When most people think of community giving, it’s unlikely energy providers come to mind — but for much of Alberta, they do.
These providers, known as community energy marketers, reinvest proceeds from utility bills to fund community initiatives throughout Alberta, primarily in smaller communities.
Diamond Valley-based Foothills Energy Co-op is one of dozens of those providers. As a cooperative, 100 per cent of its net profit goes toward community initiatives.
According to board member Michael Kingston, the cooperative donated $225,000 to community initiatives in 2025.
Foothills Energy Co-op board member Michael Kingston, furthest right, is pictured presenting a $2,500 cheque to Oilfields Food Bank for a food drive in November 2025. According to Kingston, the cooperative donated $225,000 to community initiatives in 2025. (Submitted by Michael Kingston)
Those proceeds come from 2,000 customers across the province, located in the neighbouring Foothills County communities of Okotoks and High River, in Edmonton and Red Deer, and as far as Jasper and Hinton.
“The revenues that we derive from all of those customers around the province allows us to again put that money back into our community,” Kingston said.
Kingston said during today’s economically trying times, that kind of funding is much-needed for smaller communities feeling the economic crunch.
“A lot of towns like Diamond Valley, we’re having to cut back on a lot of activities, because they just don’t have the revenues coming in to support them,” Kingston said.
That’s been the case for the small town of just over 5,300 recently, with the Town of Diamond Valley dropping its support for community events like its annual Light Up holiday celebration. But Foothills Energy Co-op and the Foothills Lion Club carried the torch to keep that event going.
The Sheep River Library, Diamond Valley’s local public library, was approached by Foothills Energy Co-op in 2022 with an offer of grant funding to install solar panels, with the goal of lowering utility costs and reinvesting those savings into events and programs at the library.
In 2025, those solar panels were installed. According to board member Hazel Martin, the library has already seen a reduction of about 60 per cent in its energy bill.
“Those dollars go back into the library for programming,” said Martin, who is also a Town of Diamond Valley councillor.
“Our library is very much a hub of our community,” she said. “That’s a really important thing, that we can offer programs for families, for youth, for seniors, adults, that are all free.”
Providers serve communities across Alberta
Foothills Energy Co-op is one of many community energy marketers with a similar business model of reinvesting earnings back into the community.
In Olds, located north of Calgary in Mountain View County, the municipality is in charge of Mountain View Power, the local community energy marketer.
The town’s director of community services, Guy Lapointe, said a wide variety of community initiatives have been supported by proceeds from the provider. That includes everything from funding festivals and holiday events to contributions toward community groups like Men’s Shed and the Elks.
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The group Men’s Shed Canada is providing spaces for men to bond over their life experiences, socialize and work on projects that benefit their communities.
“It’s a very unique opportunity,” Lapointe said. “People are tight with dollars these days. If you don’t have money to give to local charities … this is an easy way to make that happen, because it is an expense that you’re going to have to put into your home anyway.”
While the Town of Olds operates Mountain View Power, funding decisions are influenced by a committee of community members.
Alberta’s community energy marketers have different governance structures, but whether they’re run by independent volunteers or municipal governments, the end goal remains to reinvest funds into community initiatives throughout the province.
Utility Network and Partners operates 43 of those providers, serving more than 450 communities across Alberta.
Darren Chu, the Calgary-based group’s managing director, said the community energy marketer program offers a way for people to give back to their communities through something they can’t avoid: paying their utility bills.
“Instead of thinking about your utility bills as something that’s lining shareholders’ pockets, customers know that those funds are going back into community,” he said.
Darren Chu, managing director of Calgary-based Utility Network and Partners, stands in front of his own rooftop solar installation. In addition to funding solar panel installation in Alberta through community energy marketers, the company runs a special electricity pricing program for solar customers called Solar Club. (Submitted by Darren Chu)
Chu said those community energy marketers have donated more than $4.5 million to charities and initiatives across Alberta since the program’s inception in 2009.
“The competitive retail market in Alberta is very tight, and there is a lot of competition,” Chu said. “In some cases we’re more competitive or lower priced [than our competitors] but even in instances where we’re not, our customers know that a portion of their proceeds are being donated to charities.”
There are more than 70 competitive retailers in the Alberta utility market, around 60 per cent of which are operated by Utility Network and Partners.
Outside of supporting charitable initiatives, community energy providers also support community projects like the construction of the Guinness World Records-certified largest fishing lure in the world, erected in the central Alberta city of Lacombe in 2019, which Echo Energy helped fund.