T’Sou-ke Nation’s special projects manager Andrew Moore highlighted the success of the community’s solar program at an annual Energy Connections conference in Vancouver on March 4.

Moore sat on a panel with several other experts who shared their solar and thermal energy success stories at the BC Sustainable Energy Association’s event. He spoke of the benefits of giving “power to the people” in First Nations including employment for their members, lower energy bills and eco-tourism.

Andrew Moore told the T’Sou-ke solar story.

“First Nations are the only people who have ever lived sustainably on the North American continent,” he said. “This is a way to start to do that again,” he said of the solar project.

T’Sou-ke is perhaps the most solar intensive community Indigenous community in the world. It completed its massive solar project in 2009 that saw all its administration buildings becoming net-zero-energy structures along with many homes generating hot water from rooftop solar.

Moore said the nation has continued its work advising other communities about the benefits of alternative energy.

Recently, he said, four chiefs and councillors from Northern Manitoba came to T’Sou-ke in an attempt to find answers to their nation’s high energy costs of $2 per kilowatt.

T’Sou-ke hosted several other events to share their innovations in March. “(It’s about) community energy solutions and how to get power back,” Moore said.

Meanwhile, while Moore was talking green energy in Vancouver, T’Sou-ke Chief Gord Planes was a keynote speaker at the National Community Energy Congress in Melbourne, Australia.