Lessons from ECO IMPACT 2024

Eco Impact is an annual conference hosted by Eco Canada that brings together environmental professionals from across the country. This year it was hosted in Calgary, Alberta from February 8-9, and I had the great privilege of attending it. I represented the Sustainable Capacity Foundation and gave insights into what’s happening in Ottawa as well as the two main programs I am involved with: the Faithfully Green Fund and the BIPOC Fellowship. 

There weren’t many people there who were in a similar position to me as a 22-year old recent university graduate, but I was eager to learn from the experienced professionals in this field and so I gained much knowledge and many new ideas relating both to my job and personal aspirations. With this article I aim to share some of them with you! 

I was interested in many of the conference topics, as they ranged from how fearless women lead in the environmental sector to the pressing need for deep energy retrofit projects. In this article I’ll mainly be talking about sustainable energy usage, but I have another article about the equity, diversity, and inclusion lessons I learned that can be found here. 

Our society is built around electricity usage, from the lights we turn on in the morning, to the microwave we use to heat our food, to the laptop we use to check our emails everyday. Our demand for energy seems like it’s only going to increase in the future–and if that happens it will cause problems like are we going to keep up with these energy demands? Should we just keep using non-renewable energy sources because we don’t have time to switch to better ones? Will we have to start regulating our energy usage? Thinking about this can cause a lot of stress. But what if our energy demands didn’t increase? What if we just started using more energy-efficient appliances? 

Deep energy retrofit projects increase the energy efficiency of your home by more than 80%. This might seem impossible, if you haven’t done research in this area, but it is! Replacing your current HVAC system with a ground source heat pump can reduce your energy usage from 140 GigaJoules/year to 62 GigaJoules/year. The technology in this field is constantly improving, but it’s not being implemented at the same rate because of its high cost. The homes that we build today generally have the same energy efficiency as those from the 1970s. Even though the upfront cost is more, in the long run these technologies will prove that they were worth it. They will save energy, save money, and improve comfort. Also retrofits will likely get more expensive over time as their demand increases, so it’s best not to put it off. Especially with the effects of climate change becoming more apparent, it will be necessary to make our buildings and lifestyles more sustainable. 

“If you don’t know what you want, you’re not going to get it. What do you want your home to look like in 2050?” 

Now that you’re thinking about doing a green retrofit project, I have to let you know that the Sustainable Capacity Foundation has partnered with Greening Sacred Spaces Ottawa to create the Faithfully Green Fund which helps you do just that! It is only applicable to faith community buildings in the Ottawa area, so if that’s you, check out our website for more information. We provide easily accessible, low interest loans so that you can fund the retrofit project that your building needs. Good luck in your future endeavors!