiður Elín Árnadóttir, Iceland’s minister of industry and commerce, has called getting to 100 per cent renewable energy “economically necessary,” and has gone as far to say that in the 21st Century, the shift to renewable energy could be the “story of the Arctic.” 

While in other Northern nations this shift has taken place, to say it is still in its infancy in Canada would be an understatement. But that, of course, does not mean it can’t happen. 

There is a growing sense, among industry participants, that climate change will force the question. What one sees in projects like RESTCo, or Christopher Sauer’s plans to invest in marine renewables, is perhaps the seed of what needs to happen before the North can transition to renewable energies. 

Cautiously, renewables can be, as McLean argued, a way to lessen the cost of living in the North and move towards a way of life that is less reliant on southern Canada. But don’t discount the ambitious view of things, either. 

“Always remember that the Arctic has historically been bountiful in renewable and non-renewable energy,” said Árnadóttir, at a 2016 Arctic Circle Assembly summit in Iceland. “The Arctic should be a region that other countries look to in developing renewable energy.” ABQ

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