Alberta First Nation makes big solar play with a West Coast connection

Solar power presented the Athabasca Chipewyan Nation an opportunity to diversify its energy investments at the same time demand is rising for renewable power.

The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation is about 1,000 km away from Highway 3 in southern Alberta, but couldn’t pass up the investment opportunities presented by solar-power developments along that province’s so-called transition corridor, with the help of a West Coast connection.

The Athabasca Chipewyan, partnered with Concord Pacific subsidiary Concord Green Energy, recently commissioned three solar-power farms in southern Alberta, a $145-million initial investment for the ACFN-Concord Solar Partnership.

“Being in the north, daylight hours are limited” for Athabasca Chipewyan communities, said Jason Schulz, executive director of strategic advisory services for the First Nation.

“But southern Alberta is the next best thing to Florida for solar investments and daylight hours in being in the province of Alberta,” he added.

It is also a location where proponents can take direct ownership of their own clean-energy developments, which fits in with the Athabasca Chipewyan Nation’s ambitions to diversify their resource interests “outside of oilsands dirty carbon, for lack of a better word,” Schulz said.

Investment in clean energy is a path many B.C. First Nations have taken through partnerships with independent power producers that sell electricity to B.C. Hydro and increasingly with projects that aim to establish their own energy independence.

In Alberta, the Athabasca Chipewyan Nation identified these three solar-farm opportunities, two on or adjacent to Highway 3 at Monarch, west of Lethbridge, and Vulcan, north of the southern city, about two-and-a-half years ago, and partnered with Concord Green Energy to develop them.

For Concord Green Energy, which includes two run-of-river independent power projects in its portfolio of 22 facilities, Alberta’s campaign to replace coal-fired electricity generation presented an opportunity that fit well with the company’s ethic, according to Concord Pacific CEO Terry Hui.

“It’s a new market for us. It’s expanding and a little bit different,” Hui said. “Although there’s no (power purchase) agreement, I’m pretty bullish about the green energy sector.”

In total, the three solar farms add up to 194 hectares with 67.6 megawatts of solar-power generation capacity, capable of producing 150 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year. And the two parties hope this opening will lead to future opportunities.

The Athabasca Chipewyan Nation had experience in solar power with the development of a smaller project at Fort Chipewyan, with associated industry, that helped power the community itself. But Schulz said they have bigger ambitions.

“It presents huge opportunities, and I would say growing opportunities as, you know, there’s increased interest in the field,” Schulz said.

Hui shares that optimism, noting that First Nations are natural partners in a lot of potential projects through the role they play in the approval process under Canada’s commitments to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“We believe that there is a lot of growth in the market in the First Nations capital and resources market,” Hui said. “Green energy is a form of income property” that can earn stable income and returns, he added.

And in B.C., carbon-reduction commitments in the province’s CleanBC plan, along with Canada’s net-zero targets, will mean that this province will need more renewable electricity sooner than it expects, according to Cole Sayers, interim executive director of Clean Energy B.C. and advocate for First Nations-led clean-energy projects.

Officially, B.C. Hydro expects to be in a power surplus for most of this decade, especially with its Site C dam expected to come online in the next few years.

In the meantime, Sayers said First Nations are focusing their efforts on renewable-power projects to curb the diesel generators that remote communities rely on.

However, Sayers said new Energy Minister Josie Osborne has been tasked with incorporating B.C.’s climate targets in the province’s energy plans, which open the bigger opportunities they are interested in.

“(In) a climate-alive framework for energy planning, there’s certainly good potential for more First Nations-led renewable energy projects,” said Sayers, a member of the Hupacasath First Nation on the West Coast of Vancouver Island.

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