Striking gold with geothermal in the Yukon – CanGEA advocacy is paying off
Haines Junction, Yukon, Canada (source: flickr/ Gustavo Jeronimo, creative commons)
Alexander Richter
20 Nov 2017
The Yukon, mostly known for its history in the gold rush era, is exploring its geothermal potential in a new partnership by the government and a first nation. A long time of advocacy on behalf of the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association for geothermal development is now paying off.
Following news on a new partnership on geothermal between the government of the Yukon through the Yukon Geological Survey and Ta’an Kwäch’än – a first nation, efforts by the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association (CanGEA) finally seem to pay off.
Advocating on geothermal and its potential for Canada, CanGEA has been promoting the opportunities presented by geothermal particularly in the Yukon.
CanGEA has worked closely with the Yukon government to map existing geothermal data. “We’re very excited to see local First Nations involved, especially through the development corporation, taking notes and taking control of the energy beneath their feet,” said CanGEA chair Alison Thompson.
“We think that they’re going to find good results, very promising results, and this will lead to more commercial drilling and more projects.”
There are currently geothermal projects under development in the provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. “So you see the three provinces below Yukon are all now actively developing geothermal resources. One or more of them may be producing power, and certainly heat, by 2018.”, so Thompson.
“We expect through this drilling you’ll be enthusiastically moving forward towards more projects” in the next one to three years, said Thompson.
“Places like America, New Zealand and Iceland have been producing for, in some cases, over 50 years. These are not things we have to re-invent the wheel on. These are things we can transfer over from other producing regions of the world.”
Source: CBC.ca
Disclaimer: the author is on the board of the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association.
