Thank you to the committee, both members and to the staff, for your kind invitation for us to be here today. On behalf of everybody at the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy, or FORCE, as it's commonly known, it's an honour.
I'm pleased to be joined by Melissa Oldreive, our environmental programs manager at the facility, and Jeremy Poste, representing one of our berth holders at FORCE, who is with a company called OpenHydro Technology Canada.
We're happy to be part of a conversation about how clean technology can be part of our economy and our environment. We're here today to discuss specifically the marine renewable energy sector, which includes river current, tidal, and wave technologies. Our specific focus at FORCE is with respect to tidal devices, which have application for both tides and rivers. Tidal turbines operate much like a windmill, but albeit under water. They convert the natural flow of water and current into electricity.
FORCE, where Melissa and I work, is a demonstration facility that connects these turbines to the Nova Scotia transmission grid. FORCE was supported by a $20-million grant from the Government of Canada. That grant has been a huge success for us, spurring nearly $100 million in development activity in this sector and the involvement of over 250 Canadian companies. That activity is projected to reach $240 million as each of these devices is installed at our facility.
The FORCE site is in the Bay of Fundy's Minas Passage, which contains approximately 7,000 megawatts of power potential. That's enough to power almost 2.5 million homes, or all of Atlantic Canada at peak demand. It's quite a staggering resource. That resource flows across the country. It's not limited to the Bay of Fundy, where it's estimated 40,000 megawatts of tidal power from our coast regions lie in wait. This potential climbs significantly if we apply that estimation to Canada's rivers, where it's estimated 340 gigawatts of power lie in wait for all Canadians.
If you look at a map of Canada, you can predict places where tidal and river energy can be extracted. Just as the water speeds up when you hold your thumb over a garden hose, you'll find an energy resource any place where two shorelines pinch together. Unlike other forms of renewable energy, tidal energy is predictable. We can predict the output today, tomorrow, or a hundred years from now, and that makes it easier to plan and integrate into the grid.
Last year, my colleague here, Mr. Poste, did just that. He deployed the first large-scale, grid-connected tidal device in the Bay of Fundy. This is certainly not the first deployment in the world. In-stream tidal energy projects are expanding in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, France, China, and South Korea. Others, like Chile, India, and Japan are also taking early steps. At the moment the U.K. leads this sector, with over 1,800 megawatts in development. The region has deployed dozens of devices, including the first industrial-scale, four-turbine array, the final step before moving to pure commercial farms.
The technology also has applications in northern and remote communities, where people often rely on diesel-based generation for their power sources. Even at this early stage, tidal technology can compete with those costs. North America has seen small-scale deployments in British Columbia, Manitoba, New York, Maine, and elsewhere. In fact, an in-stream project in a small Alaskan village has already shown potential to lower and stabilize electricity rates for remote communities. Importantly, although the project is located in a sensitive spawning ground for salmon, monitoring to date has shown no significant impacts from the installation of this device.
Whether we place a turbine in Alaska, the North Sea, or the Bay of Fundy, continued environmental monitoring will be crucial. Power developers need to provide clear and convincing evidence that their technology is safe and that impacts are acceptable. That means getting in the water and getting equipment wet, and that's something Canada is very good at. Hundreds of Canadian companies have the skill to directly translate to supporting this industry, and they'll have already been put to work monitoring and measuring the resource, transporting and installing substitute power cables, and building turbine components and pioneering new research.
Canadian scientists and contractors have also been hard at work around environmental effects monitoring. Working with them, FORCE has built three underwater science platforms to gather data from the sea floor. These platforms are creating a critical new piece of Canadian expertise: the ability to see and sense extreme turbulent flows located, for example, in the Minas Passage. Wind projects rely on meteorological data to get the ball rolling, both for consenting and for project planning in terms of profitability. We're building the comparable tools for tidal. The data the platforms produce makes everything possible: the technology, design, resource assessment, financing, public acceptance, and more. These sensor platforms and the expertise surrounding them are pioneering. They are also a huge export opportunity for Canada.
Getting the industry moving has also taken the considerable political will of both provincial and federal governments. For that, we would like to thank you. We still need it though, and this includes infrastructure, specifically related to port facilities and a greater capacity that can accommodate increased adoption of renewables; federal policy leadership on renewable targets in tandem with your leadership on carbon; and financial mechanisms to support cost reduction.
As I mentioned, we're not alone in this race. Capturing even 10% of the global market could translate into $5 billion in exports by the year 2050. We're off to a great start.
Again, 250 Canadian companies have been involved in the activity in the Bay of Fundy alone. Across the country, Canadian companies like Rockland Scientific and Instream Energy Systems in B.C., New Energy Corporation in Alberta, and MilAero in Nova Scotia are already providing solutions to the international market. Small Atlantic Canadian companies like EMO Marine have been bought by international firms like the MacArtney Underwater Technology Group.
As the industry matures, so will the opportunity. We believe our oceans and rivers have the potential to create those opportunities right here in Canada.
Thank you very much. I'd now like to turn it over to Jeremy Poste.