Tag Archives: Solar energy

Energy

Quadra ICAN asks ‘What can we do when the grid goes down?’

When Jan Zwicky talked about the need to be independent of the grid, she referred to a 60 second power outage at 4 AM last year. Zwicky wasn’t aware there was a problem until she went into the basement three days later. Her freezer, which had been packed with food, was still off. Most of the contents were ruined. 

Zwicky said she is not dependant on a computer and has a back-up system that can keep the lights on, “ But boy, I don’t want that freezer to fall apart!”

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Energy, Indigenous Nations

Heiltsuk First Nation doing ‘heart work’ to tackle climate crisis

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

It’s hard work, but it’s heart work. 

That’s the maxim of the climate action team helping bring the Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) First Nation’s vision of clean energy sovereignty to life. 

The small, remote coastal nation in Bella Bella on British Columbia’s wild central coast is in the last stage of shaping a three- to five-year clean energy plan to shift its dependence on diesel and increase the community’s climate resiliency by focusing on sustainable solutions using the sun, wind, earth and water. 

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Education, Energy

Solar panels for Quadra Elementary School

Quadra ICAN will soon be installing 14 solar panels on the roof of Quadra Elementary School. Terratek Energy already has the panels and mounting system in stock. They are waiting for final approval, which should arrive in December.

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Environment

No one size fits all when it comes to building healthier and greener communities

By Natasha Bulowski, Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Five new reports bring human health to the forefront of the climate mitigation conversation in an attempt to empower communities and decision-makers to consider local impacts when deciding on low-carbon infrastructure.

“It’s really an effort to advance the discussions and look at how infrastructure has not only the benefit of reducing emissions, but really improving community health,” said Aline Coutinho, a research associate with the Smart Prosperity Institute who authored two of the reports.

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Energy

The silent strength of Indigenous renewable energy micro-grids

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

For the first time since the 1970s, silence descended on the tiny, isolated village of Old Crow in Canada’s Arctic in August. For the first time since the 1970s, silence descended on the tiny, isolated village of Old Crow in Canada’s Arctic in August.

For generations, the community of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation in the Yukon, about 100 kilometres east of the Alaskan border, had suffered the incessant drone of diesel-powered generators to meet its electricity needs.

But the fly-in community, 120 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, was quiet for the first time in decades as the nation brought its solar energy micro-grid online, said Chief Dana Tizya-Tramm at an official COP26 side event Thursday.

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