Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In follow-up to my Member’s statement, I’d like to ask the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources a few questions.
Over the last few years, his department has worked with the Arctic Energy Alliance to install woodstoves in the communities. Moving forward, will that continue? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. The Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, we intend to maintain our commitment and enhance our commitment to alternative energies, to biomass, and one of the questions that’s going to be posed tonight is what type of regulation and legislation do we need, in fact, to allow us to enhance woodstove use, biomass, solar use. Are there specific pieces of legislation that other jurisdictions may have, because we don’t have any right now. We have legislation that governs oil and gas installations and those types of things, so we are very interested in that. We’ve got pathfinders in the regions. We’re going to be looking at training more people so that, in fact, you can do the proper inspections and get the insurance coverage and those types of issues dealt with as well.
That sounds good. I’d like to ask the Minister, how is the department working with the communities who have taken on biomass to expand?
We work with communities on a community-by-community project basis at this point. Where there is an interest, for example, in the Member’s community of McPherson there has been waste heat work done. We have been studying the viability of using fast growing willows as a source of biomass in addition to all the other standard programs of general applications that are there for all businesses and individuals to apply for. We’re also, of course, very interested in working with communities as they do their own energy plans, to see what long-term planning needs to be done to ensure things are integrated and fit both for the community but are part of the broader planning of the government.
Aside from one of the diamond mines, we don’t really have any wind turbines within the Northwest Territories except for a miniature one that’s always been up in Inuvik.
I’d like to ask the Minister, when does the Minister estimate the first wind turbine to be operating in the Northwest Territories communities?
The most viable site, in my mind, is a place called Storm Hills, between Inuvik and Tuk, where they’ve been doing wind mapping for some time now. We’re looking at the viability of that site, and we know that if we put in six, seven megawatts, eight megawatts of power between Tuk and Inuvik, you could cut the diesel consumption for the production of electricity in half, and wind is free. We just have to work on the money. Part of the commitment here going forward with the charrette is the investment in those types of very fundamental community infrastructures that will allow us to make a serious dent into the reliance on diesel.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
