Hatch: Renewable Solutions for First Nations Communities

Holly Brown and Nathan Killeen from Hatch join the show to discuss how the company is tackling some of the most difficult energy issues. Their team works to bring renewable energy to remote areas, often working with First Nation’s communities to create an energy system that works for them. Engineers with a global focus, the Hatch team helps to create renewable energy projects that benefit communities of all sizes.

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Allen Hall: Welcome to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast. I’m your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel Saxum. Today, we’re diving into the renewable energy initiatives of Hatch, a global engineering powerhouse that’s been shaping industries for nearly seven decades. While Hatch is known for its wide ranging expertise in metals, minerals, And infrastructure will be shining a spotlight on their cutting edge work in the renewable energy sector, from solar farms to wind turbines and battery storage, Hatch is at the forefront of the clean energy revolution.

We’ll explore how this employee owned company is leveraging its vast engineering experience to tackle the complex challenges of transitioning to sustainable, sustainable, And in this episode, we’ll discuss Hatch’s projects with First Nation communities in Canada and how they’re helping communities around the world access cleaner, more reliable energy.

Our guests are Nathan Colleen, Wind Power Lead at Hatch and Holly Brown, Senior Environmental Consultant at Hatch. Nathan and Holly, welcome to the show.

Holly Brown: Thank you, Allen.

Nathan Killeen: Very nice to be here.

Allen Hall: First off, I think we should introduce people that are not familiar to hatch to all the thing that Hatch does. And if you haven’t been on the website, you should go check it out.

It’s hatch.com. But Holly, you want to give some description of all the things that Hatch. Does do.

Holly Brown: At Hatch we refer to ourselves as entrepreneurs with a technical soul. So what that means is we’re really a group of people who are passionately committed to the pursuit of a better world through positive change. So I think a unique differentiator for Hatch is that we embrace our client’s vision as our own, and we partner with clients to develop ideas that are smarter, more efficient, and innovative.

We have a global professional network of over 10, 000 people. We’re in about 150 different countries all over the globe, and we have three primary sectors that we work in, and that’s metals and mining, energy and infrastructure. We’re unique in the sense that we’re employee owned and independent, which means we’re free to bring our best thinking to our clients business needs, and our exceptional diverse teams combine not only the vast engineering and business knowledge, but we work in close partnerships with our clients to develop.

market strategies, manage and optimize production for their businesses, and really develop new game changing technologies for design and deliver of complex capital projects. I think in summary, we tackle the tough, right? So we provide holistic solutions in this space. Another key portion of that we’ll talk about later on is the community engagement and social performance.

Directly working with the First Nations and indigenous communities that’s their land and we want to make sure that we deliver the project, not only to our clients needs, but also to the local communities and that’ll create lasting success for the project in general. Our. Exceptional diverse teams include technical entrepreneurs and technical solutions to our client’s challenges.

And so those optimized practices across environmental protection economic prosperity, social justice, as I mentioned before, and cultural vibrancy. So we really want businesses and the ecosystems and the communities to thrive both now and into the future on our projects.

Allen Hall: Yeah, and I want to get to some of the projects you’re doing, but I think being in renewables, you have firsthand experience, both of you, of some of the complexities that are involved there. And I know when we had talked previously, we’re talking about a specific project that was pretty complicated. So that’s where I want to pick both of your brains today about renewable projects and getting out to some more remote places.

And how Hatch has evolved that way, and maybe, can we have Nathan describe what’s happening with First Nations and the work that Hatch is doing there?

Nathan Killeen: And what we’re doing with some of these First Nations, multiple First Nations These are very tough environments. A lot of the, these communities are remote.

They’re dependent on diesel gen sets. Fuel is very expensive. It’s, it’s a fluctuating commodity. So a lot of these projects are the incorporation of, energy storage, solar and wind. And the project that we’re going to speaking about today combines all three. And obviously, this helps on multiple fronts.

It’s, it’s obviously the people. The nations that we’re working with, this is their land, their environment. It’s their, it’s a sense of ownership. It’s a sense of independence that we’re working with them, beyond just the, first principles of saving money and helping the environment.

It’s also the empowerment that this gives these people’s, In the in multiple locations, it’s not only, obviously there’s the difficulties of dealing in these environments. You have limited construction schedules, you’re integrating different technologies.

So one of the things that we really. Emphasizes, we have a micro grid solution and we’re able to tie these things together. So it’s just as, Holly said, it’s we’re working with the communities, to provide them that energy independence that they’re looking for.

Joel Saxum: So these projects like they like something like this in the Northwest territories it’s a renewable development project.

While it may not be a. 200, 300 megawatt project. It is a project on steroids, right? Because you’re dealing with so many complications, logistics, complications stakeholder complications, there’s just so much involved in it. And that’s where patch thrives, right? Because you guys can, it’s a one stop shop.

