 new titled Green Energy as a Rural Economic Development Tool Project of First Nations and Renewable Energy Opportunities. My name is Amy Schneider and I'm in the Economic Development Division at the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training. So as always, we hope that this webinar will provide everyone on the line with a link to new information and will enable some discussion between experts in an affordable and accessible and sustainable way. As Darby just mentioned, the webinar is being recorded and then will be archived on the Rural BC website and so then we'll have a lasting resource of today's session for those of you on the line and others who are unable to join us today. And I encourage you to look at the webinars that are currently on the site already because there may be other topics of interest to you. As well, we're certainly keen to get your feedback so following today's presentation you'll be provided with a survey to let us know what your experience was this afternoon and also to get your input on what you would like to see for future topics. So now, I'm going to introduce our presenters for today's session starting with Mark Imus. Mark is the Director of Community Economic Development in the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training. Mark works in the Economic Development Division as well in the Pine Beetle Epidemic Response Branch and is the Provincial Government Liaison to the Southern Interior Beetle Action Coalition. Mark works closely with Sliback on Economic Development and Diversification Project in the Mountain Pine Beetle Zone of DC's Southern Interior. Next we have Robert Duncan and Robert is the CEO of the Uppknit Power Corporation which is primarily owned by the, I'm going to stumble over the name here, the Hupacathus First Nation which operates the 6.5 megawatt run of the Red River Green Hydroelectric Project on China Creek on the outskirts of the Port Alberni City Limits. Next we have Michael Whedon. Michael has held senior finance and general management positions in industry with over 25 years of experience. Most recently as a consultant in the environment sector, he has evaluated the number of alternative energy technologies including many in the bioenergy sector. In addition to being appointed Executive Director in September 2008, Michael is also a member of the Board of the BC Bioenergy Network. And our last presenter is Paul Donald and Paul is the Business Development Manager for All Nations Development Corporation located in Kamloops DC. Paul and his team at All Nations put financing and funding together for Aboriginal entrepreneurs whether they be individuals or communities and Paul is also a member of the First Nations. So I'm just quickly going to review the agenda that we'll be going through today. So we've already crossed off the first couple items. So Mark is going to lead us off and talk about the green energy as a rural economic development to a project. Then Robert will talk about the China Creek Project. Michael will follow and give an overview of bioenergy research and technologies. And then Paul Donald will be talking about funding options and opportunities available to First Nations for renewable energy projects. As Darby mentioned, we'll have a discussion at the end of the session and I encourage you all to participate in that discussion because we have lots of people on the line. So we'll be able to get a variety of perspectives and input in that discussion. And then we'll finish up hopefully right at three o'clock and let you enjoy the rest of your afternoon. So I think I'll just turn it off directly to Mark. And oh sorry, we're going to have a quick poll to begin with. Here's our fabulous poll graphic. So yes, thanks Amy, thanks very much. And we did put together four different poll questions here. So great, I can see people jumping on this now. So you can, as an attendee, just actually click on the color right on the slide in front of you. It's not the feedback button up on the top right hand corner, but the slide in front of you. So are you involved in developing a renewable energy project? So please if you could vote on that now. And it looks like everyone may have, oh okay, we're still getting some movement on that. Janelle is going to just take a tally here once we get to a point where she can make a bit of a tally. So still a bit of movement there. We'll give it a second or two more. People changing their minds. We'll leave it at that one. Okay, great. Next one please. Do you wish to get involved in developing a renewable energy project? So yes, I'm not currently involved in a renewable energy project, but I'd like to be. No, I'm not currently involved in and do you wish to become involved in developing a renewable energy project? Or I am already involved in developing a renewable energy. I think I may have hidden these and I'm sorry if I didn't show the first one, but I could certainly show the results here for this next one. And certainly we're strongly weighted on actually developing projects here. Really solid there, Janelle. Mine we just got two more here. So what is your background? Local government, First Nation government, Provincial government, private sector non-profit or other. And I'll show you the results. We're scribbling for Janelle here as well. So just let me know Janelle when you're ready there. I know they're moving still a little bit. Your current level of knowledge. I'll best engage the information that they're providing today. Well, we'll certainly arrange. We're actually coming to a finish pretty quickly. Good to go. Okay, fabulous. Graphic here. One more time. Let you get over. There you are. While contributing over $378 million to government for public services, which is valuable for things like hospitals and schools, together when the 27 projects in Hydro's last call are built, that could deliver another 3D, 100-person years of First Nations. Participate either through direct ownership, equity, and a better economic future for First Nations, NVC in general. So supporting this sector is the Beetle Action Coalition who are interested in advancing and diversification in the interior. And it's a priority for the local government and First Nations that participate on their boards to increase rural knowledge of green energy opportunities and to develop new tools that will facilitate increased rural benefits from green energy development in the mountain pine beetle epidemic zone in BC. This picture on the slide here is just a picture of the Lake Country Microhydro Facility, which I'll talk more about later. The major components and objectives of the project are to work directly with a number of small communities and First Nations in the upper mountain pine beetle zone to assist them in furthering their proposed green energy development projects and concepts. We can circulate a variety of green energy information resources and tools to rural communities and First Nations throughout the pine beetle zone. And it's a system with identifying and developing green energy opportunity in their respective communities. The number of communities out there that have ideas about what they think could be developed in their region based on their local resources. And so this project is really trying to help them realize those opportunities. Some of the other components and objectives to work with the green energy industry organizations and businesses to identify and implement actions to increase rural benefits from green energy development in BC's interior. And to organize and deliver a series