There is no denying the human population is putting a massive toll on the environment.  The way businesses operate, the way people live their lives and consume their products; food production/distribution systems; the way we travel and communicate - will all need to drastically change. We are already seeing massive environmental improvements in the recent Covid-19 related economic slow-downs, which is showing this terrible economic vs environmental correlation. This is not the type of economy we want to support at Gunta Business, one that only prospers at the cost of our environment.  

We have in many ways dedicated ourselves to learning more about the Sustainable Economy, about the power of Social Enterprises and B-Corps, and using market and industrial forces - for good. Business is a powerful tool that communities of people can design to effect the very change that they seek to perform. We at Gunta Business continue to seek to support these Market Disrupters, those who work to innovate to do things better and not to proceed with the status-quo. There are true environmental and social implications with well developed renewable energy projects that not only provide value to the investors and business partners, but to the community and environment it operates within.  We see these collective efforts to bring about social and environmental change as the exact types of projects we want to work with.

Our renewable energy efforts are always focused on bringing forward the concept of a smart community. A smart community is designed with the residents in mind, and balances the economic need for scale from centralized servicing with the need for individualization. A community-scaled solution requires majority participation, but needs to be flexible enough to allow for wider adoption. The opportunity to build community the ‘right-way’ has compelled most community leaders and planners to begin to research community energy planning, renewable energy generation and storage, micro-grids, as well as renewable heating options for the all current builds and any construction to be built in the very near future. 

It is community development and infrastructure projects like the recently constructed road and subdivision in the community that generate a significant portion of incidentally harvested wood, or wood waste that supplies the heating local system. This wood is cleanly stacked on the job site and diverted to the Teslin biomass yard for storage, seasoning and then processing into wood fuel (wood chips). At the community biomass yard, wood is delivered and stored on-site for 1 to 2 years for seasoning (weather assisted drying), and then the seasoned round logs are then processed into 1) raw cants for local construction and 2) wood chips for biomass.

Once the wood is processed into wood chips, a delivery truck then takes the processed wood chips to the district energy centres across the community where they deliver the wood chips to the onsite storage bins. The wood chips are then pulled through a cork-screw conveyance system until it is combusted by the highly efficient wood-chip boiler system. This system heats water that is stored in an insulated water tank, until one of the connected buildings turns up the temperature demand, which then draws heated water from that tank to the building. The heat in the water is transferred to the building via a heat exchanger. Each building is monitored by heat metres that measure the amount of heat energy that is consumed in each building. This allows internal buildings to budget for cost and externally owned buildings (like the School) to pay for their heat, like their electricity bill, by the kilowatt hour.

Gúnta Business Renewable Energy Projects

From small projects to community scale initiatives

Gúnta Business Consulting has the experience and expertise that will help bring to your renewable energy endeavour from the planning table to implementation.

From our perspective, there is no greater example of community economic leadership and success then through the local Indigenous equitable participation in community-led renewable energy projects. We continue to support these community-focused efforts through providing feasibility, project planning support, as well as mentorship. Gunta Business has been a long-time mentor with ICE.Net (Indigenous Clean Energy Network), mentoring Indigenous and community-energy champions in their various stage of project development all across Canada since 2017, and continues to provide mentorship to these many catalysts today.

 Gúnta Renewable Energy Engagements

Gúnta Business CEO, Blair Hogan, has spent years cultivating and sharing his passion for renewable energy. An expert in the field who specializes in renewable applications in the North and in Indigenous communities, Blair is dedicated to making sustainable power options accessible where they are needed the most.

Click Here to listen to Blair’s presentation to the 2019 Indigenous Clean Energy CoLab Conference on BioHeating and CoGeneration.