Photo: Ken Ahmann, Chief Operating Officer of Colusa Indian Energy (CIE)
Colusa Indian Energy was formed in 2023 as a Section 17 Corporation and is entirely owned by the Cachil DeHe Band of Wintun Indians of the Colusa Rancheria.
In the final installment of this series, we present a Q&A session with the company’s COO, Ken Ahmann.
IV: Does anything in CIE’s business model distinguish it from other tribal energy companies?
Ahmann: One of the things that really sets us apart is that I think a majority of tribal or native owned energy companies have boxed themselves into being 100 percent renewable. And I think you’re missing some opportunities with tribes like the Southern Utes or Osage, or these tribes that have long been involved in oil and gas.
IV: Is that perspective reflected in your marketing and outreach to the tribes?
Ahmann: We don’t call ourselves a renewable energy company. We call ourselves a tribal energy company. There are some tribes which have benefitted greatly from oil and gas, and even coal, so if we get called on by one of those tribes to help, no matter what my personal feelings are about the climate crisis or whatever, our charter is to help tribes in energy in any capacity.
IV: Would you please tell us about one of CIE’s various green energy initiatives?
Ahmann: We have a pretty unique biomass project underway. The project is 100 percent grant funded, and it’s basically to prove that we can generate clean, green, renewable hydrogen from cannabis waste. If you were a nontribal startup company, it would be a whole lot more difficult for you to get into that space, specifically because you wouldn’t have access to grant funding. Part of this green hydrogen program is that we have an internal mandate to be burning 20 percent hydrogen by 2028, and burning 100 percent hydrogen by 2030, completely replacing natural gas.
IV: That’s laudable, but natural gas still seems to be a go-to fuel source. Why is that?
Ahmann: If you have a big resort, or a big cannabis grow, or a large medical facility, gas fired cogeneration is one of the first things we look at because it is extremely cost effective. That being said, even though we are not required to, the tribe voluntarily exceeds the strictest air quality requirements on Earth.
IV: Are there further plans for mitigating the environmental costs of burning fossil fuels?
Ahmann: For some of our bigger natural gas fired projects, we are going to do direct carbon capture at the tailpipe. We’re going to do pre-combustion carbon capture, slipstreaming the natural gas into a blue hydrogen system that is going to knock the carbon out of the gas before it even gets burned. We’re offering the same types of things to all the tribes that we develop with that have a natural gas component. It’s always at the front of our minds—How do we make this as clean, and green, and sustainable, as possible without ignoring the fact that there are oil and gas tribes, and tribes that can benefit significantly from having at least a component of their microgrid be gas fired.
IV: Will a shift to hydrogen use mean costly replacements of gas-burning microgrids?
Ahmann: When hydrogen is financially viable, all the equipment we sell is 100 percent hydrogen-ready. So you don’t have to replace all this gas-fired stuff. You can convert to hydrogen with a software change.
IV: Wait, like for real? That’s actually really amazing. What’s next for C.I.E in the USA?
Ahmann: The next goal is economic development. How do you utilize these new tribal utility backbones as a potential source of revenue generation today and long into the future? This helps tribes diversify away from gaming, not to replace gaming, of course, but as an additional revenue stream that maybe could eventually dwarf gaming.
IV: Last question. What about Indigenous energy needs in other parts of the world?
Ahmann: We’ve already been contacted by Indigenous groups in other countries. Australia, different parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, and in South America. It’s humbling and overwhelming. It’s hard enough to look at the need in Indian Country in the United States, and then you broaden your view to a global level. It’s almost crushing, right? I mean, how much need there is out there? There are nonprofits operating in this space that do a lot of good already. Corporate America is not coming to help unless it can make a lot of money. And in some of these international governments, there’s a level of corruption that’s sometimes even worse than in this country, which is hard to imagine.
