Our Energy Benchmarking Program

Understanding your current energy use is the first step in reducing it. Launched in 2017, our Energy Benchmarking Program is helping faith communities take practical and economical climate action by lowering their energy use and emissions. 

The Energy Benchmarking program:

1. Supports stewardship of environmental and financial resources. 
2. It allows you to target carbon consumption (buildings account for about 42% of a typical faith community’s carbon footprint).
3. Saves time and money, allowing you to target the lowest hanging fruit. 
4. Assists future reporting requirements. 

View our Case Studies of the places we have worked with.

Recorded November 20th, 2019

Runnymede United Lighting Case Study Webinar: Costs, Savings and Payback Periods from Energy Conservation in your Faith Building.

Watch and listen to the webinar (59 minutes)

Download Don Dewees' PowerPoint presentation

To provide learning and ways to reduce your building footprint, we have created a 62 page Do It Yourself Faith Building Energy Audit Guide.

We would like to thank Enbridge Gas Inc. for providing funding to Faith & the Common Good. 

Enbridge Gas Inc. has a more than 170-year history and is Canada's largest natural gas distribution company. Enbridge Gas delivers safe, reliable natural gas in more than 100 communities across Ontario and is a leader in promoting energy efficiency programs.

For information about Enbridge incentives, contact your Enbridge Energy Solutions Consultant, Jeffrey Blunt, at 416-795-8346 or email jeffrey.blunt@enbridge.com to learn more about their programs and incentives or visit enbridgesmartsavings.com/business

New in 2018! This easy-to-use 62-page guide is intended for decision-makers in faith communities who wish get to know how their buildings work and reduce the amount of energy they use in their buildings.

Energy audits of religious buildings show that 80 to 85 per cent of the energy used in places of worship is for heating and ventilation. Operators of religious buildings can take advantage of that finding to reduce their operating costs by making sure their heating and ventilating equipment is working as efficiently as possible, and by reducing heat loss from their facilities.

This guide discusses low or no-cost measures to give operators of religious buildings a range of options they can apply to reduce their energy bills while adding comfort and attractiveness to their facility. It includes a 14-page DIY energy audit.

 Download PDF (3.9 MB)

Order a hard copy of the DIY Walkthrough Audit Guide
Cost: $25 per copy (includes shipping and handling within Canada)

Building Automatic Systems Lunch 'n' Learn Webinar
Jan. 30, 2019

Presenter: Murtaz Abid, C.E.T.

Learn more about controlling the heating, cooling and ventilation in your faith buildings. This subject is somewhat complex, and thus requires specific knowledge and expertise. Murtaza a.k.a Taz, a Certified Engineering Technologist, talks about ways to save energy by controlling your building through technology, whether it be smart programmable thermostats or smart self-sustained Automation Systems, or everything in between.

 Download PDF (1.2 MB)

 Listen to the audio recording.

 
New in 2018! Our energy benchmarking team has created a series of graphics to help your faith community reduce energy and facilitate recycling efforts.

Each item shown here is available in both pdf format for printing and high resolution jpg.

If you are downloading resources for your faith community, we would appreciate you registering your faith community as part of our network by signing up your faith community.

 Download Resources

Recorded November 15, 2017
Saving energy is becoming increasingly important for large buildings, with cap and trade now in Ontario. But did you know that faith buildings account for 42% of all faith community green house gas emissions?

This is why Faith & the Common Good is engaging in an exciting, new benchmarking program. It will allow you to measure and track your energy consumption, and reduce it over time.

 Watch and listen to webinar (1 hour, 20 minutes)

Presented by Faith & the Common Good: Greening Sacred Spaces Toronto chapter, with support from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Toronto Hydro, Save ON Energy, and Enbridge Gas.

Recorded January 22, 2018
We were delighted to welcome Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, Dr. Dianne Saxe, to the webinar launch of our new Faith Building Energy Benchmarking program.  For those of you who attended, we hope that you found Dianne Saxe’s talk inspirational, concerning the moral, physical, and economic urgency of meaningful action on climate change.

Download options include:

• Entire webinar
• Individual pdf presentations:
  
  • Dianne Saxe presentation — Facing Climate Change
  • Faith & the Common Good presentation — Energy Benchmarking
  • Toronto Hydro presentation — Energy Saving Programs for your Place of Worship
  • Enbridge presentation — Minimizing the Cost Impact of Cap and Trade through Energy Efficiency

 Watch and listen to webinar (1 hour, 23 minutes)

 Download individual presentations