Good afternoon.
My name is Colleen Giroux-Schmidt, and I am the vice-president of corporate relations here at Innergex Renewable Energy. In addition to my role at Innergex, I was part of the Generation Energy Council, which submitted its report to the federal government in June 2018.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today and share our thoughts on the opportunities the greening government initiative holds for Canada.
For those on the committee not familiar with Innergex Renewable Energy, we are a leading Canadian renewable energy producer. We've been active since 1990. We develop, own and operate wind, solar, and small hydro and geothermal facilities, and we carry out our operations with more than 300 employees across Canada—in Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia—as well as in the United States, France, Chile and Iceland. We are a publicly traded company, and our shares are listed on the TSX under the symbol INE.
Innergex is 100% committed to renewable energy. While our company began with small-scale hydro in Quebec, we have expanded beyond that to now have a broadly diversified portfolio of projects, both geographically and by technology. In addition to our 68 operating assets, we are actively building the largest solar farm in Texas. We also just signed two contracts with the utility in Hawaii for solar plus storage projects.
Partnerships form the basis of our operations here and abroad, whether they be with indigenous and non-indigenous communities as equity partners in our projects, with our local contractors and suppliers, or with our customers. We have collaborated and built partnership-based relationships with multiple communities across our operating facilities and development projects. Innergex was the partner on the first municipal-partnered wind farm in Quebec, and we have multiple equity-partnered projects with indigenous communities across the country. We understand that our business is more sustainable when we are working together to build a safer, cleaner and more resilient electricity system for today and for future generations.
We know that greenhouse gas emission reduction is a critical global imperative, and we also know that switching to renewable electricity is a key way to achieve emission reductions. Innergex is proud of our Canadian roots, and we see opportunities for the kinds of projects that we develop to help Canada both to meet its goals within the greening government program and broader regional economic development, and to create indigenous economic opportunities.
We applaud the greening government initiative and the acknowledgement that one of the best tools an organization has for driving change is its procurement policy.
Increasingly, customers are the driver of change in the energy space. Just last week, Bloomberg New Energy Finance released its 2019 corporate energy market outlook. I mention it because in 2018, corporations bought a record amount of clean energy through power purchase agreements, or PPAs. Some 13.4 gigawatts of clean energy contracts were signed by 121 corporations in 21 different countries. This is up from 6.1 gigawatts in 2017.
This is a significant shift and reinforces the overall trend to shift toward renewable energy. While utilizing procurement policy to enable the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is a critical piece of this, we also see significant opportunity for the Government of Canada to do more.
The procurement of renewable energy can be used as a driving force to revitalize indigenous and non-indigenous rural communities across Canada. There is an untapped opportunity to leverage the build-out of the renewable energy sector to bring new jobs and economic development, and to allow communities to take an active role in the transition to the 21st century low-carbon economy.
Innergex has experienced first-hand the impact that renewable energy projects can have when the local community plays a partnership role in the project. We believe that these partnerships are an indispensable part of the future of renewable energy development. We know that there is significant interest in communities to develop these projects.
As you're aware, one third of Canada's indigenous communities are here in British Columbia. A survey of indigenous clean energy published by the BC First Nations Clean Energy Working Group, in partnership with the University of Victoria's school of environmental studies and Clean Energy BC, demonstrated a widespread involvement and interest in renewable energy among indigenous communities in B.C., with half of the 105 respondents already involved in the clean energy industry in some way, from ownership to receiving royalties, and 98% of respondents indicating that they are or would like to be more involved.
However, communities have also identified significant barriers to participation in the industry. The majority of indigenous community survey respondents, 75%, indicated that they have projects in mind that they have not yet pursued or been able to pursue. They identified three primary barriers to developing these projects: lack of project opportunity, lack of community readiness, and difficulty securing financing.
Innergex notes from our experience working in multiple provinces across this country that this level of interest exists throughout Canada. We believe that strategic federal government procurement of renewable electricity can help address the first hurdle.
I'd like to take a moment to share with you the story of Kwoiek Creek and the Kanaka Bar Indian Band.
In 1978, the community, located near Boston Bar in the Fraser Canyon of British Columbia, started to think about developing a small hydro project. This is a region that had not seen economic activity since the railway and the highway were built. They worked over the next two decades to build community support for the project, and in the 1990s applied for the water licence. They worked with a couple of other companies before choosing Innergex to be their partner in the development of the project.
We became involved in the early 2000s, and with Kanaka Bar took the project through a comprehensive environmental assessment, were successful in a competitive procurement process and constructed the project. We began commercial operations five years ago, and the Kanaka Bar Indian Band owns 50% of this 50-megawatt project.
This, on its own, is a significant achievement, but the story doesn't stop there. Kanaka Bar has reinvested their portion of the revenue back into their community. They have done community solar, are working to become self-sufficient with food, have built community housing, and employ 20-plus youth on an annual basis. They have become one of the key economic drivers in the region.
This is a remarkable achievement, and one that we are proud to have witnessed and contributed to. More importantly, it is one that we believe is repeatable across the country. We believe that the Government of Canada could build on the foundation of greening government and deploy strategic government procurement policy to enable indigenous economic opportunities by procuring renewable electricity from projects with significant indigenous partnership and ownership. To achieve this, we strongly encourage you to aggregate the procurement opportunities so they can enable projects of significance.
We also believe that government process and organization must be streamlined to enable procurement. We are in an era where the challenges we are facing are multi-faceted and complex, and the solutions must also be multi-faceted. This requires an enhanced level of collaboration and leadership across agencies and ministries.
Canada has made the commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and has the opportunity to lead the world in the energy transition. The business case for it is abundant. The signals from multinational business leaders are clear, and our neighbours are poised for action.
By making a strong commitment to demonstrating leadership through strategic procurement of renewable electricity, with strong indigenous partnerships, Canada can both reduce our greenhouse gas emissions within our own borders, and also unlock unprecedented opportunities for economic benefits in indigenous and non-indigenous communities across the country.
Thank you very much for your time, and we look forward to your questions.