Breakthroughs Inspired by Buildings

Energy retrofitting buildings in Canada is essential to a low-carbon future. Residential and commercial retrofits have the potential to reduce emissions, save Canadians money, create thousands of jobs, and grow local manufacturing.​

There are 15 million dwellings in Canada, including 10 million single-family homes and five million apartments with a combined floor area of 2.1 billion square metres.​ The 750 million square metres of commercial and institutional buildings in Canada emit 43 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) per year.​

Scaling up Canada’s renovation industry so it can transition to a deep-retrofit industry can deliver good jobs and better, more climate-change-resilient homes and workplaces, as well as offer a chance to grow local manufacturing. Greening our buildings will lead to investment and GHG savings today, it will bring costs down for the future and put people back to work.

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Track activities include a Breakthroughs Inspired by Buildings Webinar, a public discussion paper, a virtual roundtable and curated networking session. Stay tuned for more!

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Past Events

Breakthroughs Inspired by Buildings Webinar

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Decarbonizing buildings in Canada and beyond is essential to a low carbon future. Residential and commercial energy retrofits and carbon-proofing new builds has enormous potential to reduce emissions, save Canadians money, create thousands of jobs, and grow local manufacturing.

Join partners Corporate Knights and GLOBE Series at the kick-off event of this special track in the Clean Recovery Breakthrough Series: Breakthroughs Inspired by Buildings. This virtual event will bring together industry leaders from across the country to discuss how we can accelerate and scale energy retrofits and carbon-proof new buildings in Canada. Questions covered will include:

  • What are the new and biggest opportunities to drive deep decarbonization of buildings?
  • How must current business models evolve to capitalize on those opportunities?
  • What are the other essential enablers of success?
  • How can we make the numbers work?

This event will be followed by other dialogues and transactional activities that take us beyond talk to transformational outcomes, beyond recovery to resilience and prosperity.

Speakers

  • Tim Coldwell, President, Chandos
  • Rob Simpson, Director, Sustainability, Ivanhoé Cambridge
  • Hugo Lafontaine, Vice President, Digital Energy, Schneider Electric

Moderators

  • Toby Heaps, CEO and Editor-in-Chief, Corporate Knights
  • Elizabeth Shirt, Managing Director, Globe Series