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“If the technology works here in the way we hope it will, the implications for power generation across the North are enormous,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said 11 months ago when he visited the mine and announced federal funding for initial work on the project.

Since then, optimism has ballooned. Cash-strapped Quebec this week invested another $6.5-million to help Glencore and its technology partner Tugliq Énergie install a first wind turbine and power storage facility on the site. Provincial lawmakers and company executives are as enthusiastic about the potential for a game-changing development in the north as the prime minister was.

“In five years, all Inuit villages could be powered by wind,” says Laurent Abbatiello, Tugliq’s chief financial officer, adding he sees smaller northern communities ultimately using a mix of wind, solar power and liquified natural gas.

The change could boost industry and other business in the north as well, he says. “When energy there is as much as $1.50 per kilowatt hour, as it has been, it’s very hard to develop anything. Less than 20¢, which is where we think we can get it, you’re starting to hit a price point where it’s justifiable to develop businesses.”

Sitting in a meeting room at Raglan’s lodge, a crab-shaped structure whose creature comforts were engineered by a former Club Med manager, Glencore vice-president Kristan Straub reflects on what motivated the company to push forward with wind power to cut down on the 60 million litres of diesel the mine uses every year. About 10 million of that amount is jet fuel for the company’s two Boeing 737s. The rest is used to power the mine’s monstrous concentrator, which grinds the rock down, as well as underground air systems and other needs.