In my opening, I'd like to highlight five things for you today.
First, I'd like to talk about the significant pipeline of investments the CIB is currently working on, which will deliver results.
The $10-billion growth [Technical difficulty—Editor] was an inflection point for the CIB, and since then our momentum has grown. We announced the $407-million investment in the Alberta irrigation project, which will kick-start the largest agricultural irrigation expansion in the history of the province. The project will result in up to 6,800 direct and indirect permanent jobs and up to 1,280 construction jobs. It will also open an estimated 200,000 acres of more productive agricultural land.
We also announced the Oneida battery energy storage project, which will be the largest battery storage project in Canada and among the largest in the world. It is a partnership between an innovative Canadian company and the Six Nations of the Grand River Development Corporation. It is another project we are very excited about.
Finally, our first zero-emission bus investment has been finalized, and we will be announcing it in co-operation with our partner in the coming weeks. This is another important step in delivering outcomes.
In addition to these three new projects, we are in detailed negotiations for, and have confidence in, a critical mass of additional projects coming by Canada Day, and in many cases sooner. In fact, we believe eight additional projects can and will be approved and announced in the coming three months.
We estimate that from the time we launched the growth plan last October to Canada Day of this year, new CIB investment commitments will total $2.5 billion. When these investments are added to the previous investment in the REM project in Quebec, this portfolio will have $3.8 billion in CIB investment in total, with approximately $5.8 billion in private and institutional capital for these projects. This private and institutional capital comes from pensioners who are part of organizations like the Caisse and farmers who are part of irrigation districts. These pension funds, private companies, first nations, broadband service providers and building owners are all non-governmental investment partners working closely with the CIB to deliver new infrastructure, as intended by the CIB Act.
We will have investments in all of our priority sectors and all five pillars of the growth plan by this summer, while continuing in parallel, of course, to work diligently to advance the longer-term transformational nation-building projects that the CIB is engaged in with our partners.
Second, we are doing more than just projects. Beyond the individual projects I've outlined, last week we announced our new indigenous community infrastructure initiative. We expect this will create a significant number of new project opportunities and have benefits with and for indigenous communities and partners at the scale of infrastructure they need to make their communities more successful. Similarly, our initiatives for zero-emission buses, as well as our building retrofits program, are open for business and being well received, and we will see new investments as a result.
We launched our unsolicited proposals framework, the first of its kind in Canada. All this was done in the last three months.
Third is our focus on outcomes. Delivering new infrastructure is about getting projects built and dollars invested. However, new infrastructure is also a means to an end. Investment in construction leads to connecting more people's homes and businesses to broadband, producing and using cleaner electricity, living and working in energy-efficient buildings, exporting crops produced on better irrigated land and increasing transit ridership on zero-emission buses and transit systems. Our investments process and due diligence are informed by the goal of not only investing money in new projects and getting new infrastructure built, but achieving tangible outcomes for Canadians.
Fourth, we are working to reduce the infrastructure gap through partnering. Nearly every country in the world faces a significant infrastructure gap. Increasingly, not only Canada but other countries, including the U.S. and the U.K., have announced intentions to renew their investment infrastructure with institutions like infrastructure banks similar to the CIB. This is important to have in context.
Certainly, governments could increase budgets and provide traditional grant funding, but that has fiscal limits and that approach doesn't always achieve performance results or transfer risks in the real world. There is a limit to it. On the other hand, many infrastructure projects get built on purely commercial terms because there is private sector investment to do that. Government can expect to have the private sector do more of this on its own, but that does not necessarily address the importance or shape the kind of public infrastructure that serves the public good.
That is why the CIB presents a third way. To be clear, the CIB does not provide grants and does not invest when the private sector can do so alone. The CIB is instead a credible made-in-Canada way of doing things to stretch public dollars further and attract private capital to get more infrastructure built for the benefit of Canadians.
In practical terms, the CIB can finance projects at lower rates, absorb some risks that are impediments to projects happening, catalyze private sector investments and performance to deliver projects, and get our capital back when our long-term low-interest loans are repaid. And we can also take equity positions and invest in other ways.
Simply put, the CIB is another alternative in the tool kit, and often a better one, especially in large-scale revenue-generating projects.
A key element of the CIB is our collaboration with governments at all levels, including provinces, territories and municipalities, as well as indigenous communities.
Finally, I would like to be clear that [Technical difficulty—Editor] the CIB has no mandate at all to sell private assets.
My fifth and final point is that we're in a new phase at the CIB, with new leadership and clear direction. The CIB is well positioned to play a meaningful role [Technical difficulty—Editor] deficit. I was pleased and humbled to join the organization a few months ago. We have a strong leadership at the board, which has responsibility in investment decisions. We have an excellent team of investment and finance professionals in place. In addition to the leadership at the CIB, we have a clear understanding of the policy priorities that the government and the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities have for us and their expectations and urgency for us.
