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MLAs defend fact-finding trip

Herb Mathisen
Northern News Services
Published Friday, May 15, 2009

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Members of a recent territorial government delegation that travelled to three Scandinavian countries defended a renewable energy fact-finding trip - costing taxpayers $54,191 - Tuesday, saying the North can learn a lot from Denmark, Finland and Sweden.

Weledeh MLA Bob Bromley, co-founder of Ecology North, said the trip allowed him to see the renewable energy technologies at work first-hand. He said he also saw different scales of heating systems - from individual homes, to large facility and city plants - and learned what kind of local skills were needed to operate them.

He said he was most interested in the wood pellet boiler systems, and the possibility of harvesting trees here to make wood pellets, as they do in Scandinavia.

"We saw a lot of individual home systems and we have a lot of material that we were able to bring back," he told media on Tuesday.

He said some of the systems could be put to use in small communities in the North.

Mackenzie Delta MLA David Krutko, two GNWT technical advisors - including climate change manager, Jim Sparling - and a southern consultant accompanied Bromley on the tour from April 25 to May 7.

"It's a way to start at ground-zero, go to where you know the systems work," said Krutko.

He said there are many similarities in the geology and vegetation of the NWT and Scandinavia and systems at work there could work in the territory. Krutko said the group travelled economy-class and drove about 2,000 km in Scandinavia, confiding they had developed a "little road rage" by the end.

Bromley said the trip had originally been planned to send eight people to Scandinavia but that was too expensive and so it was pared down to five.

City councillor Kevin Kennedy said North America is a generation behind Scandinavia in using renewable energy and there's much to learn from them.

"While the price tag sounds steep, the cost savings that could be realized by just a few of the ideas that they have gotten from this trip will more than pay for some of these costs," he said.

"The NWT is blessed in the sense that we have a lot of biomass and we can take advantage of this," he said.

He said with the amount of government infrastructure operating on costly fossil fuels, there are all kinds of opportunities to make the territory more sustainable and to save money.

"What we've been lacking for quite a while is a vision from the GNWT about how we can become more sustainable," said Kennedy.

Andrew Robinson, executive director of the Arctic Energy Alliance, said hopefully the trip will inspire leaders.

"Sometimes it's really important to take the leaders to see with their own eyes what can be done," he said.

Robinson explained when oil prices rose in the 1970s, the Scandinavian countries invested money and research into how to move away from fossil fuels and live off the land with more sustainability.

Robinson said Canada, on the other hand, forgot about it once oil prices dropped again.

"We've kind of fallen behind," he said.

Bromley and Krutko will draft a report for mid-June, making recommendations on different biomass opportunities the government - or private citizens - can take advantage of around the NWT.