Four Canadian First Nations will sell solar power to the neighbouring gold mine — as owners of the plant

An 8.5 MW, 100% Indigenous-owned solar farm is set to supply the Greenstone mine in Ontario. The project is small in size and big in what it teaches: communities moving from being only beneficiaries of the mine to becoming its suppliers.

Four First Nations in northern Ontario — Animbiigoo Zaagi'igan Anishinaabek, Aroland, Ginoogaming and Long Lake #58 — are developing the Greenstone Solar Farm, a photovoltaic plant near Geraldton. The project is wholly owned by the communities, in equal shares, through Kenogamisis Energy. Planned capacity is 8.5 MW DC (6.3 MW AC), with up to 14,000 panels spread over 12 hectares, and the electricity will be supplied directly to the Greenstone gold mine owned by Canada's Equinox Gold. The renewable energy approval process usually takes 12 to 16 months, and in October 2026 it was halfway through. If approved, construction begins in 2027, with 30 to 32 full-time jobs during the build and about two in operation. The estimated emissions reduction is 4,900 tonnes of CO2 per year. Horis Mansuri, chief executive of Kenogamisis Energy, described the project as a game changer for the communities' economic development. The Greenstone open-pit mine reached commercial production in November 2024, has a 27,000-tonne-per-day processing plant and is expected to produce 250,000 to 275,000 ounces of gold a year. Equinox holds long-term relationship agreements with these First Nations covering environmental management, traditional knowledge, employment and training, business contracting and financial participation.

For a long time, the relationship between a mine and its neighbouring community was thought of in terms of compensation: the company extracts, the community receives royalties, jobs or social projects. It works, but it creates a one-way dependence — one that usually ends along with the mine's life. The Greenstone case shows a different design. The communities are not asking for a share of the gold. They are building an asset of their own, a power plant, and selling an input the mine needs every day. The relationship becomes commercial, between supplier and customer, with a contract, revenue and responsibility on both sides. This format brings three gains. The first is recurring revenue, which does not depend on donations or on political renegotiation every cycle. The second is capacity building: planning, permitting, financing and operating a power plant trains local managers and technicians in skills that serve other projects. The third is durability. A solar plant has a long useful life and may, in the future, sell power to other customers — the asset outlives the mine's closure. For the miner, the advantage is just as concrete. It decarbonises part of its electricity use without tying up its own capital in generation and strengthens its social licence with a partner that has a direct interest in keeping the operation running. The plant is modest in size next to a facility that processes 27,000 tonnes per day, and that is part of the lesson: the model does not need to start big. It starts with a project the communities can master, permit and operate, and that can grow later. For those working in community relations or procurement at a mining company, the question it leaves is practical: which of the operation's inputs — energy, transport, catering, maintenance — could be supplied by businesses from the community itself, under long-term contracts?

In Canada, Australia and increasingly in Latin America, Indigenous equity ownership in mining-related infrastructure is no longer the exception. In Brazil, where the relationship between mining and traditional communities is one of the sector's most sensitive issues, models that turn neighbours into partners or suppliers offer a different toolkit from pure compensation. For ESG, community relations and procurement professionals, knowing how to structure this kind of partnership — power supply contract, financing, local capacity building — is a skill in high demand.