Press release: Energy Benchmarking Program for GTHA Faith Communities Concludes

Toronto, ON – You can’t change what you don’t measure. When it comes to tracking energy usage in order to reduce consumption, faith communities in the GTHA have had an opportunity to do just that. Starting in 2017, with a three-year, $295,200 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Faith & the Common Good (FCG) launched the Faith Building Energy Benchmarking Program that engaged over 100 faith groups in tracking their electric, gas, and GHG consumption with monthly data from their utility companies.

“This program is about Faith Communities coming together to look after future generations by reducing their carbon footprint and their impact on the environment. What could be a greater act of faith than coming together to help save the planet?” - MPP Chris Glover (Spadina-Fort York) Funds from the grant have been used to help with costs involving staffing, hosting workshops and webinars over the period of the grant, upgrading and maintaining the website, printing costs, and program supplies, as well as some administrative costs.

“Advent is a continuous call to hope…Let us try to bring out the good even from the difficult situation that the pandemic imposes upon us”  Pope Francis, November 29, 2020.

People of faith seeking to “change the wind” towards justice and compassion

In an Advent reflection, Fr. Ron Rolheiser gives an example of hope from Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners, of how people of faith helped bring down apartheid in South Africa. They prayed and placed lit candles in their windows for all to see a sign of their hope that apartheid would end. Despite their government making the lit candles a crime, that prayerful act of hope “changed the wind in South Africa” and helped end apartheid. Wallis explains that politicians make decisions based on which way the wind is blowing so hope’s task is “to change the wind”.

Faithful Footprints: Putting our Houses in Order

Energy retrofits power renewed mission for faith communities

The jury is still out on the Canadian government’s recent climate accountability act but not everyone is waiting for a verdict. 

The United Church of Canada has committed to reducing its greenhouse gases by 80 percent by 2050, and local congregations across the country are already responding, aided by more than $3 million in available grant money from the denomination.