Innovation Sandbox Challenge: Empowering Indigenous Innovation and Leadership

The OEB is launching a second Innovation Sandbox Challenge to empower Indigenous innovation and support Indigenous leadership in the energy transition by identifying challenges, exploring emerging opportunities, enhancing energy services and building capacity. The Challenge will provide up to $1.275 million in funding supported by the Government of Canada, along with regulatory guidance through the Innovation Sandbox to selected projects.

The Innovation Sandbox Challenge: Empowering Indigenous Innovation and Leadership will support projects that test scalable approaches to energy innovation within Indigenous communities. Through this Challenge, the OEB will seek submissions for projects with a two-year timeline that are either led by, developed in partnership with, or meaningfully engage with Indigenous organizations/communities.

Background

This Challenge is responsive to Ontario’s Clean Energy Opportunity, a report of the Electrification and Energy Transition Panel delivered to the Ontario government. The report emphasized the importance of meaningful Indigenous participation in the clean energy economy, calling for enhanced capacity building through funding and access to learning resources.

In March 2023, the OEB launched its first Innovation Sandbox Challenge, offering $1.5 million and regulatory support to help advance innovation in Ontario’s energy sector. That challenge is focused on two themes: how to move pilots to broader implementation and innovative strategies to enhance consumers’ understanding of their role in the energy transition.