Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the presenters here today for coming out to share your information with us.
I was very excited to hear from the Geothermal Energy Association. I'm from the Northwest Territories, and it's a very big riding. There are a lot of issues with generating power and heat. It's a very costly place to operate, and over the period of my life I've seen a lot of initiatives come forward. I was involved with a lot of projects. We looked at biomass, and we're still working on biomass.
However, the farther north you go, the smaller the tree is, to the point where there are no trees. Even in the southern part of the territory, it takes probably four trees to make up what is a normal tree in the southern part of Canada.
We looked at wind turbines. Every projected that we tried had issues. The turbines are expensive, the technology is expensive. If you're way up in a remote community and it breaks down, it takes about six months to get a part shipped up from another country, and it will take another six months to a year to get somebody who is willing to come up to fix it. It's very expensive to look at wind.
We are trying some projects around the community of Inuvik this coming summer, and I hope they work well, but we have problems with freezing rain and ice and those things. Solar has huge potential. In the summer, we have 24-hour sunlight, but we don't have that from October to February, so it doesn't work at all. We're looking at hydro. Hydro is very costly.
For us, geothermal is the solution, but geothermal hasn't been able to move forward. We've tried several projects and they didn't work. We just couldn't get geothermal right. We didn't have the expertise, all the ingredients, but we know that the ground is suitable. We have everything else.
I wasn't aware that there are projects being looked at in the far north, especially in Nunavut. I never expected to hear that. As we move forward, I think this area is going to get a lot of interest.
Could you tell me a couple of things? First of all, you talked about a number of different companies. The reason I want to ask this is because there's a lot of interest from indigenous corporations, indigenous people, on renewable energy. There is a huge need for us to convert in the north, and our government has committed to doing that.
Can you tell me, first of all, if there's any way, with some of the initiatives you're looking at, for indigenous people to play a role?