We are a proud recipient of the RBC Tech for Nature donation from the RBC Foundation alongside more than 100 leading environmental organizations. Together, we’re tackling the pressing environmental challenges of our times by leveraging technology, developing innovative solutions and building multi-sector partnerships.

Through the Climate Innovation Fund, Alberta Ecotrust works to accelerate urban emissions reductions in Calgary and Edmonton. One of our key focus areas is Building Better & Retrofitting Wiser.

The building stock in Alberta’s two largest urban centres accounts for 40 to 60% of greenhouse gas emissions. In order to achieve meaningful emissions reductions to address our current climate crisis, we need to address energy use in our building sector by performing deep energy retrofits of our current building stock quickly and at scale. Relying on traditional energy auditing methods will not get us to the scope needed.

This pilot project, targeting the commercial building sector, will use cutting edge data extrapolation and visualization approaches to rapidly collect and present information, identify large scale energy efficiency improvements, and aggregate those opportunities to catalyze investment, within Calgary and Edmonton. The technologies applied could include; cloud-based, visualization and rapid virtual labeling; data extrapolation using modelling and/or machine learning; and digital/continuous and/or snapshot auditing.

"Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time. We are committed to bringing the power of innovative technologies to address and scale solutions to some of the most pressing environmental issues of our time.” – Valerie Chort, Vice-President, Corporate Citizenship & Sustainability, RBC.

The model will be shared, including a visualization to demonstrate the outcomes of the project, engage decision makers and showcase the work for future opportunities.

We look forward to formalizing our partnerships and getting ready to scale!