of different outreach and knowledge extension activities throughout rural BC. And this webinar is one of the ways in which we're trying to get the word out about the project and the tools and information that we're collecting as a result. A little bit about the project funding partners. In addition to in the pine beetle epidemic response branch Gordon Borgstrom was the developer of the project and as an in kind contribution of the project is the project manager for this. The other partners are Canada's Rural Partnership which is the Government of Canada. And the three beetle action coalitions so the Caribou Chilcotin, the Yamanica and the Southern Interior beetle action coalition are partners. The Southern Interior coalition is the project administrator as well as the Columbia Basin Trust is another funder. We do have a project advisory committee that consists of the funding organization as well as we do have some technical advisors that participate on that advisory committee. And we've also been fortunate to have Ted Sheldon from the climate action secretary group and government participate on that as well. The project website ruralbcgreenenergy.com the information and tools and reports that have been developed through the project. I'll give you a bit more detail on what you can find here but you may want to make note of that. And as Darby says you'll have access to this presentation after the webinar as ruralbcgreenenergy.com. Next slide just that there's four key tabs that have these graphics that are shown here. One tells you a bit more about the project than what I'm giving you here today. Another one is the reports and tools, the case study reports and videos and presentations. And I'll give you a bit more detail about what's under each one of those right now and what's under development in the next few slides. Currently we have an energy opportunity scan report is up there and we partnered with SINC First Nation District of Clearwater and District of Barrier as well as the Thompson and Nicola Regional District looking at what are the energy opportunities in the North Thompson that these communities could take advantage of. And they were interested in learning where the highest potential was for them given their local situation. Another report is powering our province an analysis of the clean energy business and workforce opportunities in DC. And as you can see on the slide there the North Thompson scan report was done by Community Energy Association and the powering our province one was done by global advisors. There's also an interim progress report on their date of May 2012 gives you a bit more detail about the project. We have also a green energy information resources guide which has quite a bit of information about different resources that are out there on the green energy in the green energy sector broken down into different subtopic areas. So this includes you know sort of book references as well as websites and just a bunch of information that we've been able to collect. There's a biomass fact sheet and you can see on this slide I've taken a little clipping out of that fact sheet and this is useful for people that maybe are trying to wrap their head around biomass and explain this to in general public or for political organizations to understand what do we mean by one cubic meter of wood? Well it equates to about one powerful and then that translates into 760.344 tons of bone dry chips. We've got some good feedback on that fact sheet which has got some useful information and some of the other reports that we have under development are there's a small hydro feasibility study for the District of Clearwater, SIMC First Nation and the City of Armstrong. So this goes into more detail than that high level scan I mentioned earlier and was really intended for those governments to determine whether they should go to the next phase on developing a small-scale hydro project in their area. As well we've got a project to look at the village of Valemount's potential around geothermal energy and developing a system there so that's a pre-feasibility study. Given they're along the Rocky Mountain Trench they've got some pretty significant geothermal potential underground so they're looking at that. And as well we have another report under development called Green Energy Projects and Utilities and Investment the Governance Case Study Guide for BC Local Governance and First Nation. And that one should be coming out soon being developed by the Community Energy Association for us. Some of the shifting over to case study reports we do have currently posted the District of Lake Country there's a case study that was written by Jack Allingham who's one of the technical advisors on our project advisory committee describes the District of Lake Country's experience in developing a microhydro power plant. As well we've got a couple of future case studies that are coming. One is the Littlewick Recreation Center biomass heating system which is currently operating so we're having them write up their experience and some of the challenges and successes they've encountered and it'll tell you more about how it's helped them to save money what the environmental benefits have been and how it's been received in the community. As well the Utnic Power Project which Robert is going to talk more about next as the next presenter but we're writing up that case study as well about the China Creek Small Hydro Project that was developed by so that's the construction of the intake in this bill way. Presentation, District of Lake Country so at the same time the case study was being written we also developed a video that gives you a better sense of what the project looks like and narrated by Jack Allingham and interviews a number of people in the community talks about that project. There's a video on the UNBC University of Northern BC Bioenergy Project at their campus in Prince George and then there's also a video which is taken from Global TV News that was done on the Think Machine Biomats a district heating project which is in Inderby, BC and then along with the case study for Utnic Power China Creek we will have a video for that one as well. Any questions you might have? Thanks very much Mark appreciate that, great presentation and yeah what we'd like to do now is just open it up for a question or two we've just got a couple minutes here before turning it over to Robert so I can see Ted Sheldon by the looks with it is his virtual hand raised and I invite others also to ask any questions they may have and you can do that again through the Q&A button at the top or just by raising your virtual hand through the feedback button but to actually bring Ted aboard here what I'd ask everyone to do is to please mute their line oh Ted we may have lost Ted actually there you may have put his virtual hand down oh he's back so if I could ask everyone to please mute their line star six and I will unmute the conference out of lecture mode and take your free ask a question the conference is no longer in lecture mode hi Ted are you there yeah I'm here can you hear me take these these different projects in rural BC around the uh far as you've great now you've got you're looking at geothermal and um and biomass of course I think that you guess the fake machine particularly at the district of energy of of enderby are there any other projects kind of forecast going into the future that might get out any of the other renewables or energy of enderby that just seems to have so much potential around the province and wondering either a if there's a