A company headed by B.C. Liberal Senator Jack Austin is proposing to build the biggest wind power "farm" in Canada off the Queen Charlotte Islands.

Uniterre Resources Ltd. signed an agreement for the proposed offshore 700-megawatt project with engineering conglomerate ABB, in Berlin Tuesday during Prime Minister Jean Chretien's trade visit to Germany.

The two companies jointly submitted an application to the federal and provincial governments last week for the plan to build 350 wind turbines in shallow waters 30 kilometres off the northeast tip of the Charlottes.

"The Nai Kun wind farm will propel Canada to the global frontier in renewable energy development," Austin said in a news release. "In addition to supplying much-needed capacity to the B.C. Hydro grid, Nai Kun will play a valuable role in helping Canada meet its Kyoto commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

The partners hope to start construction of the wind farm in 2004, with a four-year construction period envisaged, though no financing details have been released.

Uniterre, until this week a dormant exploration company trading for pennies on the Canadian Venture Exchange, plans to transmit power from the wind farm to the B.C. Hydro grid with a submarine transmission cable to a substation near Prince Rupert.

The company says wind speeds at the proposed generation sites average 31 kilometres an hour.

Hydro said Uniterre officials met with the Crown utility last October. But the company at that time failed to meet the conditions for Hydro's "request for proposals" from independent power producers.

Project promoters say the wind generators would produce electricity at a cost of 6.6 cents per kilowatt-hour. But Hydro spokeswoman Elisha Odowichuk said Hydro believes the costs are closer to eight to 10 cents because of transmission loss. Electricity from hydroelectric dams averages 6.1 cents an hour.

The Uniterre proposal would expand Canada's wind power generation by 350 per cent. The project also would produce more than twice the energy of the 265-megawatt natural gas-fired plant proposed by Hydro for Vancouver Island.

(A megawatt is roughly enough electricity to power 1,000 homes).

Hydro is still looking for a site for the Island plant, a joint venture with U.S. company Calpine, but suggested sites in Port Alberni, the Cowichan Valley and Nanaimo have run into heavy opposition. And the proposed Vancouver Island Generation Project is dependent on gas from the planned GSX pipeline to the Island, which also has met with opposition from environmentalists and community groups.

Some opponents have suggested Hydro is not doing enough to develop green energy sources like wind power.

However, separately on Tuesday, Hydro identified 18 of 22 small independent power producers across the province that have signed deals to supply more than 80 megawatts of "green" electricity to the Crown corporation. (Four companies did not want to be publicly identified.)

The producers include four companies tapping rivers to generate power from small hydro plants on Vancouver Island. The largest of these is a 4.5-megawatt plant to be run by Innergex Inc. on the Tsable River, near Courtenay.

Another company, Synex Energy Resources, is developing smaller plants at McKelvie Creek, near Tahsis, and ZZ Creek, near Gold River. Near Port Alice, Raging River Power and Mining Inc. is planning a 1.75-megawatt plant on the Raging River.