Toronto: Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator announced the launch June 27 of its Energy Partnerships Program (EPP), designed to support Indigenous communities, co-operatives, municipalities and public sector entities to participate in Ontario’s clean energy economy.
The program encourages local partnerships, helps communities create economic development opportunities and supports a high level of local community engagement, participation and investment in energy projects. The EPP consists of two funding streams:
Partnership Stream
• For Indigenous communities, funding for the legal, technical and financial due diligence work to develop partnerships on Feed-in Tariff (FIT), Large Renewable Procurement (LRP) and identified transmission projects.
• For municipalities, co-operatives and public sector entities, funding for legal, technical and financial due diligence work to develop FIT projects.
Project Development Stream
• Funding for Indigenous communities, municipalities, co-operatives and public sector entities to assist with the soft costs associated with developing FIT projects, such as obtaining the requisite regulatory approvals.
• This stream also includes a Remote Project Development Sub-Stream – available to identified remote First Nations communities (those that have been identified as uneconomic to connect to the IESO controlled grid) – to assist with costs for developing energy-based solutions to reduce diesel dependency in these communities.
• The EPP builds on the success of its four separate former funding programs, which combined have supported 776 projects and have leveraged over $20 million in secured funding to date.