if you're giving some thought going down the road to to other rural communities or even even more importantly what feedback have you got from other rural communities to date that would suggest the possible portability of some of these best practices like the one in enderby to other communities again is biomass uh it would be to look at opportunities in the caribou chocotin around with wood waste of some of the some of the schools but as far as solar or or wind we don't currently have any looking at that specifically under this green energy project really these uh the ones that we do have have come forward through the funding partners through the beetle action coalition and uh and just sort of canvassing the local governments and first nations well there's certainly a nice nice range of them to date so that's a wonderful project being developed and uh we're hoping to you know do more of this kind of outreach and uh and get get the word out in a in a bigger way so that uh you know as many of local governments and first nations are aware of the project and the tools and the reports and resources that have been collected so so yeah we're certainly open to any suggestions you might have in terms of uh getting the word out about the project you guys thanks very much much mark we do have a couple more questions actually in the q and a if i may i'd ask you just to hold those questions keep them in the queue and perhaps we can revisit those in the disguise but we can just continue with the presentations we have and make sure we we do get to all of them while holding that that's the end so um i would like to turn things over next um and over to to robert duncan i'm just going to go back to lecture mode just to ensure that we're not being interrupted at all the conference is in lecture mode direct and talk a little bit about the nation went through as well as future opportunities that we're looking at going forward so uh just a real quick overview of uh of china creek and and open it power open it power the limited partnership is made up of and some would call it a very unique cast of characters from 72 and a half percent of it senate's energy 12 and a half percent the utilo first nation 10 percent in the city of port alberdy five percent open it power corporation operation which is essentially uh ourselves ourselves as a general partner general responsible for the day to day management of of of the project and hi robert sorry i'm just going to interrupt here we just have some feedback and it may be coming uh essentially actually from the other presenters so i'd ask all of us at this point to please mute your mute your line star six for the exception of you robert of course and and then hopefully that'll reduce that feedback we're getting in and robert if you don't mind just perhaps speaking just a little bit louder and that may resolve issues here so please go ahead and hoping everyone can hear me okay again just continuing on the project is six and a half megawatts it's located in the china creek watershed obviously the penstock for for this project is 4.6 kilometers from the intake down to the powerhouse and it's it's unique in the nature as it is the shared water supply the city of port alberdy's intake for for a part of the water for the city is actually in between the intake for china creek and the powerhouse so we certainly are mindful of that during the course of our operations and work very closely with the city's engineering department there are a number of elements of course related to these projects and a lot of them aren't a lot of fun and it certainly takes the time to to get to the process typically you're looking at about 30 to 40 approving agencies some of the significant ones of course are fisheries environmental and certainly for us most importantly in developing these projects most important is the hydrology for these projects then of course is dealing with BC hydro and other agencies as part of the process the standing offer of programs sets out various elements as part of the EPA which is the Indie Purchase Agreement the 2010 call for power changed slightly in terms of the standing offer system some may recall previously it was 10 megawatts or less you were very much part of the standing offer program the 10 megawatts has jumped up to 15 megawatts now so any projects of 15 megawatts or less are part and parcel of the standing offer program financing inequity is a very critical element to the process and I would suggest any of those that are looking towards these types of project going forward that really bring in a lender and as soon as you can because this is somewhat and still relatively a new industry and obviously there's a huge and could be a significant learning curve for numbers that may not have been involved in these projects before so having a good understanding of the EPA the standing offer program for lenders I think this always never a bad thing on an annual basis related to the water quality water temperature water flows and such not we monitor and provide reports to the licensing branch on an annual basis and I had the Harlequin duck up there because it's a bit of a humor story for me we studied in the China Creek watershed system for one year because someone had made no they thought that Harlequin ducks were nesting in and around this area so a significant amount of money and time went into the study and at the end proved there was no ducks in the area but it's just one of those things that does come up as a matter of course throughout these projects so one has to be very mindful of what the impacts are of your project for us certainly the day to day management is it's a significant issue for us to deal with we're fortunate that we have couple of the members here that have been involved in the project and then talking about who actually said community members are plant technician and his assistant are both community members so we're very fortunate that they've been a part of the project since day one we do obviously have to provide BC Hydro invoices at the end of every month and at the 15th of the very following month we have a direct deposit that goes into our accounts from BC Hydro there's calculations that are done on a daily basis and then on a monthly basis and then annually we're adjusted on peak hour and in super peak hour adjustments along the way there's a number of elements related to these projects and sometimes they can be a trick to deal with we're fortunate in this case here the Penn stock the powerhouse and intake chamber were all built simultaneously although different contractors were involved certainly there was a good deal of coordination that's involved when you do that and not all Penn stocks are of this length in some cases they're a lot shorter Sable River for example which is another project that we're working on there's only a 1400 meter Penn stock length so they'll vary and geography and the environment certainly will dictate how and when you can undertake construction in those areas so engineering and other elements are significant factors typically and certainly in this case the construction of the Penn stock has a number and ballparking at around 1.5 million dollars the intake which is the Obermeyer Bladder the weir the intake chamber again another million dollar project for that and then there's a powerhouse this trash rack cleaner related to the intake chamber we have a lot of leaves that come down we have to deal with that because it potentially impacts our power production the turbines again the generators and what you see in this