You come in, you have the technical expertise, you have environmental expertise, you have the civil expertise. Like it’s all there.

Nathan Killeen: Can we do the turnkey projects? Absolutely. We’re there, we can do standard solar front end design, owners, engineering, independent engineering, but where we really excel is these multifaceted projects that are, Harsh environments, technically difficult, we have a great stakeholder engagement, a great relationship with these communities.

It’s a project on steroids. There’s not many companies, consulting companies that can execute to the level that we can, because we understand this area. We have good engagement with the communities and we’re really, I think we like to tackle the tough.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. Yeah. I’ll give you two, two, two examples, like for the listeners here of my, from my network of.

Working in remote Canada. I worked in oil and gas exploration, right? So Nuiqsut, those kinds of places. Like I’ve been there in the winter time and just getting food there for the crew, it takes dedicated personnel. The other one I like to say a lot is I have a really good friend. His name’s Joe Welter, a great civil engineer.

But he worked for a company for six or eight years and they built hockey rinks. That’s what they did. That’s they traveled all over the world, building hockey rinks. And they did a ton of them fly in hockey rink building in Northern Canada. Like in these remote places and the stories he would tell about, not only are we fighting logistics and getting materials and stuff here, but we’re also fighting like bears off.

And then, and he said, there’s nowhere to you got a crew here building stuff and these kinds of things, there’s nowhere to stay. You’re sleeping in some kid’s bedroom. Like he’s done that before. These are, those are really out there problems, but.

You guys having that knowledge and knowing how to work within these situations really brings a lot of value to the client as well. Yeah, we have an entire division related to bear mitigation, that’s,

Nathan Killeen: you mean

Joel Saxum: Those are problems we don’t deal with in of, developing a wind farm in Texas.

You don’t have to worry about bears taking people out.

Nathan Killeen: Yeah, I think the most I ever had to contend with, working on wind farms in Iowa was maybe the occasional white tailed deer at about, three or four hundred yards,

Joel Saxum: not very voracious.

Allen Hall: I was involved with a project on the airplane side of modifying airplanes to haul diesel fuel.

Up to the Northwest Territories and the Canadian government was involved in that. And at the time, I just remember thinking, we’re hauling like maybe 50 gallons of diesel fuel out to these remote areas. How expensive that was. It was crazy expensive. So it makes sense now for those remote areas to get a hold of Hatch.

And to put in a wind and a solar and a battery storage system to get the dependency off diesel fuel and lower the cost. I think everybody misses how much

Joel Saxum: cost that is. Yeah, when you factor the logistics in of diesel fuel for a genset in Northwest Territories, you’re paying 10, 12, 15 a gallon to get it up there.

A lot of times it comes in like a 5, 000 pound bag in the back of a DC 5 airplane. And they land it, drag the bag out, here’s your fuel. That’s crazy. If you can get away from that and that’s what Hatch does. That’s what you guys are delivering for the first nations in that area. Right?

Nathan Killeen: No, listen diesel gen sets are still a reality.

You need it for the rotating inertia. You need it for grid, but. We’re moving towards, obviously a synchronous condenser is going to be pretty bitably expensive for something like that, but that’s why we’re including the energy storage. And this is you guys hit the nail right on the head.

It’s the footprint is not only, the emissions and, pollution from that gen set, but it’s getting it up there. What are those overall costs right now? You may have somebody coming in to, perform an annual maintenance. Okay. Okay, that still has a footprint, but you’re not bringing in, you’re not, you’d be better off just sending the plane maybe, just with the fuel.

I think you make a very good point there, Allen.

Allen Hall: So what is the approach been with some of the First Nations on changing their energy future? And how does that Set up hatch because you can tap into so many different disciplines within one company, which is amazing. Where do you start off here?

Holly Brown: Where do we start? We have a entire indigenous engagement team. That is all they do day in and day out. And so they’re a great resource to us. And really, I think it’s about meeting the community and the people. where they are with the values that they have and understanding where they’ve come from what their land looks like, do they have the experience with developers or whatnot coming in, contaminating their land maybe not involving them in the process.

So we really understand, I think from the conception project inception and conceptually, we understand the connectivity and the critical need for that alignment piece between. integration between project delivery, social performance, indigenous engagement managing those communities, involving them, educating them, and building sort of a holistic path forward where everyone is on the same page, including the stakeholders including all of the components, all the logistics that go into this, and then actively involving the local indigenous First Nations community.

It’s a critical part Of any project success. Particularly in Canada, where there’s such a large focus. I do believe in the U. S. We could do better on this front, having seen all that we do in Canada. Yeah, that’s my perspective on where we start. It really starts from inception project planning, getting all those different teams involved on the social community engagement, indigenous First Nations and integrating them with the technical project team to see how we’re going to deliver something that is suitable for all of us.

