Baker Lake is taking strides towards becoming a leader in green-energy planning in Nunavut.
Baker Mayor Kevin Iksiktaaryuk said hamlet council passed its community energy plan on April 4.
He said the municipality is currently working on updating its website and people should soon see information regarding the strategy.
“The plan is an approach that will ensure the prosperity of our community,” said Iksiktaaryuk.
“Baker Lake is known as one of the cleanest, if not the cleanest community in Nunavut. That’s something we really pride ourselves on.
“We’ve done a lot of work to our garbage dump to get it operating at an efficient level. We’ve worked with Agnico Eagle and local company Peter’s Expediting Ltd. to co-ordinate the removal of dangerous goods from our dump.”
In addition to the work done at the local dump, Iksiktaaryuk said Baker Lake has a good group of volunteers who gather every year for the hamlet’s spring cleanup to ensure the community has a clean summer.
He said years ago, the community also implemented a single-use plastic ban on shopping bags.
“We approved a bylaw on it to, again, support a clean community.
“So there’s really been a lot of community effort and coordination to ensure that we have a clean and beautiful town.
“We’re well-known as a clean, green town as is and we’re really hoping to further that. And, with our community energy plan, kind of become a community leader in green energy for the region and the territory.”
Iksiktaaryuk said he feels that Baker Lake has developed a great community energy plan.
He said he’s very hopeful that the strategy will not only bring cleaner energy to the community but also generate more prosperity through the Independent Power Program and the Commercial Independent Power Program (CIPP), which are available from the Qulliq Energy Corporation (QEC).
“These programs can bring additional revenues in, so we can do even more for the community. The commercial program is geared toward smaller-scale projects and Baker is already a CIPP partner with the QEC.
“We already have solar panels installed upon our recreation centre. That, in itself, allows us to provide energy into the grid through the CIPP program. For 2023, we produced more power than we actually used for the whole year.
“Most of that, probably, comes from the summer, just because the sun is always out. During winter you expect a lower output but, throughout the whole year, we generate more power than we consume at the recreation centre.
“With that success. we’re looking to roll out more green energies into the community and just kind of build on that.”
Iksiktaaryuk said his personal definition of green energy is lower carbon-emission infrastructure for the municipality.
“As we all know, our hamlets are funded through the territorial government. I don’t want to say we have our hands tied, but we do have limited funds. The municipality of Baker Lake, for years, has done quite well. We haven’t seen a deficit for a few years now.
“We run a pretty balanced budget and I hope to continue that so the hamlet can do more for the community.
“My platform, when I ran for mayor, was infrastructure development, economic development, more transparency from the municipality and better communication.
“Those are all things that we keep looking to improve upon.”
Iksiktaaryuk said other communities in the region have community energy plans being developed by the Kivalliq Inuit Association, or Kivalliq Alternative Energy, which is a partnership between Northern Energy Capital and Sakku Investments Corp.
He said Baker Lake chose to go in a different direction and develop its own.
“We’ve had a few community members who are very passionate about green energy, and they’ve worked with the municipality to help us develop our own energy plan.
“Moving forward, I’m hoping to provide the community with more meaningful infrastructure, job creation, economic development and additional revenue so that the municipality can do more for its residents.
“My hope is to do this in a very transparent manner, where we provide the community with information that it’s entitled to hear. I’m also looking to create a condensed version of our minutes, so that we have a standard procedure for prepared minutes that can be read on the radio and posted on social media.
“My first year in office has also been about bylaw policy review and reform. A lot of our bylaws are outdated, so having updated ones that reflect our ever-changing community is my priority for the first year.”