Led by dedicated community volunteers in collaboration with the Biosphere Institute, the Bow Valley Green Energy Cooperative seeks to make community renewable energy generation projects a reality in Canmore, Banff, and the Municipal District of Bighorn.

Community renewable energy generation projects are owned and managed by local citizens. Not only do they change how electricity is generated — via renewable sources — but also how it is controlled. With these projects local residents become owners instead of large utility companies.

Through our “Canmore Community Solar” feasibility study, the Biosphere Institute laid the groundwork for the creation of the Bow Valley Green Energy Cooperative (BVGEC) in 2019.

We facilitated a series of workshops from the Alberta Community and Co-operative Association, providing interested community members with the opportunity to learn about how to create and manage a local renewable energy cooperative.

Several workshop participants subsequently began meeting weekly with Biosphere Institute staff. These enthusiastic community volunteers soon formed the steering committee for a community-based renewable energy cooperative. They began to assess and prioritize opportunities for small-scale solar installations on residential and commercial properties in and near Canmore.

The Biosphere Institute now serves on Bow Valley Green Energy’s Board of Directors and is actively collaborating with its founders to make solar and other forms of renewable energy more accessible to all who live in the Bow Valley, regardless of their financial capacity, house ownership or property location.

Bow Valley Green Energy broke ground on its first community-owned and -managed solar installation in the summer of 2021, in Canmore. In collaboration with the Biosphere Institute, the Cooperative undertook a community-wide membership drive in the late spring and summer of 2021.