Category Archives: Energy

Energy, Indigenous Nations, Justice

How the Blueberry ruling in B.C. is a gamechanger for the Site C dam, extractive industries and Indigenous Rights

By Matt Simmons, The Narwhal, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

When B.C. Supreme Court Justice Emily Burke served her ruling on a long-fought case between Blueberry River First Nations and the province in late June, unequivocally determining the B.C. government breached  the Nations’ Treaty Rights by permitting and encouraging widespread  resource extraction, she noted B.C.’s regulatory regime for industrial  development is broken.   

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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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Energy, Indigenous Nations

B.C. MLA calls for protection of CGL pipeline workers, slams ‘arrogant’ NDP government

Terrace Standard, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Following two new arrests at the Coastal GasLink (CGL) pipeline site near Houston this week, Skeena BC Liberal MLA Ellis Ross came forward in support of pipeline workers and spoke about protecting them.

“The workers are not at fault here. They are just doing the job they were supposed to do under a contract with the company. They should not be exposed to anything, other than just doing a job that was lawful.”

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Energy

Is tidal energy the surge remote coastal communities need?

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Many remote West Coast communities rely on diesel for electricity generation, which poses a range of negative economic, social, and environmental effects.

But some sites along B.C.’s extensive coastline are ideal for tidal energy micro-grids that may well be the answer for off-grid communities to generate clean power, suggested experts at a COAST (Centre for Ocean Applied Sustainable Technologies) virtual event Wednesday.

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Cost of Climate Change, Energy

WHO urges world leaders to phase out fossil fuels

By John Woodside,  National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Ahead of a major UN climate conference, the World Health Organization is making a desperate plea to world leaders to phase out fossil fuels to help save millions of lives around the globe.

In a special report, the world’s leading health organization is echoing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest study, which UN Secretary-General António Guterres said must sound a “death knell” for fossil fuels “before they destroy our planet.”

“Extreme heat, floods, droughts, increasingly frequent wildfires and hurricanes; the events of 2021 have broken many records,” wrote Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, in the report’s foreword.

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