frame here is the generator of machine number one and the turbine and generator for machine number two so we have two machines and I've sort of noted the delivery issue many would think again just order these off the shelf typically delivery times range from 12 months to in some cases two years so one has to be very mindful of that in terms of project development the powerhouse building that you see here that encases all of all of the electrical and other equipment that's required to run these projects is about where's about a million and a half dollars trying to create overall was a 14 million dollar project and if you're looking at ballparking one of these projects for example back then of course 2005 2004 when this project was being developed it came online in 2006 and it worked out to about two million dollars per megawatt of course a couple of years later the costs have gone up to about three million and now we're looking at about probably four million per megawatt that you can just generally throw at a project just to give you some idea of some of the capital costs that are involved soft costs and those are really risk monies range anywhere from half a million to a million dollars and that's sort of the standard out there in the industry right now and that's the risk side of it is really determining the viability the feasibility of these projects and I can't stress enough the importance of undertaking hydrology assessment in some cases will take a couple of years to do to get some really solid numbers and then that includes and involves obviously putting data logs into the system which will give you a good idea of the flow of the water and it'll measure temperatures and other qualities of course which are all important important for determining the amount of water that can be taken out of the system without negatively impacting that system obviously interspersion other considerations that are all part and part of that assessment once you've determined the hydrology and how much you can take out of a system that will really determine at the end of the day what your revenue generation is and of course the point can call the base rate for this region in 2006 was $58,000 per gigawatt hour in 2010 that changed $202,000 per gigawatt hour so a significant change but also what's gone up is the cost so briefly about future opportunities for Hupatcha Sets we're currently working on the Sable River Project which is another six and a half megawatt run of river project and we're ballparking anywhere from $21 to $25 million for the for the capital cost of that project and again similar to the Upnit Limited Partnership we are working with a couple of other partners the Komoks First Nation located obviously in Komoks and Island Timberlands who's the owner of the lands that would be developed in this project on so we're going to a variety of due diligence elements related to this project and somewhat hopeful that we can get in the ground with it next year a lot of time and energy has gone into it already Plixer Creek Executive House Power again three to four megawatt run of river project on the lower end side because it isn't that big of a project and we're going to be a minority partner in that development and we're just undergoing a variety of different due diligence elements related to that project currently Great Central Lake currently no partners identified this is a different than this run of river of course it's a micro hydro three to four megawatts and we're ballparking anywhere from 10 to 15 million dollars it is part of an existing dam structure which is currently owned by a catalyst paper and we have an understanding with catalyst with regards to the ownership of the facility we're going through some training right now with regards to the operation of the facilities and aspect that will take another six to six months to a year to finalize elements related to that we did have a look at some of the elements related to the potential there and are currently looking at furthering that investigation to better determine the risk associated with that opportunity so certainly from from our point of view success breeds success and provides more often than not future opportunities that's my time thank you very much robert great presentation and again if there's any questions out there we certainly welcome welcome them at this time we got a few minutes take one or two here we did have a couple of existing questions I think they were more targeted at the previous presentation but again please if there's any questions now we can take those and we'll give you a couple seconds here to either enter those in the Q and A at the top or raise your virtual hand through that feedback button on the on the right hand side mason here I'm just wondering what was sort of the biggest challenge you guys had at the beginning in terms of getting this project up and going and started financing financing and equity bringing equity into the project this is of course likely the first first nations majority owned and operated the facility in the province so bringing significant amount of equity into the project was certainly then was the challenges more opportunities out there now than there ever was which is a good thing and I think good opportunities for other first nations but that was the hugest challenge to overcome there are a number of challenges but certainly that was one of the bigger ones what advice would you have for somebody for another first nation that wanted to undertake something like this in terms of making it just smoothing it out in terms of trying to get the financing and the equity was there any sort of key elements that they could that would help them get ready to ask you know just to pursue the financing well what I've been asked a number of times for a number of first nations and I'll say get your hydrology done that because hydrology really at the end of the day is what determines what sort of income a project potential would would make on an annual basis and that really will dictate and determine one hand will tell you perhaps how much finance you'll need but on another hand and more importantly it'll also determine and show you how much equity you need to bring into a project to be available I guess a quick example of that would be Sable River which we run some analysis on really quickly and really rough numbers in terms of looking at it and that told us you know here's the level that the income from this project would support and if your project is more or less than what that number is then obviously that will tell you very clearly how much equity you need to bring into these projects to make them feasible because it you know at the end of the day they do need to be feasible you can't build a 30 million dollar project and only have a million and a half dollars in income that it just obviously doesn't fly that way one other thought and certainly for us going forward is to look at the sort of a management team approach more than just us bring in your lender as part of the the management team bring it in some outside expertise in terms of environmental or engineering and even legal to that extent because the energy purchase agreement and other elements connected to these projects can be complicated and getting good legal advice as well as all of the other protocols that are required is always a good thing and I like the idea of a management team approach and that way a number of elements can be covered off at one time thanks pretty much Robert and I did see a couple more questions there but I think