Summary
- Indigenous communities are leading clean energy projects across Canada.
- Indigenous-led projects are creating economic opportunities, building local skills, strengthening energy independence, and reducing reliance on fossil fuels.
- Strong projects reflect local priorities, Indigenous knowledge, meaningful ownership, and long-term community goals.
- Successful partnerships start early and are built around respect, trust, shared benefits, and a shared mission.
- Indigenous leadership extends beyond clean energy, with opportunities across Canada’s wider cleantech sector.
Across Canada, Indigenous communities are demonstrating what successful clean energy adoption can look like in practice.
From solar and wind to microgrids and bioenergy, Indigenous-led projects and Indigenous innovation are responding to the specific energy needs of communities while creating economic opportunities, building local skills, strengthening energy independence, and giving communities greater sovereignty over their energy future.
And a lot is happening. Indigenous Clean Energy, a national not-for-profit organization supporting Indigenous leadership in clean energy, estimates that between 1,700 and 2,100 renewable energy projects and systems across Canada involve Indigenous leadership or partnerships.
How these projects are approached makes them unique. Every community has different needs, shaped by its infrastructure, local resources, energy access, economic priorities, and the surrounding land and water. No single clean energy solution will work everywhere.
From the very beginning, Indigenous-led projects are combining this knowledge of place with community priorities and technical expertise. This creates space to ask important questions early: What does the community need? What knowledge and resources already exist here? What technology makes sense in this environment? And what should this project provide for the community in the long term?
As Canada scales clean energy, these projects offer powerful examples of what can happen when the people who steward a place, depend on its resources, and will live with its infrastructure have a meaningful role in shaping its future. They also give the wider clean energy sector an opportunity to learn from approaches that are already working—and to strengthen the way we work together as Canada advances its transition to net zero.
Indigenous Climate Leadership in Action
Across the country, Indigenous communities are putting these principles into practice.
In northern Manitoba, Sayisi Dene First Nation is leading the development of the province's first integrated renewable energy microgrid. The project will combine solar power, battery storage, and a microgrid controller to generate electricity in Tadoule Lake. Once commissioned, the project is expected to reduce carbon emissions by approximately 500 tonnes each year while lowering energy costs for the community over time.
Amlamgog (Fort Folly First Nation) in New Brunswick offers another example of Indigenous leadership driving clean energy adoption. The community had already installed solar panels on its commercial buildings and developed a Community Energy Plan when it partnered with Foresight to explore its next step: a scalable microgrid that could power the residential side of the community, lower costs and emissions, and create new economic opportunities.
Rather than beginning with a predetermined technology, the Amlamgog Microgrid Innovation Challenge invited innovators to respond to the community’s goals and local energy needs. Lighthouse Energy was selected as the winning solution, with the work now focused on partnership development and exploring opportunities for Amlamgog to serve as a living lab and technology proving ground, with a focus on youth engagement and local employment opportunities.
Ownership is also becoming an important part of Indigenous leadership in larger energy projects. In Manitoba, new wind developments supported through the province's Indigenous Loan Guarantee Program must be at least 51% owned by one or more Indigenous Nations. The model creates opportunities for Indigenous Peoples to participate as majority owners rather than simply as communities located near energy infrastructure.
Though these projects vary in size, technology, and location, together they showcase what Indigenous leadership looks like in practice—identifying community needs, developing projects, creating partnerships, building local skills, generating revenue, owning infrastructure, and making decisions about how energy is produced and used.
Partnership in Practice
First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities across Canada have distinct priorities, cultures, knowledge, lands, and energy needs.
The projects happening across the country highlight some important principles for creating the conditions where Indigenous leadership and strong partnerships can thrive.
- Start together, from the beginning.
Strong partnerships start early and continue throughout a project. Creating space for Indigenous leadership from the outset means communities can meaningfully shape the goals, technology, partnerships, and outcomes rather than being brought in once key decisions have already been made. - Respect Indigenous knowledge, values, and priorities.
Indigenous knowledge is rooted in generations of relationships with land, water, ecosystems, and place. Respect means listening, learning, and recognizing this knowledge alongside cultural values and community priorities when decisions are made. Combining this with technical and scientific expertise can help shape solutions that reflect both the place and the people they will serve. - Build around a shared mission.
Successful partnerships are built on listening, transparency, and trust. Understanding what each partner wants to achieve creates an opportunity to find common ground and work toward outcomes that create shared value. - Build capacity and share benefits.
The impact of a project can extend well beyond the technology itself. Skills development, training, employment, economic participation, and meaningful ownership can help ensure that skills, opportunities, and benefits remain within communities. - Work together toward a long-term vision.
Clean energy infrastructure can operate for decades. Planning with future generations in mind means considering how projects will evolve, who will maintain and benefit from them, and how they align with a community’s vision for the future.
Creating Opportunity
Indigenous communities across Canada are already demonstrating success in clean energy adoption projects and systems. Their leadership is reducing dependence on fossil fuels, creating new economic opportunities, developing local expertise, strengthening energy independence, and demonstrating how technology, community priorities, and knowledge of place work hand-in-hand.
This leadership extends far beyond clean energy generation. For example, the Líl̓wat Nation took a similar proactive approach, partnering with Foresight to explore turning logging waste into new economic opportunities, lower local wildfire risks, and create sustainable regional jobs. By exploring ways to turn local forestry residuals into carbon-sequestering biochar, they created a practical pathway to address environmental hazards while building economic independence.
Driving Canada’s net-zero transition takes real collaboration across industry, governments, innovators, and Indigenous communities. Supporting Indigenous leadership within these partnerships is key—it allows us to strengthen what works, unlock new economic opportunities, and build lasting momentum toward a cleaner future.
Foresight’s Adoption Services connect organizations and communities with the technologies, innovators, and expertise needed to turn those opportunities into action. Discover Foresight’s Adoption Services.
1. What is Indigenous-led clean energy?
Indigenous-led clean energy refers to clean energy projects where First Nations, Inuit, or Métis communities play a meaningful role in leading, owning, developing, or making decisions about the project.
2. How are Indigenous communities leading clean energy projects in Canada?
Indigenous communities are leading clean energy projects in Canada through solar, wind, microgrids, bioenergy, energy storage, and other projects that support local energy needs and create economic opportunities.
3. Why is Indigenous leadership important in clean energy?
Indigenous leadership is important in clean energy because it brings local priorities, Indigenous knowledge, and long-term community goals into how clean energy projects are developed.
4. What does a strong clean energy partnership with Indigenous communities look like?
A strong partnership starts early and is built on respect, trust, shared goals, meaningful participation, and equitable benefits.
5. Does Indigenous leadership in cleantech extend beyond clean energy?
Yes. Indigenous leadership is also present across forestry, natural resources, transportation, agriculture, water, and other sectors.
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