Clean Climate Leadership Showcase

A celebration of Clean Climate Leadership during the Global Climate Summit.

During the Global Climate Conference in Paris, the City of Halifax, the Ecology Action Centre and Clean Foundation celebrated those Nova Scotian businesses, individuals, community groups and educators showing outstanding leadership around climate change.

On December 11th, 2015 at Halifax City Hall, we shone a spotlight on just some of the Nova Scotians championing our transition to a low-carbon economy, and those helping us to adapt to the impacts of climate change.

Nova Scotia has shown national leadership on waste reduction and energy efficiency – we want to celebrate those champions working to ensure our province does its share on the climate change issue.

By 2020, 40% of Nova Scotia’s electricity will come from renewable sources. However, the majority of energy will still come from high emissions-producing, non-renewable resources – so there is more work to do.

We hope the people honoured here continue to work on climate issues, and inspire more action in Atlantic Canada.

Here are the Nova Scotians that we showcased in 2015 (pictured here with Halifax Mayor Mike Savage):

1. MindShift program through the Adventure Earth Centre. MindShift was designed by youth, for youth, to make a difference in schools and communities. It’s a theatrical presentation that is taken on by a team of high school youth to learn and then deliver to the grade 10 Science classes.

2. Doctor Solar is a community-owned company that has been designing, installing and maintaining solar hot water and photovoltaic systems for residential, commercial and institutional applications throughout Nova Scotia for over 20 years.

(Councillor Jennifer Watts, chair of the Halifax Environment Committee, joined Halifax Mayor Mike Savage for photos):

3. Rochelle Owen works as the Director of the Office of Sustainability at Dalhousie University, which works on local and international climate change issues at the grassroots level, environmental law and policy, adaptation planning and international development. Rochelle’s work at the University is focused on the sustainability in operations.

4. CarbonCure Technologies has developed a breakthrough yet practical technology that allows concrete producers to beneficially reuse CO2 during concrete manufacturing to improve concrete quality, lower costs and reduce a development’s carbon footprint.

5. Stephen Thomas is an engineer currently working with Scotian Windfields on their community-owned wind projects. He is the former chair of the Ecology Action Centre’s Energy Action Team. He is the founder of DivestDAL, a fossil fuel divestment campaign at Dalhousie University, as well as If You Build It, an organization that provides people the tools to build their own solar panels. [Mr. Thomas was not at the ceremony as he was at the Climate Conference in Paris]

6. Unama’ki Institute of Natural Resources is an organization that represents the five Mi’kmaw communities of Unama’ki (Cape Breton Island) on natural resource issues. UINR contributes to an understanding and protection of the Bras d’Or Lakes’ ecosystem through research, monitoring, education, and management while integrating Two-Eyed Seeing, an approach of combining traditional ecological knowledge and conventional ways of understanding.

7. Leon de Vreede is the Sustainability Planner for the Town of Bridgewater. Leon has been working for over a decade to further his vision for sustainable and climate-friendly Nova Scotian communities. In 2008 he was hired by the Town of Bridgewater to produce its Integrated Community Sustainability Plan, which he completed in 2010. He designed the Town’s award-winning energy management program, its Community Sustainability Network, and its unique Growing Green Festival.

8. Cape Breton University will soon be the first University in North America to completely offset all of its direct CO2 emissions by investing in renewable energy generation and energy efficiency. This coming January, CBU will commission a three turbine windfarm across from the campus that will generate an estimated 16,200 MWh of electricity annually, equivalent to a saving of 15,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year.