This session showcases inspiring community-led initiatives from local changemakers creating meaningful impact. Through stories of leadership, collaboration, and innovation, speakers will share lessons from real-world action.

Discover practical, community-led retrofit solutions advancing equitable decarbonization and resilience. Speakers share lessons from emergency resilience, community-led investment, and manufactured home communities, followed by an interactive audience discussion.

• Lessons from supporting retrofits in manufactured home parks in BC
  Robyn Ashwell, Ecotrust Canada and Leigh St-Hillaire, Volta Research

 Enjoy snacks and network

This panel explores cross-sector partnerships advancing healthy, energy-efficient Indigenous housing through community-led, culturally grounded solutions that strengthen climate resilience, improve health, build local capacity, and support equitable, lasting outcomes.

Following the talks, participants will join roundtable discussions to reflect on the key questions, opportunities, and challenges highlighted by the speakers. Opportunity to learn about success stories from new technologies, projects and policy development for Home Energy Justice in Canada. The session is designed to ensure participants leave with fresh ideas, new perspectives, and inspiration to drive change in their own communities and organizations.

• Changing the Conversation - Communicating Energy Poverty in Canada
  Nearly 2 million Canadian households experience energy poverty, struggling to afford or access the energy needed to maintain healthy, comfortable homes. The burden falls disproportionately on vulnerable groups, including seniors, renters, newcomers, and single-parent families. Despite its growing prevalence, energy poverty remains inconsistently defined in Canada, creating barriers to awareness, policy action, and access to support. This workshop will examine how effective communication and public engagement can connect research, policy, programs, and communities to build understanding, strengthen support, and drive meaningful, long-term solutions.
   
• Breaking the cycle - stable policies for energy affordability, deep retrofits, and good jobs
  Reducing emissions from existing buildings is essential to meeting Canada’s climate goals, yet adoption of proven retrofit technologies such as heat pumps, insulation, and air sealing remains too slow. The start-stop-start cycle of deep retrofit incentive programs has created uncertainty for contractors, disrupted workforce development, and slowed market growth. This workshop will explore how insights from industry practitioners, combined with stable policy and workforce strategies, can accelerate building decarbonization while supporting healthy communities and good jobs.
  Ceileigh McAllister, Arctic Energy Alliance & University of Waterloo
   
• Non-Energy Benefits for Equitable Retrofit Programs and Energy Affordability
  Motivations for retrofits often extend beyond energy efficiency. When building improvements also address priorities such as health, safety, affordability, and housing stability, support for investment is strengthened. This workshop will explore how non-energy benefits (NEBs) can help build the case for energy poverty solutions, highlighting emerging research and approaches to measuring these impacts. Participants will discuss opportunities for collaboration, shared data, and standardized methodologies that can strengthen advocacy, unlock funding, and support more equitable program outcomes across Canada.

Enjoy snacks and network

This panel examines how energy efficiency programs can integrate energy justice, climate adaptation, and horizontal equity to build resilient, equitable investments that better serve low-income households while protecting program outcomes from climate risks.

This panel showcases Indigenous-led and collaborative retrofit programs that expand energy efficiency in remote and Indigenous communities, highlighting innovative partnerships, community capacity, culturally informed delivery, and practical lessons for equitable program design.

Please join us for cocktails, drinks, and snacks to end the day together.

Quick re-grounding.

This session builds on the “Inspirations from the Ground” session by broadening the lens to international examples of innovation and impact. This discussion will explore how communities and organizations around the world are addressing similar challenges through creative, scalable, and context-sensitive solutions.
 

Following the talks, participants will join roundtable discussions to reflect on the key lessons, opportunities, and challenges emerging from international examples of change. Through facilitated conversation, attendees will consider how global models of innovation can inform and inspire action in their own local contexts. The session is designed to help participants translate international insights into practical ideas, leaving with new perspectives and approaches to strengthen their work on the ground.

• Comfort, climate, and equity: tenant voices in building performance
  As building performance standards and thermal comfort bylaws gain momentum, it is critical to ensure that tenants are meaningfully engaged in policy and implementation discussions. This workshop will explore the connections between tenant engagement, energy poverty, building performance standards, and minimum/maximum heat requirements. Participants will discuss how policies and retrofit programs can simultaneously advance climate goals, affordability, health, and safety while minimizing unintended impacts on tenants. Through case studies and discussion, the session will identify practical strategies for creating more equitable, comfortable, and resilient housing.
  Stephanie Pineau, FCM
   
• A national strategy to end energy poverty
  The Energy Poverty Coalition emerged from a CHEJ 2025 session focused on advancing a national framework to end energy poverty in Canada. The Coalition brings together organizations committed to reducing and ultimately eliminating energy poverty in Canada through collaboration, shared learning, and coordinated action. This session, led by Efficiency Canada Campaign Manager Emilie Grenier, will focus on the Coalition’s work and strategic planning around ongoing advocacy.
  Emilie Grenier, Efficiency Canada
   
• Disability justice and energy poverty
  As extreme heat events become more frequent and severe, indoor cooling is emerging as both a climate adaptation and disability justice issue. This workshop explores how a Disability Justice lens can help bridge climate mitigation and adaptation efforts in buildings, areas that are often treated separately despite significant overlap. Drawing on preliminary findings from interviews with climate, energy, disability, and accessibility stakeholders, participants will discuss opportunities to align building decarbonization, thermal resilience, and accessibility goals through technology, policy, and program design, creating healthier and more equitable outcomes for building occupants.
  Alyssa Scanga, Trent University

As affordability pressures continue to affect households across Canada, energy efficiency is increasingly being recognized as a nation-building opportunity. Improving the efficiency of homes and buildings can help reduce energy bills, lower the risk of energy poverty, and improve quality of life. With millions of Canadians struggling to afford the energy they need, some advocates are calling for a federal goal to end energy poverty. This panel will explore how energy efficiency can advance affordability, economic resilience, and social equity. What would it take to make ending energy poverty a national priority?