Building Energy Sovereignty through Community-Based Projects in Nunavik

Rodon, Thierry; Nachet, Louise; Krolik, Christophe; Palliser, Tommy

doi:10.3390/su13169061

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…RE can provide the means for communities to access energy services that are essential to live comfortably and affordably, while reducing local pollution from diesel fuels. Research from rural Alaska (Schmidt et al, 2021) and communities in Canada's boreal region, for example, show that harvesting local resources for bioenergy production helps sustain cultural practices, whilst other studies indicate that RE allows household resources normally spent on electricity for home heating to be invested instead in fuels and equipment to support hunting, fishing, trapping, and gathering (Rodon et al, 2021;Schmidt et al, 2021;Tsuji et al, 2021). In the Mackenzie Delta, McMaster et al (2023) report that the prospects of secure and affordable RE can translate to improved resourcing of social services, such as schools, recreational centers, and community buildings.…”

Section: Value Generating Outcomes-re Aligns With Exercising Self-det...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whilst in Canada the concerns over displacement from traditional lands are most often documented in relation to hydropower development (Krupa, 2012;Tsuji et al, 2021), in other jurisdictions, including northern Sweden and Norway, such displacement is an increasing concern regarding wind power development and its disruption of traditional livelihoods (Szpak, 2019). Further, Indigenous communities in northern Ontario and Labrador have raised concerns that RE can also lead to job displacement, especially when RE projects replace locally operated diesel plants and lead to the loss of the diesel-related institutions that provide energy services to communities (e.g., fuel service and maintenance) (Karanasios & Parker, 2018;Mercer et al, 2020;Rodon et al, 2021).…”

Section: Value-eroding Outcomes-re Creates Barriers To Self-determina...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is common for government-owned utilities to monopolize energy infrastructure and supply and to dominate energy governance (Leonhardt et al, 2023). Experiences across northern Canada show that monopoly control can reinforce colonial structures, disregard the cultural and social value of RE, and inhibit energy sovereignty (Rezaei and Dowlatabadi, 2016;Rodon et al, 2021;Tsuji et al, 2021). In the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, for example, MacKay et al ( 2021) report that quota regulations for distributed energy projects limit an individual's ability to be energy secure.…”

Section: Policy Infrastructure and Coordinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Numerous studies on Indigenous community RE emphasize the importance of financial resources to the materialization of RE projects (MacKay et al, 2021;Mang-Benza and Baxter, 2021;Mercer et al, 2020). However, securing financing for local RE is complex, often stifling or delaying project development (Bullock et al, 2020;Rodon et al, 2021). Leonhardt et al (2023) report that Indigenous communities must often pursue multiple financial programs to support a single RE project, often requiring matching funds from the private sector.…”

Section: Capacity To Plan Build Operate and Maintain Re Projectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social value of renewable energy in remote northern Indigenous communities

Lim,

Poelzer,

Noble

2024

JAED

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Renewable energy (RE) is at the forefront of Canada’s strategy to achieve a net-zero electricity grid by 2035. The development of RE projects is also promoted as a means to deliver energy services in rural and remote Indigenous communities across the North. Although RE projects have the potential to contribute to sovereignty, self-sufficiency, and economic reconciliation, the social value of RE to Indigenous communities is often overlooked and poorly understood. This article advances themes for understanding and approaching RE developments to better assess their social value. It does so based on the analysis of lessons from RE research in northern Canada and Alaska. We demonstrate that RE projects can create outcomes that are value generating or value eroding and that such outcomes are often couched in the context of supporting or detracting from self-determination. Techno-human variables, from community vision and capacity to policy environments and local RE ownership, serve to enable or inhibit the realization of value-generating outcomes from RE. Finally, we identify several pathways to creation from RE, including relationships and collaborative leadership, knowledge and skills-development, Indigenous-led policies that decrease energy bureaucracy and manage benefits distribution, and regulations and structures that safeguard ecologies.

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Section: Value Generating Outcomes-re Aligns With Exercising Self-det...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Value-eroding Outcomes-re Creates Barriers To Self-determina...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Policy Infrastructure and Coordinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Capacity To Plan Build Operate and Maintain Re Projectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Social value of renewable energy in remote northern Indigenous communities

Lim,

Poelzer,

Noble

2024

JAED

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Therefore, they are convenient test beds for examining the role of different kinds of prosumerism in creating a better and more sustainable economy. In this context, individual and collective prosumption activities have the potential to enable people to reclaim energy and food sovereignty (García-Sempere et al, 2019;Hoover, 2017;Menconi et al, 2016;Rodon et al, 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosuming Alone or Together: A Bisectoral Approach to Conceptualizing the Commons Prosumer

Ritzel

Mann

Zyl-Bulitta

2022

International Journal of the Commons

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The aim of this study was to combine the concept of prosumerism with the theory of the commons to develop the concept of commons prosumer (co-prosumer) in distinction to private prosumer (p-prosumer). While the p-prosumer prosumes for himself, the coprosumer creates a social environment for social capital. We use energy and agriculture as two cases in point to illustrate that the concept of the prosumer's role appears in different contexts with varying attributes such as self-efficacy, sufficiency, or autarchy. However, independence and socially fragmented structures might lead to less resilience, whereas dependence structures could confer collective benefits. We propose a building block to fill the gap in the prosumer setting and balance individual and collective interests. By positioning the p-prosumer on a commons-based foundation, we make more explicit the dependence structures that build communities or networks to showcase possibilities that pave the way for shared and socially innovative structures of self-empowerment for infrastructure decision-making at different levels.

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