Inukjuak aims to be diesel-free by 2012

Within five years, the community of Inukjuak will use its water and wind to produce heat and light and end its dependence on diesel fuel to generate electrical power.

The Pituvik Landholding Corporation of Inukjuak, which administers community-held lands and money, is moving ahead with a plan to install hydro-electric turbines on the Inukjuak River, as well as a wind generator farm outside of town.

“The information we get on climate change and global warming and the greenhouse gases that we produce locally is having an effect. People are starting to say, ‘we should look at alternative energy, and things we could do to reduce the greenhouse gases,’” said Eric Atagotaluk, president of the Pituvik LHC.

Together, Inukjuak’s two alternative energy-producing projects will be able to provide more than two megawatts of clean, non-polluting electricity a year. That’s more than enough power for the current needs of Inukjuak, population 1,150, and to meet future growth of up to 1,500 households.

The proposed hydro-electric project will draw on the flow and fall of the Inukjuak River.

The plan is to install two or three turbines at a point in the river about 12 km from town. These turbines will harness the power contained in the river’s rapids and waterfall, diverted through a channel. As water runs swiftly through the turbines, the movement of the turbines will generate electricity.

As for generating power from wind, Atagotaluk said, his community has the distinction of being the “windiest” in Nunavik.

A pilot project for a windmill farm, consisting of several turbines outside of Inukjuak, will be able to produce about one megawatt of electricity — probably enough to meet the community’s present power requirements, although back-up diesel-produced power would still be necessary.

A wind-monitoring tower has already been tracking Inukjuak’s powerful winds since 2004. According to Hydro-Québec, the potential for energy-production is “interesting.”

When a pilot project on the Magdelan islands, producing 300 kilowatt-hours, is completed in 2006, Inukjuak’s larger $10 million wind project will go ahead in 2007.

The hydro-electric project would also move ahead in 2007, following a feasibility study this summer, which would look at soil, water flows and engineering requirements as well as environmental impacts and economic benefits.

The turbines could be churning out power within five years at a cost of $28 million. Studies show that it will return this investment at a rate of about 30 per cent a year — so the hydro-electric project will be able to pay for itself within its first five years.

The two projects are likely to be bankrolled by a combination of money from the local landholding corporation, Makivik Corporation, joint venturing and federal government funds. The electricity produced would then be sold back to Hydro-Québec.

However, Hydro-Québec is considering spinning off all its wind power projects in Quebec into a stand-alone subsidiary and could keep some form of ownership over the proposed wind turbine farm.

Hydro-Québec is actively pursuing any projects to lower the cost of power delivery to Nunavik. In Nunavik, electricity is sold at the same rate as in the South, but costs 10 times more to produce, due to the high cost of transporting diesel fuel.

Hydro-Québec spokesperson Mathieu Boucher said studies show it’s too expensive to link Nunavik to the main power grid, so independent power production is the way to go.

Of the two technologies, wind is less tested than hydro-electric producers in northern Quebec, and the wind turbines’ reliability and resistance to cold is uncertain.

But the Inukjuak wind project looks like a winner, and experts say 80 per cent of coastal communities in the Arctic have a similarly good potential for the production of wind energy.

Kotzebue, a community of 4,000 on Alaska’s northwest coast, got into wind energy in 1997 with three 60-kilowatt turbines. Kotzebue installed seven more in 1999, two in 2004, and will install three in 2006. The Northwest Borough of Alaska also has combined wind-diesel projects in smaller communities.

Hydro-electric mini-projects have already been built in other communities in Quebec. The James Bay Cree community of Wemindji built a one-megawatt station on the Maquatua River in 1985.

To better inform Inukjuak about alternative energy and climate change, the Pituvik LHC, the municipality of Inukjuak, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and the Aboriginal and Northern Community Action Program mounted a two-day workshop on climate change and energy in mid-February.

In August 2003, the federal government announced new funding totaling approximately $30.7 million over four years, for climate change and energy initiatives in aboriginal and northern communities.

The Aboriginal and Northern Community Action Program, wants to encourage “Aboriginal and northern communities in all provinces and territories to become active partners in climate change action,” according to their website.