Nathan Killeen: It’s a partnership. It’s not just the project is the outcome of that partnership. So it’s and the benefit, I think, again, it’s the point of any renewable energy project, of course, is to lower costs. And then in a lot of cases here, for these bigger projects, you have a PPA, it’s economic, the drivers behind that are economic.

Of course, in these projects, you There’s always economic drivers, but it’s really that partnership and it’s I think we look at it as a holistic, it’s not a problem, but it’s an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to better community. But again, we’re not, we have we’re part of the answer, but we’re not the solution.

We’re working with those communities that, help them come to, all right. a good outcome.

Allen Hall: We could use you in the States with a number of wind and solar projects where it doesn’t seem like the community is that engaged before the digging starts. And what a disaster that turns into.

So I’m glad you actually have a whole group of people devoted to that. That’s amazing. And once you get buy in or get to some sort of agreement with the community, What happens next? There must be, I’m just thinking out loud here, but anytime we get into any sort of a renewable energy project, the first thing is like, all right, I got permits.

I got government oversight. I have all these checkboxes I have to do before I can even put the first spade in the ground. Is that similar in the Northwest Territory? Is that same sort of regulatory structure or is it a little more freedom there?

Nathan Killeen: I think, what it comes back to is we do have this holistic and like different professional services.

And part of that is our permitting team. And I think they work hand in hand with these communities. And a lot of it, again, is getting, boots on the ground, community engagement. But, The motivations, every project is different. Every First Nations community is, it’s.

Every situation is unique, right? And so I think where we really excel at is that we understand and we really emphasize those details. And, we’re working hand in hand with, in some cases it’s working directly, the First Nations community might own the assets and others, it’s a power company delivering to those.

The devil is in the details. And I think, we’re excelling at that. Listening and then, understanding it’s a partnership. But again, this is that it’s, I think it’s that entrepreneurial spirit that Holly spoke about. It’s, this is not just a line item on our budget sheet.

It’s a real project that affects people.

Holly Brown: Yeah. And I think the regulatory environment in Canada is It is different from the U. S. In this space. That comes with some complexities, but I wouldn’t say it’s fundamentally easier or more difficult, right? It’s just a different set of, whether or not you’re working with provincial federal regulations in Canada.

It’s a little bit different than the U. S. Kind of mix, but very similar in terms of permitting. Timelines may differ a little bit depending on where you are and what sort of regulatory approvals you need in order for you to then go dig in the ground. But yeah it’s a, it is different for sure.

Joel Saxum: I think that there’s something, Allen mentioned it as well and I’d like to double down on it. Your, or the Hatch approach to getting these projects off the ground is something that Could very well be needed in the United States because we see this. We covered on the podcast a lot, right? Like these, the pushback from small communities and counties and townships and so and the moratoriums on solar and wind, and they seem, Politically driven.

That’s my opinion. I’m just saying that a lot of times it’s politically driven rather than technically driven if you could get in and sometimes it’s because people feel like the projects are being shoved down their throat. Like they think big business is coming in here and they’re going to do whatever they want.

And if you could get on the ground and get boots on the ground and conversations with stakeholders at an early stage, you can really get this thing, designed well and moving because at the end of the day, we know how to build wind farms, We know how to build battery storage systems.

We know how to build solar farms. Like we can do it, but we need less opposition and more access to that land to get it done. I wish that other people would take the approach. I wish that more people would get that. We’d like, get an, it’s almost, it’s a PR approach and that needs to happen more.

Holly Brown: It is Joel.

And I think it’s a soft skill, right? It’s that communication sort of psychology component that is unfortunately lost in a lot of engineering and science firms. It’s rare that you have, a PhD with a psych degree, that’s a, that’s an odd combo, but I always say that’s such an asset in this business because really, when communities outright, in my opinion, based on my experience, when they outright reject a scope of work and there hasn’t even been any discussion, like you said, it could be, being shoved down their throats.

But typically it comes from fear, right? They may not have a say, they’re concerned about X, Y, Z. What is this going to do? It could be anything, right? It could be, am I going to get cancer from this windmill that you’re putting in here? I’ve seen people say all sorts of things. So to have that level of scientific wherewithal, technical prowess, and excellence coupled with that social communication Component when you’re first at Project Inception.

Again, it all goes back to Project Inception and getting that team in place, boots on the ground, maybe putting out a community letter and opening it up for questions. That is something that I think is not done enough in the states. Why? Because it’s it can be difficult.

You’re right. It can delay the process. But in my opinion, it can also accelerate the process because the more you can have buy in from the communities and everybody up front, Typically, the faster and smoother the project will run.

Joel Saxum: I think at a certain level, there’s an ethics conundrum there.