our time is going a little bit short here so please hold those questions for a discussion later and like that turn things over now to Robert may need to unmute your line star six and there's your slide all right thank you very much Mark and I want to thank jobs tourism and skills training for the opportunity to persist participate here my presentation is going to focus upon a project that is under the development with the the first nation we've entitled this case study energy independence and an economic development solution for the first nation but before I turn to that I just want to mention that the BC bioenergy network is is a not-for-profit organization that was founded in March of 2008 and we received a generous funding a $25 million grant from the BC Ministry of Energy mines and petroleum resources and the Ministry of the Environment to in the simplest of terms accelerate the development of bioenergy in BC we have a mandate that's built into our our constitution and at this point in time we have in the in the past three almost four years now we have 19 different projects 19 large projects and 10 capacity building projects we've committed over 15 million of the 25 million by way of a grant and loans and an equity investment and our total investment to date on these projects is $116 million this particular presentation is going to focus upon one project that we want to make happen in conjunction with the community of of Quodacha the First Nations community and in terms of the presentation I'm going to discuss and outline the ultimate goal and provide you some background relating to this project I want to evaluate the energy options for the community and provide you with a project update there are approximately 60 communities in BC that are remote communities that rely upon diesel electricity generation and most of these communities are actually First Nations communities and have been working with the Quodacha First Nations in fulfilling a goal that they have that is very simply to implement an energy plan which is consistent with the goals aspirations financing and human resource capabilities of of Quodacha within the boundaries of acceptable risks and expected benefits indeed we're looking to fund and make a project happen that will be a model for other remote communities in terms of background we have been working in conjunction with the BC First Nations Energy and Mining Council the BC First Nations and the community of Quodacha we started out with the two advisory First Nations groups through a tripartite agreement and ultimately we're introduced to the Quodacha First Nations and now what I'd like to do is share with you the bioenergy options for the for the community okay there are principally four options and the first option is to stick with the status quo and that basically would rely upon BC Hydro for future electricity needs and in all likelihood that would be through diesel generation of power the next level option was to focus in on a biomass solution for the major buildings in the in the community and that would utilize a woody biomass system to displace propane with the proven and reliable low risk system BC Hydro would continue to be responsible for electricity supply so this option just looks at the heating requirements for the community and there are many advanced combustion systems in the world clean clean systems that would satisfy this need the third option is to move into electricity generation combine the biomass as well as the base load power requirements for the community and this basically would utilize woody biomass based propane and diesel and then we would still be relying upon BC Hydro for peak demand and backup energy needs the fourth option is indeed the biomass heating and full power for the community and that's to meet not only the the base load energy requirements of the community but the peaking requirements and in terms of these options the level of difficulty of each one it really in increases as you go from one to four it places a responsibility upon the community for for their energy needs both heat and electricity okay let's just step through quickly through the option so you understand what we're talking about here this is option two this is using biomass heating to display propane and here's an example of a of a picture of a of a system a heating system that would meet the the needs of the community here's a little pictogram a cartoon of what the what the piece of equipment looks like and and this is basically an advanced combustion system over here this picture here is the picture of the school and the community and this is the largest energy user in the community currently on propane and down here we've got a picture of an engineering drawing that looks at area the buildings in the middle of the community when you're using a heat system you want to tie up all of the buildings through a hot water system and you want those lines to be short but it's very economical and efficient that's option two moving on to option three we're looking at providing the base load electricity needs of the community and in the blue here you'll see the electricity demand of the community and you can see that it varies quite significantly over the course of a 12 month period the goal in meeting the base load requirements is to go below the the sort of the lowest level of electricity need in the community so that you can run your operation 24 by 7 on a consistent reliable basis this will be an easy system to easiest system to manage so that's a combined heat and power system and then you harvest the exhaust and the the heat generated by the generator to make electricity and you use that to power your your heat heat district water system okay moving on we're going to look at option three and that particular option could be configured with something like this you'll have some sort of a gasification or thermal unit that produces a gas a synthetic gas shown here we've got an example of one and that would be kind of combined up in this example with a some sort of energy generation device this is a 633 GE Gen Barker natural gas reciprocating engine here that's about three times the size of what Kodachi would need for their base load requirement trying to give you a picture of what that system would look like and then you would house it in a in a building or some sort of a containerized system for the for the community and connected to the electricity system okay moving on I want to uh share you to share with you sort of the the greenest solutions of all that's option four that's taking and dealing not only with the heat in the precinct area the base and the piecing load of the community and here we would be looking at using a renewable resource wood and in the Kodachi it's impacted by the mountain pine be able to rather significantly and then you would just have the diesel generation there is a backup reliability provision so that the the community actually has set upon this is being the goal that they have for the community okay now this is the electricity demand profile that's going to have to be met by such a such a system and following these heat requirement is is is a is a challenge for a biomass based system and and that's really the the you know the challenge of this particular option but to see this option in the terms of a picture it's basically an option three that we saw previously that you're doubling it up but then of course you have to be able to meet these peaking requirements and you need to be able to integrate with BC hydro so that's option four uh all right