This Nunavut community will soon flip the switch on a solar transition

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This week:

The pervasive, rattling buzz of diesel generators is a daily feature of the Arctic landscape. Especially in the remote communities that pepper the vast tundra of Nunavut. 

That's because the territory holds the dubious distinction of being one of the few places in Canada that still relies, almost exclusively, on imported fossil fuels. 

But the needle is moving, ever so slightly, as more and more Nunavummiut look to solar energy to offset their diesel use, emissions and costs — including the first solar project in Nunavut's history big enough to power large parts of a community.

The Inuit hamlet of Naujaat sits right on the Arctic circle, facing the icy shores of Hudson's Bay in Nunavut's northern Kivalliq Region. Home to around one thousand people, Naujaat is about to flip the switch on 2,500 solar panels — enough to power 130 homes, or about 60 per cent of the hamlet. 

By next spring, Naujaat residents are expected to be able to ditch diesel generator sets — for the summer months at least — and power parts of their community on solar energy alone. Blaine Chislett is preparing a 'Coming of the Light' ceremony to mark the solar project's debut.

He says below the constant hum of generators, there's a serene silence that he's excited to hear.

"Our current generations will be able to hear the silence that our ancestors once did back when they were nomadic people," said Chislett, the manager of energy and sustainability at the Inuit-owned Sakku Investments Corporation.

"To have that silence, to touch back into our ancestry, to feel what they felt, back a millennia ago…. It just gives me tingles." 

Chislett spearheads renewable projects in northern communities, and he's heavily involved in the Naujaat project, which the hamlet council named the Ikayuut Solar and Energy Storage Project. Ikayuut means "help" in Inuktitut.

Project planners say Ikayuut will help the community reduce its diesel consumption by 30 per cent, or 400,000 litres per year, and cut carbon dioxide emissions by about 30,000 tonnes over the next 30 years.

Chislett says the thought of normalizing solar power for younger generations of Inuit gives him "goosebumps."