Ninepoint launches first US ETF with bet on North American energy integration

On September 22, Toronto-based asset management firm Ninepoint Partners initiated trading for its first U.S.-listed fund, hoping that the energy links that unite Canada and the U.S. will endure beyond trade rifts affecting the border.

The Ninepoint North American Energy Independence ETF, which trades on the NYSE Arca under the symbol ENRG, aggregates all companies involved in oil and gas production, pipelines, nuclear and uranium, copper and key minerals into one actively managed portfolio.

This combination also places the investment fund in the center of an issue that cryptocurrency miners are more than familiar with: access to power. Grid access and approved mining locations increasingly affect whether a Bitcoin miner continues mining or directs his efforts into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC).

What ENRG actually holds

The ENRG has between 25 and 50 stocks in its portfolio and charges an expense ratio of 0.65%. Its portfolio covers the fields of energy supply, transport infrastructure, nuclear energy and uranium, and electrification inputs, including copper and critical minerals. The fund has its focus in Canada as well as in Mexico and the USA, although it can have up to 10% of its investments allowed outside North America. Its SEC filing confirms the management fee of 0.65% and lists Tidal Investments as adviser and Ninepoint Partners as sub-adviser.

Ninepoint co-CEO John Wilson told Reuters that about two-thirds of the fund’s oil and gas producers will be based in the U.S., while Canadian pipeline operators and uranium, copper and other metals miners will make up most of those asset classes.

The thesis: integration outlasts the rhetoric

Wilson’s situation is simple to comprehend. The dependence of the nations on energy across their borders has been in place long before one government came into power, and it will not be removed due to the change of the political powers.

It would be naive to think that the headline stuff is going away any time in the next two years.

—John Wilson, Ninepoint co-CEO.

Trade statistics illustrate just how strong those connections are. As per the EIA, in 2025, the daily average for American natural gas imports from Canada was 8.6 billion cubic feet. Electricity trade amounted to $3.2 billion, with imports from Canada accounting for 67% of the turnover. According to the Canada Energy Regulator, Canada accounted for 63.4% of imports of crude oil and almost 100% of natural gas imported by the U.S. in that period.

According to Ninepoint portfolio manager Eric Nuttall, this strong dependency can be explained on the basis of energy security.

Energy security stopped being an abstraction with Russia’s war in Ukraine and China’s export controls on rare earths.

—Eric Nuttall

Where crypto mining meets the power fight

Ninepoint’s demand theory is directly related to crypto mining. According to the IEA, the electricity demand of data centers increased by 17% and points to the fact that grid connections, transformer stations, and other infrastructure are bottlenecks in terms of providing new connections.

According to Cryptopolitan, the ongoing work on building OpenAI’s computing capacity brings increasing value to power, land, and existing interconnections.

The pressures are already apparent in mining economics. CoinShares estimated the weighted average ex-tax cash cost of producing one Bitcoin is around $75,500 as of Q2 2026. The company referred to the U.S. interconnection queue’s staggering figure of approximately 2,600 GW, while the newest available report from the Berkeley Lab showed that more than 2,060 GW of both active generation and storage were in queue awaiting a grid connection at the end of 2025. The discrepancy is likely due to the difference in varying definitions of queues and dates of reporting of the data; therefore, numbers shall not be taken as exact equivalents.

According to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, electricity represents over 80% of the operating expenditures of miners. Given the expensive and limited nature of electricity, Core Scientific, Keel, Cipher and IREN are scaling down their mining capacity or discontinuing it by repurposing their installations for AI and HPC. The effect on crypto is indirect, but still meaningful.

If electricity gets more costly or less reliable in North America, miners will seek other sources of cheap, reliable electricity. ENRG by itself will not have an impact on Bitcoin price, but it has a relationship with the same constraints that affect Bitcoin mining as a whole.

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