in terms of our project update I want to share with you where we are we requested expressions of interest and from interested technology providers some time ago actually 27 participants participated in our our webinar on this subject but three proposals were received you have undertaken an independent parallel to technical evaluation of these proposals and the independent reviews actually came up with the with the same conclusions and they recommended the top four technologies and they were the same and they were short shortlisted for comprehensive financial and technical review we've had underway discussions with BC hydro for an energy purchase agreement we've engaged FP innovation uh assisted the development of a sustainable harvesting plan for a couple of options for the community and by the way this confirms the the vast abundance of biomass hereby able to to fuel the needs of the community on a sustainable basis in fact using the biomass in the community would actually mitigate the fire risks that such communities are often exposed to but we've been meeting with the chief and band council and community leaders throughout well we have been supporting them ultimately the decision to proceed will be theirs but we've been working together as in partners in this project and finally we've gone so far as to develop the energy piping requirement that they've been examined and the engineering for the precinct area that's the dense area in the community that is large pleaded okay let me just talk to give you an update on the four leading technologies that are being evaluated the first is an advanced combustion system using organic rank and cycle generators ORC or organic rank and cycle engines are widely used in Europe they tend to be expensive more expensive at least to other alternatives but they are highly reliable and proven source of energy widely used in Europe the second option examine was an advanced gasification system using a reciprocating engine generator and in the this technology is widely dispersed in many parts of the world and then there were two other options these were lower cost options one is a low cost gasification system using a reciprocating engine generator and the fourth is a novel lower cost hydrogen gas engine system using a diesel or a spark ignition natural gas reciprocating engine now two of these options after a very close financial examination and modeling were determined not to be feasible given the expected pricing available from BC Hydro now we've had discussions with Hydro and we do not yet have an EPA with them but we are trying to explore the options that where they would be comfortable with entering into a long-term EPA in fact such an EPA is absolutely essential to the the financing of such a project and we've prepared recommendations for the community which I'll now share with you we're recommending a phased approach and as follows the first phase would be the installation of a biomass boiler a small system which would likely just be a heat only system for the precinct area for the for the school and the store and the and the multiple of highly dense buildings in the in the village core the second option was would be to test a combined heat and power solution in a test location where we have access to lots of lots of support you know engineering plumbing and electrical support and our assessment of the technologies is that many of them are new and there are few installations in the in that that exist and we wanted to pick a technology that we could ensure beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was fully reliable before moving it and so-called burdening the community with a new a newer technology so that's phase two and actually phase one and phase two can be commenced in parallel phase three would be to move the combined heat and power upon successful commissioning and we're looking at least 8,000 hours as the test move and commission within the village and then finally phase four is to integrate that with the heat only system and expand it in the fourth phase okay so where do we stand well we do have some remaining tasks for completion but we're well along in this project we are near to making the final technology selection and as part of that we will have a visit to the community to confirm the plan and the adoption of the recommended solution we have had financing discussions underway but we need to complete our financing plan we need to complete the engineering so that we are certain of the of the engineering costs and as part of that we will be doing a request for proposals actually doing the contracting of the beat biomass heating system and we will look to negotiate a combined heat and power purchase terms and and testing program we need to finalize the structuring of the of the ownership group we need to commit with hydro and EPA and purchase agreement and as part of that we need to complete environmental impact assessment and prepare the site okay that completes my presentation I'd be pleased to answer any questions and I've got Scott Sanders with me here with the BC Bioenergy Network and he's working very closely with the community back to Mark Darby here thanks very much for the presentation we are running just a little bit behind perhaps Michael if you do Michael it's a very answer for one question we have from Penny which is what is happening to the carbonic waste well there will be the the carbonic waste I'm assuming that you're referring to the ash as part of the program ash can be used as a soil amendment it does depend upon the final selection of fuels but the fuel is that we will check will be all natural and the quantities of ash will be very low in one of the technology solutions there will there's the possibility of producing a high value added carbon material an activated carbon material that could be used in in an agricultural application and the community is considering a small greenhouse and it could be suitable for that thanks for that presentation we best move on and share we have time for for here at the end so thanks again Michael and Paul it's over to you it's 1988 which includes First Nations communities all individuals and organizations and businesses so it's fully Aboriginal owned we're actually one of five Aboriginal capital corporations in BC the other Aboriginal capital corporations include travel resources investment corporation Italian old Aboriginal capital corporation the First Nations agricultural lending association and the new channel economic development corporation so there's five Aboriginal capital corporations spread throughout BC and we we provide with respect to clean energy projects we provide business support in terms of loans in support we provide as well the access to the BC First Nations equity fund and we also assist with the delivery of federal funding through Aboriginal affairs and Northern Development Canada so there's a few programs there the Aboriginal Business Canada or Aboriginal Business Development Program major projects and investment funds so those are both federal funding I'll talk a little bit about those we provide as well a fund business loan and that's available through all of the Aboriginal capital corporations in BC it's a provincial program that loan is specifically for a majority Aboriginal owned businesses that are located in BC it's eligible for a 40% deferred contribution or a grant if you will and it's a maximum $75,000 now one of the things that's occurred in the last few years is that there's been a change it used to be $75,000 and for for our First Nations