Canadian clean energy company eyeing Chatham

Canadian clean energy company eyeing Chatham-Kent for gigafactory

Project was showcased during Prime Minister Mark Carney's Canada Investment Summit

A Canadian clean energy company is eyeing Chatham-Kent, Ont., as the site of a proposed new facility that would, among other things, be the first in North America to produce sodium-ion batteries.

That’s according to both Chatham-Kent’s mayor and leaders of the company in question, Canadian Sustainable Energies Ltd.

What is the Canada Investment Summit? Inside Carney's investment summit in Toronto

Carney hosts investment summit amid trade war

“The company's flagship facility in Chatham-Kent, Ont., will produce high-efficiency solar modules, battery energy storage systems and complete energy infrastructure solutions for utilities, developers and commercial customers across North America,” according to a news release posted on LinkedIn by the company’s founder and CEO.”

A goal, the release said, is to build an integrated business rather than creating standalone solar facilities, battery plants or engineering, procurement, and construction services.

The project came to light when it was featured as part of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Canada Investment Summit on Monday and Tuesday.

The company said in the release that it chose Chatham-Kent because of its established workforce and production expertise; access to highways, rail transportation and shipping; access to energy transmission and support from multiple levels of government.

Factory would be huge for the region, mayor says

Chatham-Kent Mayor Darrin Canniff said the company was also attracted to the region by its affordability and land availability, and by the fact that the government is small enough to be nimble.

Canniff said if the project goes forward, it will be huge for the region.

“It's not just Chatham-Kent,” he said.

“They'll be using businesses from across southwestern Ontario. … It's absolutely huge when you think about … the number of jobs and the multiplier…It's a significant increase to the workforce in Chatham-Kent … which will benefit virtually every business that we have in the municipality.”

Canniff was quick to point out that the project, dubbed by Canadian Sustainable Energies as a “10 GW integrated gigafactory campus,” is not a data centre and does not have significant power requirements.

He described the proposed campus’ water and natural gas usage as “normal.”

“This is something that’s a cutting-edge technology and something that we can have here that is nowhere in the U.S.,” Canniff said.

“That is something that becomes very attractive to both the federal [and] provincial governments.”

Heather Kitching reports local news for CBC stations across Ontario and the North. You can reach her at heather.kitching@cbc.ca.

With files from Afternoon Drive