Canada is home to around 240 remote communities that rely on diesel fuel to heat and provide electricity to their homes. This system of heating and electricity generation comes with significant social, economic, and environmental costs that Indigenous governments and businesses are working hard to address through clean energy development. For those governments and businesses who seek to transition away from diesel and toward cleaner, locally produced energy, there are a number of barriers to overcome. Key among them are regulatory and legislative roadblocks that make Indigenous leadership in the energy transition especially challenging.
As part of the Pembina Institute’s Rethinking Regulation to Decarbonize Canada series, we examine the regulatory and legislative challenges that remote Indigenous communities face as they seek to reduce diesel use and decarbonize remote microgrids. In particular, we focus on the regulatory systems of four jurisdictions in Canada: British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and the Yukon.
Authors: He, Emily, Arthur Bledsoe and Fibha Nazim. Decarbonizing Remote Indigenous Communities: Regulatory reform in B.C. and the territories. The Pembina Institute, 2025.
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