Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have met with Mr. Philipp myself a number of times. It will be either around his battery initiative that he is working on or his proposed idea of centralized heat within a community and electricity. We have had a number of discussions with him. I have asked him to sit down with our director of energy and have those conversations to kind of dissected a bit. As I have said in the House, when I talked to Mr. Philipp, I was a little bit concerned about the size of the project and the amount that he wanted to chew off at once. Even, I was a little bit concerned about the community, that, even though he's very passionate about Fort Providence, I was a little bit concerned about the size and the layout of it and suggested maybe have a look at a little bit smaller tighter knit community, where some of these things could be done in a more economic fashion.
I like Jeff's concept. I think there is a possibility that something can be worked out in a manner that could work in one of our smaller communities. We will continue to have those discussions with him, but when you have a look at what he was trying to do all at once, I think it is a bit much. It hasn't been quite proven everywhere. He has, in theory, I think, and I am not an expert on this, but when you look at the multiple generators that he wanted to lay out throughout the community and the electricity aspect of it, I said, you know, one of the concerns I've got going forward and when you look at our energy strategy 2030, our three-year rolling plan, I said we are going to put a T-line into Fort Providence and put them on hydro, so does it clearly make sense to have a community that is going to be on the hydro system have diesel generation there for electricity? Central heat is something that is intriguing, but I know the details would have to be worked out around that, around cost effectiveness, about the length of line, about capturing the amount of BTUs from the source point to the building, and what would that entail, and the cost factors of that, and the layout of the community, as well.
That being said, as we have said, our energy strategy is a three-year rolling plan, and I will continue to look at these types of initiatives. We have made the commitment. We need to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the Northwest Territories. It would be around central heat or building efficiencies or electrical generation, and we will continue to work with these proponents going forward. Thank you, Mr. Chair.