community they could only use it up to the $75,000 limit and that changed just about a year and a half ago so that First Nations communities can come to access it up to three different times so the maximum there now for a community is $225,000 three times the $75,000 we provide as well business support in terms of assistance with business planning putting the business financing or funding packages together for individuals or for communities we will refer different programs if we're not able to assist or somebody can help better then we will definitely provide those referrals and we also provide loan aftercare for clients that have loans with us that are requiring some assistance typically that's with marketing or bookkeeping that type of thing we provide them with some of that aftercare assistance now we provide access through to the BC First Nations equity fund and then this is something that you know with Robert Duncan talks previously about you know one of the biggest challenges is access to to to funding that or clients and get started up in them in the clean energy project the BC First Nations equity fund is a $5 million fund for BC First Nations that was established in 2010 to allow the First Nations to have equity participation in green energy projects so not just you know just receiving royalties or taxation benefits but there actually can be an equity partner so there's a $5 million fund that we've established and that was done in partnership with our company All Nations Trust Company the New Channel Economic Development Corporation and the New Relationship Trust there is also I should mention as well another fund very similar that's in partnership with the Telehold Aboriginal Capital Corporation and Tribal Resources Investment Corporation and then I've put a link there to the Telehold Aboriginal Capital Corporation website or TAAC.ca and you can find out more information about that so there are actually a couple of different funds there and they're specifically for again the First Nations to become equity partners in greener clean energy projects okay so I mentioned before the federal funding be an Aboriginal business Canada or sorry Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development one of the programs the Aboriginal Business Canada Program we deliver that program in the interior of BC it's their mandate of Aboriginal Business Canada is to increase the number of Aboriginal owned businesses in Canada they'll provide funding for typically up to 35% of eligible startup costs there's a maximum for individual entrepreneurs of $99,000 and for First Nations communities community owned projects or businesses it's a $250,000 limit one of the things I know what I will note is that the $99,000 for an individual may become more relevant if you have kind of contracting opportunities for for the your green energy projects so if you have a band member that wants to start up a business and needs to buy some equipment that's definitely right up the alley for for Aboriginal Business Canada that's what they do I'll note as well that there are upcoming changes to this program in this fiscal year but at this point I don't have the details of the idea is the plan is that the program delivery will be rolled out to the Aboriginal Capital Corporations that I've mentioned previously and that's we're in a bit of a transition period right now the other federal funding through Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development is the major projects and investment funds or MPF that was created in 2008 specifically to increase the Aboriginal participation and resource and energy projects the most of the projects have been with with clean energy and with mining at this point but they're they're not limited to that in BC I know I've looked at their statistics and they've averaged about six projects a year in BC and most of that was for pre-development costs for like things like feasibility studies environmental assessments hydrology and the average contribution was in the area of $300,000 so this is a major projects and investment funds is specifically directed to community-owned businesses so Aboriginal Business Canada the major projects and investment funds they'll provide assistance with some of the soft costs that Robert Duncan mentioned earlier that you know those are kind of monies that you put at risk when you're you're starting up this or doing the feasibility and determining that this project is going to be worked while there's there is funds available for feasibility studies business planning environmental assessments doing business valuations and also for legal counsel there can be significant dollars spent on partnership agreements or purchase agreements that type of thing corporate structure those are all kind of eligible costs that you can get some funding for so I've provided an example of how that could work you know a feasibility study and or hydrology environmental assessments said that costs you three hundred thousand dollars you can apply through or the First Nations communities can can apply through MPAP for Aboriginal Business Canada for funding you know it typically it's about a 75-25 split and there's an example there so that that mitigates a lot or offsets a lot of the risk that the community would otherwise have to to bear on their own when they're starting up a green energy project here's an example of some funding once the soft costs are are or their studies are complete you know if you need to to purchase some equipment to get started in the business there's there's dollars available for the actual startup as well and it should be noted that with all of the federal funding from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development it's not a it's not a situation where the fund like 100% of the project costs there's always going to be a financing component in there and it's it's going to be significant but you know there's they're that help offset some of the risk and again the financing can come from like the BC First Nations Equity Fund or the Regeneration Fund so there's financing and funding available and as well the province has First Nations Clean Energy Business Fund so that was another $5 million fund that was established again to increase participation by First Nations in the energy sector there is there are dollars for capacity development again whether that's feasibility studies hydrology that type of thing and there's also dollars for equity I've added the link there for the for the Ministry of Reversal Relations their website there the capacity dollar development or capacity dollars are limited to $50,000 with the cap on that and the equity contributions they have a cap on that of $500,000 so there are resources out there to help offset the risk when you're starting up a clean energy project at least for the First Nations owned projects or businesses and I've listed my contact information there for anyone that has any questions and again if you're not in my region where I deliver I would certainly refer you to one of the other average on capital corporations or the province depending on where where you would best access dollars and resources that's it very much for the presentation there and we but would like to switch things over now to a discussion period and perhaps we should open things up first for questions for Paul following his presentation there any specific ones for Paul you're welcome to again raise your virtual hand through that feedback button at the top right hand corner just change it from green proceed to purple which