Remote communities, the majority of which are Indigenous, are not connected to the electricity grid and have historically relied exclusively on diesel generators for electricity. These generators are noisy, polluting, and transporting diesel is expensive and carries an ever-present risk of environmentally catastrophic diesel spill. Remote communities pay the highest electricity rates in Canada but still face issues with power quality and blackouts. Energy availability limits community growth and economic development. On top of all of these issues, decisions about remote communities’ energy supply have historically been made by people who do not live in the community.
In response to these issues, Indigenous leaders across Canada have built community-scale clean energy solutions that not only mitigate the harmful effects of diesel, but also create economic opportunity for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities through energy ownership.
The increase of diesel-reducing projects is, in part, the result of an evolving ecosystem of policies and reforms that address these specific barriers and make community-led renewable energy projects a viable endeavour for Indigenous governments, development corporations, and businesses.
This report catalogues those policies at the federal level and in each province and territory. These are policies that are helping to restore the flow of clean power back to communities, whether through transmission lines or local renewable generation projects such as hydro, wind, or solar power developments. But it’s about more than just electricity: restoring the flow also refers to the flow of benefits of energy development, and the flow of decision-making power, returning to the community.
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About Restoring the Flow
In Restoring the Flow, we identify and evaluate five streams of policy that are crucial for supporting and empowering community-led clean energy projects and restoring the flow of clean electricity, economic benefits of energy, and decision-making power back to remote Indigenous communities.
These streams are:
- Collaboration with rights-holders
- Plans and strategies for diesel reduction
- Financing and funding for clean energy projects
- Programs for efficient buildings
- Independent Power Producer (IPP) policies
Our scan highlights how or whether these policies are being implemented within all Canadian jurisdictions that have remote communities in them.
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National trends and findings
Our national scan of remote energy policy suggests that pathways for remote decarbonization are widening, but there is significant variation in how those pathways have been designed and implemented. This is in part because every jurisdiction with remote communities in Canada is unique: politically, culturally, geographically, and economically.
These conditions shape the policy landscape that creates the energy status quo for remote communities and the challenges and barriers preventing diesel reduction. However, regions and jurisdictions also face some similar challenges across provincial and territorial borders:
- Across all jurisdictions, outdated and rigid regulatory barriers – including anything from lack of access to the regulatory process to rigid utility mandates – make diesel reduction and clean energy development a challenge for both utilities and communities.
- The territories face similar challenges for community-led diesel reduction: small population sizes, aging and inefficient diesel infrastructure, and unique construction contexts all add up to make the cost, time, and difficulty of clean energy development much more challenging than for provinces.
- In the prairie provinces (Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba) there are few remote communities, but many rural, Indigenous, and grid-connected northern communities that experience energy insecurity. These communities are similarly interested in clean energy development and benefit from similar policy options as remote communities.
- Ontario, Manitoba, Nunavut, and the Yukon are each exploring grid connection as a strategy for diesel reduction and Indigenous ownership. In Ontario’s case, this has resulted in the completion of the Wataynikaneyap Power Transmission Project, a milestone accomplishment which connected two-thirds of the province’s remote communities to the provincial grid in 2024.
Common trends and strategies have emerged across jurisdictions that are yielding positive outcomes for Indigenous-led clean energy for remote communities. We have seen that the most progress is made in jurisdictions with strong policies across all five streams, though no jurisdiction can say the work is done.
- The provinces and territories that have made the most progress on removing barriers to community-led action are the same ones that prioritize and mandate collaboration with Indigenous communities and rights-holders.
Most Canadian jurisdictions are making progress on removing barriers to Indigenous-led clean energy development. Notably, B.C., Quebec, and the Yukon are showing strong leadership across several key metrics examined throughout the report.
- Most jurisdictions rely on some level of federal partnership to deliver funding programs for community decarbonization and renewable energy initiatives.
- There is a strong need for improved regulation and policy (e.g. strong IPP policies, capacity building, and energy efficiency) that can support and incentivize more community clean energy leadership.
- Transformative federal initiatives such as Wah-ila-toos, the Indigenous Off-diesel Initiative, Clean Energy for Rural and Remote Communities, and Northern REACHE have been important tools for addressing the longstanding inertia that has stalled action across the territories and provinces for many decades.
Where do we go from here?
There has been enormous progress in the field of remote community renewable energy since the Pembina Institute published Power Shift in Remote Indigenous Communities, the precursor to this report, in 2019. Most jurisdictions have implemented impactful policies that create meaningful opportunity for economic development and climate action in remote communities, but there’s still a lot of work to do across every jurisdiction to remove barriers to action.
The result of this work is a transformed energy landscape in remote Indigenous communities that reinforces a simple truth: clean energy in remote Indigenous communities is about more than reducing diesel. It is also about community flourishing; energy security and affordability; community growth and well being; and reconciliation. The community clean energy journey — whether community energy planning, energy efficiency projects, or utility-scale clean energy projects — builds capacity to advance a shared vision for stronger, healthier communities for generations to come.
Canadian governments are at the receiving end of a remarkable invitation to work alongside visionary rights-holders and communities to ensure that the transition to clean energy does not leave remote communities behind. It is our strong recommendation that governments work with rights-holders and communities ensure that:
- UNDRIP is implemented into energy legislation in all Canadian jurisdictions.
- Governments, regulators, and utilities prioritize the development and implementation of policies and programs that support Indigenous governance of clean energy projects with fair and equitable rates.
- Funding programs specifically designed to support community-led diesel reduction and clean energy development are supported with ongoing federal, provincial, and territorial budget allocations.
