The Yukon government has kicked off its pursuit of new hydroelectric energy projects.

Energy, Mines and Resources Minister Scott Kent made the announcement Thursday.

The minister insisted in an interview this morning this is not a planning exercise that will end up on the shelf.

"A substantial increase in Yukon's power supply will be necessary over time to foster responsible and sustainable economic development in the territory,” Kent said in Thursday's press release.

"Hydroelectric power will meet this demand and ensure Yukon's power supply is from a clean, affordable source.”

Kent has directed the Yukon Development Corp. – Yukon Energy's parent company – to plan one or more hydroelectric projects that will meet the Yukon's anticipated growth in demand.

The Crown corporation has been instructed to report back to Kent in 90 days with a work plan to achieve its mandate along with the estimated cost of doing work, the minister said.

Until the development corporation provides the work plan and the cost estimate, he added, he won't be sure what the exercise will cost, and what will be involved in terms of human resources.

The government will foot the bill, and the cost will not be passed on to Yukon Energy or its ratepayers, he said.

Kent said he would expect to have the results by next fall.

From there, he said, the government would begin searching for funding partners, which essentially boils down to the federal government and Yukon First Nations.

It's his intent, he said, to carry the project on through the permitting stage and into operation.

"Realistically, we are probably looking at 10- or 15-year time horizon on this before we can turn the lights on,” he said.

Premier Darrell Pasloski, the minister noted, has committed to making new hydroelectric generation a part of the territory's energy future.

Kent said simply the government is asking the development corporation to match the best project with the anticipated growth in demand while considering cost and location.

The exercise will likely involve looking at options already identified for new dams and others that haven't been, he said.

The government has already identified 10 potential sites that it set aside years ago during the negotiations of aboriginal land claim settlements.

Yukon Energy has identified 23 different options for future hydro generation, from small projects to the very large.

On the smaller scale, for instance, Yukon Energy has identified the option of installing a hydro dam on the Tutshi River at the south end of Windy Arm for an estimated cost of $165 million (2009 dollars) for six megawatts of generating capacity.

Among the proposals in the medium category is a power dam at the Hoole Canyon on the Pelly River, at a cost of $460 million for 40 megawatts of generating capacity, or the same amount of hydro capacity available at the Whitehorse Rapids Dam.

Among the larger projects identified in Yukon Energy's 20-resource plan is damming Fraser Falls on the Stewart River at a cost of $2.5 billion for 300 megawatts of generating capacity.

Anne Middler of the Yukon Conservation Society said this morning while some hydro-generation is good, not all of it is.

"We support low-impact projects that will give us incremental increases of hydro over time and generally that means not large projects but small projects,” she said.

Middler said the society doesn't yet have details about what the government is proposing.

Large hydro projects, she said, have a significant environmental cost.

The society would not be favour of flooding large valleys to provide huge amounts of power, she added, particularly if the demand is coming from industrial pursuits like large mines.

Middler said good examples of low-impact, effective hydro projects can be found in Skagway's Goat Lake hydro project, which produces four megawatts of generating capacity, and Altin's Pine Creek project, which produces 2.1 megawatts of capacity.