The people that you’re, most of the time, where a wind farm or solar farm is being built, is going to be in a heavily conservative area, right? You’re in the mid, you’re in the middle of the Midwest, or you’re in Texas, you’re in Oklahoma. You’re somewhere in farm country, in general, and that’s where I am here in rural America, and none of, nobody likes to be lied to or feel like they’ve had the wool pull over their eyes, but that seems to happen or, I’m not gonna say it seems to happen, but it seems like the opinion is that it happens.

Quite often with renewable energy projects. And if you can get in front of that by with community engagement, otherwise you’re fighting this, you’re fighting the land landowners for 20, 25 years. That’s just the reality of it, right? Every time a generator goes down and you’ve got to move a crane in for a wind turbine or something, it’s on Facebook and it says all these things.

And then you start to get this misinformation spreading. And because people are angry and all these different things. So I think that the, that what it sounds like here now, I don’t know the hatch approach. I’ve never worked with you guys. But what it sounds like, what you’re telling us and what Allen and I’ve done a bit of research in the background is that’s how you approach things.

That’s what, we like to hear that. We’re bringing good news we feel right now.

Nathan Killeen: I’ve seen different approaches to community engagement and some is I’m sorry, you didn’t put the turbine on that piece of land that you owned. And, people respond in some parts of the country, with a lot of emotion, a lot of passion that sometimes leads to repairs of said turbines.

So that’s true as a true statement. I think what we try to do, and I think is more successful. Like we’re talking, it’s like that rule of 10, in manufacturing if you catch it in design, it’s always going to be more expensive. The further it goes down the line.

Allen Hall: Let’s talk about the finance piece.

Cause I, that is the linchpin to most projects. If there’s no financing, projects do not move forward. But the community aspect of that is sometimes overlooked. And a financial group doesn’t want to be involved in some sort of conflict if they can avoid it. Does getting the community bought in or to be part of the process, does that help on the financing side?

Sort of speeding a project up and getting more access to funds

Holly Brown: on the financial front. Maybe not necessarily opening up more Avenues for financials, but I think it creates as an engagement or a project manager It creates having that community engagement up front Essentially a more streamlined path through your financials that have already been developed for that project, right?

You’re not potentially encountering as many hurdles and therefore delays and therefore stop work, right? All of that To a project manager, engagement manager, it’s just dollars going out the window. So I do think it helps on that front.

Allen Hall: On a larger context, what does the community engagement for Hatch look like going forward?

What have you learned over the last several years that now is being implemented as you reach towards new projects?

Holly Brown: From my perspective, the sooner the better. Earlier engagement is always better. Again, and so I think understanding that connectivity and that critical need for alignment and integration moving forward.

It’s just an optimization in my mind off of what we’ve already developed over the last, 70 years now at this point, more if you’re looking at hydropower, as Nate mentioned, last 100 years. A century, a breadth of such experience in dealing with all these different types of communities and First Nations and engagement of Indigenous peoples.

That’s how that team was formed, years ago knowing and realizing there was such a critical component to the success of our projects. And we needed that expertise in that, social, environmental governance of these communities and First Nations. So I think from that’s where I see it.

It’s a refinement in optimization over time. And I think every project that we do, we also have, lessons learned at the end of the project that there’s anything, yeah, that we can take moving forward. Hey, was this difficult? How did this work with this community? Okay yeah, we had this over here and this worked well, but, this is a little bit different of a situation. Maybe this community Now they’re looking at, potential wind farm, but they were just looking at mining contamination. So it’s like knowing that history of that land as well, not just the indigenous peoples, but knowing, is it fresh Greenland or is it a brownfields, have they been dealing with people coming in and out consultants, stakeholders, regulators for decades and they’re just done what’s the pulse on them.

So I think each project we do, each refinement we go through, Okay. It’s just always great to, to learn and to share and communicate that internally via the hatch hub that we have internal new sharing blogs project shares that we do. So yeah continual refinement,

Nathan Killeen: especially when it comes to these projects.

There’s two things that I would say we, we have a mantra kind of doing our homework. And I think that’s what this community engagement is about. And then it’s we’re acting like owners. And so it just speaks to that partnership. Wow.

Allen Hall: This is why Hatch is so important to the industry, is that you’re well rounded and you have the staff to do a project right and to set it up for success.

That’s really impressive. Holly and Nathan, this has been tremendous. I’ve learned so much in a short amount of time and really impressive work. And if anybody wants to connect with Hatch, probably the easiest way is to go to hatch. com and get on the website and see all the projects and the engineering and experience they have.

It’s amazing. So Holly and Nathan, thank you so much for being on the program.

Holly Brown: Absolutely. Please connect with us on LinkedIn. And thank you so much, Allen, Jill, Claire. Appreciate the opportunity.

Nathan Killeen: Yes. Thank you very much.