Colleen d'Entremont, president of the Atlantica Centre for Energy (Photo: Stephanie Sirois)
A new alliance of representatives for clean energy development in New Brunswick was announced on Monday.
The Atlantic Clean Energy Alliance will work to foster energy innovation in the provincial economy.
Representatives include the University of New Brunswick, Moltex Energy, ARC Nuclear Canada, NB Power, Atlantica Centre for Energy, the Department of Natural Resources and Energy Development, Opportunities New Brunswick and Economic Development Greater Saint John.
Colleen d’Entremont, president of the Atlantica Centre for Energy, said while there are 8 partners now, more have expressed interest in joining.
“There’s great interest from wind developers as well as from solar developers. They just literally haven’t signed on yet, but they were in the room, and they’re interested,” she said.
D’Entremont said an important first step was gathering the key partners in academia, community, and private and public sector.
“There’s been over 7 or 8 months of work in order to come up with our objectives and collaborative nature and the role and information that we needed to get together in order to move forward,” she said.
D’Entremont said the reasoning behind the formation of the group is that the federal government has indicated clean energy development will be a priority and the ACEA wants to make sure its voice is heard while that programming is created.
She said with UNB, the community colleges and Point Lepreau, there’s a lot of capability in the province.
“Per capita, the Greater Saint John area has more electricity workers than anywhere else in the country, so we have a lot going for us here, and we hope to continue this momentum going forward,” she said.
Representatives of the alliance are attending the Canadian Nuclear Association national conference in Ottawa.
Once they return, they’ll get to work on meeting 2050 global emissions reduction targets.