is question and the they'll queue up there and let you speak to speak to opportunities or again you can use the Q&A and actually write in your question there well we'll we'll go back and revisit some of the questions that are there as well but right now we do have a virtual hand raised if I could ask everyone presenters and attendees alike just to to mute your line and then I'll just go off lecture mode here right now and we'll be able to ask those get those persons with their virtual hands raised to ask their questions so the conference is no longer in lecture mode great and it was seen that we actually have someone the conference is in lecture mode it would seem someone has actually put their phone on hold which removes that ability so I see great and Heather you both got questions there if I could ask you to put those in the in the Q&A at this time and of course you were going to have to resort solely to the the Q&A at this time and so until you're able to do that oh there's Graham so let's go ahead Graham's question is for for all so it's the five million equity for one project or for all the five million dollars that we're talking about those are five million dollar please enter those there you're also welcome to enter that in the your question in the Q&A section there in the interim I'll actually go back I believe this question was for Mark Iman and the question is how long did the north Thompson green energy opportunity take? How was it funded? How do I get a copy? Peter Robinson from the Community Energy Association and you can access a copy of the report on the rural BC green energy website ruralbcgreenenergy.com there's a copy of it there before it was paid for through the green energy project so I mentioned in my presentation all the different funding contributors that went in to developing the green energy as a rural economic development tool project that's where we got the funding from to pay for that study from Brian and not too much contact around this one it's the title and wave question mark was the question that may have been specific to just a period of time when you're speaking Mark but is that something you can respond to? Green energy projects we haven't had anything that's focused on title or wave in the BC interior and looking at the mountain pine beetle affected zone so we have we haven't really focused on that particular type of technology is it like is it if someone was interested specifically in that though I think if you google Highlands and Islands trust in Scotland they've got a fair amount of experience with title power production that was Gordon Borgstrom executive director of our pine beetle response branch who's with me here in Camlitz and is the project manager on the green energy project so that was Highlands and I might have some useful information on that topic from Grimm that I believe has not been asked and the questions trying to remember who it might have been for for Robert Duncan but the question was any plans to use I see engines operating on thin gas processing from biomass pretty sure that question was direct to to you Robert does that does that seem to make sense that was for me think that might have been for Michael yeah I can address that there are a number of technologies that use woody biomass to produce a synthetic gas some are hydrogen rich some are not hydrogen rich but they can be fed into reciprocating a diesel engine typically in quantities up to 70 percent and if the gas is rich enough and clean enough and that's a special step that needs to be addressed they can be used in natural gas a spark ignition system so those technologies are available I think that addresses the question the review period for an application and how and how do you have an application form Apple Corporation itself which we just have our own application form it's a fairly short-term review there's applications for federal funding from Aboriginal Business Canada or the major projects investment fund those ones the Aboriginal Business Canada website are set anko.bc.ca wants to application form for that federal funding the review period short-term I don't think federal funding is the way to go but you know give yourself at least three to six months to get an answer we're talking about Aboriginal Affairs money a little bit long here so Clean Energy BC has a conference generates 2012 at the end of October which includes a short course committing it to paper financing negotiating and contracting clean energy projects on Sunday October 28 this may be of interest to participants so but not so much a question there as as a heads up that that conference is in place and there is that that course that fits particularly well with our subject today and so that's the end of the list of questions we have there right now and time is growing a little bit late here so this is a a bit of a last call here for any other questions in the Q&A or and we can address them Mark it's Michael Whedon Ted asked at the very beginning about other biomass projects in the province and of course long-standing one in so which a few years ago was probably the only one we did a recent survey and there's about 50 communities that are considering projects in the province and of course one that a great example is the the hydronic system in Prince George which happens to be the largest system in Canada now and it was recently commissioned this past year demonstration level projects playing in remote communities it's it's not addressed to anyone particular anyway any presenter wish to address that that question I will Michael it's Michael it's absolutely essential we need these examples these models for other people to evaluate reduces the risk shows the importance of homework I think that we need lots of them any other presenters wish to speak to that question at all again welcome to see demonstration level projects playing in remote communities yeah I guess it's Mark Mark Imas here I guess just to add to that I think that was one of the primary reasons that Sheen decided to do a district energy system in Enderby was to demonstrate that this could be done and you could actually eat multiple buildings then he put a fair bit of his own money into building that facility and putting in the infrastructure for that very reason just to educate people that this can be done and it is a viable for heating so so I think it is very important and I and it is raising the awareness I think amongst communities in DC so the more examples that are out there the better in my mark and our time is getting very short here we're going to have to move along here all the presenters as well as our attendees today and we do have a number of resources here available and again that these slides are available to that handout section of the top right hand corner of your screen as well you can download that right now and these resources of course to be available there for you we'll also make the slides available to the rural DC website as well as today's recording as well our presenters today have kindly made themselves their contact information available so if we did not get to your question today please do you're welcome to contact them directly and thanks to our presenters for making themselves available for that greatly appreciated and with that I would just again remind you those materials there they won't be available forever the handout so please do download those now if you need them as well we'll be putting them on the survey following today's webinar we really appreciate you being back on the last time to all our presenters