Hydroelectric clean power project brings sweet sounds of silence to high Arctic

Sarah-Lisa Kasudluak used to lie awake at night, distracted by the hum of her town’s diesel generator.

“It used to be particularly annoying in the silence," she says.

Her home, Inukjuak, should be a silent place, after all. The community is nestled against the harsh backdrop of Quebec’s Arctic region, on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay. Despite its name — which means “many people” — Inukjuak has a population of only about 2,000. Known for its extreme winters and breathtaking displays of the northern lights, it’s a place where traditional fishing and hunting have sustained its residents for generations.

But the once-frozen landscape is changing — and so is the community’s approach to energy.

Since October 2023, Inukjuak has halved its reliance on fossil fuels and aims to eliminate their use for heating and electricity in residential buildings by October 2024.

The solution has been the construction of a new hydropower facility — clean, locally generated electricity has replaced the loud noise from diesel generators across Inukjuak, including Kasudluak's home.

While Canada is ambitiously targeting a net-zero electrical grid by 2035, Inukjuak aims to entirely eliminate its use of fuel for electricity even earlier, by 2030.

It’s a major undertaking. Inukjuak has depended on diesel fuel for more than six decades to keep its lights on and houses warm. The energy source may have been vital, but it was expensive, noisy, polluting, and unreliable — and unreliability, that far north, is a potentially deadly problem.

"Fuel supply issues could leave us in the dark and cold for days," says Tommy Palliser, President of Pituvik Landholding Corporation, the Inuit-owned organization that manages the logistics for all community projects.

The logistics of importing three million liters of diesel annually were daunting in a town accessible only by sea and air. Fuel deliveries, made by tankers between July and October, were fraught with risks.

In 2015 alone, three major fuel leaks contaminated the waters and lands in Inukjuak, Ivujivik, and Salluit.

According to Palliser, Elders recall that in the 1960s, “millions of liters” leaked from a massive fuel reservoir near Inukjuak, leaving a lasting environmental impact.

The environmental damage, coupled with the constant hum of diesel generators and the smell of fuel, was a stark reminder of the community’s reliance on fossil fuels.

Inukjuak’s bold vision for a sustainable future

In Arctic Quebec, the ice is growing thinner, the snow softer, and blizzards stronger, making traditional hunting and fishing increasingly difficult.

These impacts of climate change have added urgency to the search for alternatives.

"Global warming is a real and immediate threat to our communities," Palliser says. "In November, we had a foot of ice, but now it's just a few inches thick. In February, when temperatures used to drop below minus 30 degrees, we now experience freezing rain.”

Recognizing a need for change, the community explored several green energy options, including windmills. But it was the potential of hydroelectric power that truly captivated them in 2009, when Hydro-Québec's studies revealed that a hydroelectric project offers a more reliable energy source due to the river's consistent year-round flow.

The result was Innavik, the first hydroelectric project in Arctic Quebec, so named by Pituvik — in the Inuktitut language, Innavik refers to a pouch used to carry flint and moss to start a fire.

"When we heard Hydro-Québec wanted to study the potentials of renewable energies and develop related projects, we said, 'No, this is our land, and this is going to be our project,'" Palliser stresses proudly.

And so, a 50-50 partnership between Innergex Renewable Energy and the Pituvik Landholding Corporation was born, ensuring that all project decisions and benefits would involve and receive approval from the Inuit community.

Economically, the benefits of the project will be substantial. With a community power demand of approximately four megawatts, the surplus sold to Hydro-Québec is expected to generate $90 million for Inukjuak over the next four decades.

Chris Henderson, a Canadian eco-entrepreneur who has advised the Inukjuak community on the project, highlights the importance of finding a reliable partner like Inneregex in large projects in remote northern Canada.

However, he emphasized that the unique aspect of the Innavik project was the community’s unwavering commitment to making the project succeed.

"Since 2009, with community members, we have made over 30 trips to Quebec City and met with every premier. They never gave up. We knew this was a great project, even though Hydro-Québec did not believe in this," he says.

“This project demonstrated that achieving sustainability requires persistence. You must keep working and fighting for what you believe is right.”

Kasudluak explained the significance of such projects in small, underfunded communities: “When you live in a community, you are not one individual, you are many,” she said.

"Undertaking projects like this in Indigenous territories is a step-by-step process that involves growing with our community. While this project aligns with decarbonization goals, for us, the Indigenous people, it's also about decolonization."

Challenges and triumphs

Building a run-of-river hydroelectric facility in the remote Arctic was no small feat, specifically because, Pituvik’s power corp director Eric Atagotaalukexplained, the community prioritized minimizing the project's environmental impact.

As a result, although they could have built a 144 MW facility, it opted for a small-scale 7.5 MW dam, which has a small head pond of 1.2 square kilometres and a shallow depth that minimizes the flooding impact. Moreover, given the power station’s run-of-river design, the river will continue to flow downstream as it did before the construction.

In addition to these environmental considerations, Atagotaaluk adds that navigating logistical challenges was another hurdle in building the dam in such a remote place. The construction company used a barge, towed by a tugboat, to transport equipment and supplies from Wemindji, more than 600 kilometres south in James Bay, to Inukjuak — a journey that takes about three weeks.

Despite all these difficulties, the construction of the hydroelectric power plant was completed in 2023.

The project's ecological and socio-economic benefits were enormous. By transitioning from diesel to renewable electricity, Innavik is projected to prevent 700,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions over the next 40 years.

This shift also significantly reduced noise and air pollution within the community. Sarah-Lisa Kasudluak, one of the community leaders in Inukjuak, explains that the once-pervasive hum of diesel generators has faded, replaced by the quiet of clean energy.