Innovative programs make Colchester homes cosier — and more climate-friendly

Joanna Burris is well acquainted with the Salmon River, which runs through central Colchester and the town of Truro before rising up into the Cobequid Hills, descending through a valley and finally emptying into the Bay of Fundy.

Growing up in the community of Bible Hill, outside of Truro, she remembers water rushing through the floodplains during high rainfall or snow melt runoff. But in the decades since then, she’s witnessed something that worries her: increased flooding activity.

“When you live in a place, you start to experience how climate change is impacting that place,” says Burris. “A lot of these impacts at this point are inevitable. We’re going to continue to have hotter summers, have more extreme precipitation events and wildfires. But in the long term, if we can reduce our emissions, then the impacts won’t be as severe.”

Seeing these climate-related changes in her community made Burris want to help — and she knew she had the skills to make a difference. Equipped with a planning degree from Dalhousie University, she was hired as the Municipality of Colchester’s first sustainability planner.

For close to six years, she has led the county toward a greener future by building partnerships, engaging stakeholders and helping homeowners reduce their carbon footprint. She wants to help everyone play a role in the municipality’s transition to renewable energy and eventual goal of meeting its net-zero emissions target by 2050.

Long before she came on board, Colchester Council had already laid the essential groundwork for their current programs. In 2009, it adopted a vision statement for a sustainable future for Colchester County, drawing inspiration from the United Nations’ principles for thriving, green communities. At the time, municipalities across Canada were developing integrated sustainability plans to gain access to federal gas tax funds, says Burris. The funds were for environmentally sustainable infrastructure projects — including wastewater management, public transit and community energy systems.

In Nova Scotia, Colchester was ahead of the sustainability curve when, in 2012, it announced that it was building a compost facility to extend the life of landfills, protect the environment and turn waste into a valuable resource.

Burris, who was initially hired to get Solar Colchester off the ground for homeowners, says that in 2019, a pilot project started providing low-interest financing for homeowners looking to install solar panels. Throughout the municipality, solar panels started going up on municipal buildings, the goal of which was (and is) to have all the buildings at net-zero emissions by 2035 — through solar and retrofits.

In 2021, Solar Colchester expanded to include more homeowners by offering another low-interest financing program called Cozy Colchester, which allows local homeowners to make energy efficiency upgrades to their homes. For some homes, solar doesn’t make sense — but other energy efficiency improvements do. Participants in the programs receive financing for up to $30,000 and can pay for the project over a 10- to 15-year term. They are also eligible for rebates from Efficiency Nova Scotia.

Even with rebates, many homeowners don’t have the upfront money to invest in energy efficiency. That’s what makes Solar Colchester and Cozy Colchester unique. They’re examples of programs that fall under Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), where the municipality pays for the retrofits upfront and the homeowners pay back the cost of the retrofits over time.

“It does allow people to switch from oil to heat pumps. Some people replace their doors and windows and add insulation. It does provide a good amount to do those initial steps,” says Burris. “And in most cases, the savings are greater than the (monthly) payments.”

A win-win any way you cut it, these essentially cost-free upgrades not only make houses warmer, they also have the added benefit of reducing a home’s carbon footprint.

Since 2019, 246 home efficiency projects, including solar and retrofits, have been financed through the programs. Since 2021, an impressive 430 free home energy assessments have also been provided.

Ted Parker looks forward to substantial energy savings and increased comfort next winter in his 50-year-old home in Lower Economy. Thanks to the Cozy Colchester program, this past March he was able to install a heat pump — a replacement for his wood stove and costly backup electric baseboard heaters. And at age 78, Parker says hauling wood for the stove had also gotten to be too much for him.

“We’d been looking at heat pumps for years,” he says. “The loan with Cozy Colchester helped.”

Parker has now turned his attention to insulating part of his home with spray foam. With the help of Cozy Colchester he expects to save more than $600 on the cost of the project.

“We’ve had a lot of positive feedback,” says Burris. “People appreciate that the program is connected to the municipal government because it’s where they pay their taxes and, overall, they have trust in their local government.”

The Climate Story Network is an initiative of Climate Focus, a non-profit organization dedicated to covering stories about community-driven climate solutions.