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Welcome to summer but don’t put your feet up for too long. There are lots of opportunities coming up! Read on for information about services, training, and awards – and even a CEA job – you might want to pursue this month. And there’s no better time of year to talk solar. Shine on!
There’s no need to keep all this great info to yourself. Forward this newsletter to a friend or colleague and invite them to subscribe.
Opportunities - Here to help with LGCAP
- Climate and Energy Action Awards nomination deadline
- Climate preparedness in small communities with CoNext
- CleanBC review
- We are hiring
CEA News - Making home energy retrofits easy
- CEA hosts its Annual General Meeting (announcement of new board)
- Solar showcase in northeastern BC
- Encouraging local leadership on climate action
- Part of the energy in Alberta
| | | | | | | | | | Here to help with LGCAP
Local governments and Modern Treaty Nations have until the end of this month to submit their annual Local Government Climate Action Program (LGCAP) reports to the Province. Need help? Read on.
CEA staff in Planning and Research (pictured above) have outlined a variety of services to help communities produce their LGCAP reports. They can also plan and implement local initiatives that will enhance the local impact of LGCAP funds. All of these CEA services qualify as LGCAP-eligible expenses.
| | | | Currently, communities with a population of 10,000 or more are required to report annually on their GHG emissions and local efforts to reduce them. Next year, communities of 5,000 will also be required to report—and should already be starting to collect and manage their energy and emissions data.
If this is you, get in touch to see how CEA can help.
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Climate and Energy Action Awards nomination deadline
Municipalities, regional districts, and Indigenous communities in BC have until Monday, July 14, 2025 to submit their best ideas for CEA’s annual awards program.
Check our website for more info on how to apply, the criteria, and eligibility.
All of the eligible nominations will be profiled in next month’s newsletter, with the winners announced in September at the Union of BC Municipalities convention in Victoria.
Thank you to the organizations who make the Climate & Energy Action Awards possible: the Province of BC, BC Hydro, FortisBC, Real Estate Foundation of BC, Vancity, and the Union of BC Municipalities.
| | | | | | | | Climate preparedness in small communities with CoNext
Representatives of small, rural, and remote communities often feel left out of climate conversations or behind in their preparedness for local climate impacts. If that’s you, consider the CoNext Climate Preparedness Hub, a free, five-month training program to support small communities that are in the early stages of climate planning.
Applications are now being accepted until July 18, 2025.
CoNext is a collaborative effort led by a diverse team of organizations, including CEA and the Fraser Basin Council, and is funded by Natural Resources Canada’s Climate Change Adaptation Program.
| | | | | | CleanBC review
CEA is facilitating opportunities for representatives of BC local governments who are part of CEA’s peer networks to provide input into the review of CleanBC that the Province has initiated. Multiple zoom sessions are planned:
July 9, 2025 – working groups on buildings, transportation, and overarching themes July 10, 2025 – special meeting of the Northern BC Climate Action Network (NorthCAN)
For more information about these upcoming sessions, contact peernetworks@communityenergy.ca
| | | | | | We are hiring
Join our team as a Project Coordinator providing administrative and financial support to projects across the organization. You will assist project managers from inception to closure, working on timelines, budgets, contracts, reporting, and other tasks.
Apply by Friday, July 4, 2025 at 11:59 p.m. PT
| | | | | | | | | | | | Making home energy retrofits easy
“Retrofit Assist is the best. We are part of all the different rebate programs, and nothing even comes remotely close to how great that program is, hands down. It should be the base model for delivering all rebates across the province.”
Thoe words aren’t generated from AI, they’re from an actual contractor, Micah Pilipishen, co-owner of Micah's Plumbing, Heating and Cooling in Nelson, who is a Retrofit Assist authorized contractor and supports homeowners enrolled in the Rossland and East Kootenay program to upgrade the mechanical systems in their homes. Retrofit Assist is a program delivered by CEA that provides personalized support for home energy retrofits and connects homeowners and contractors to each other and to rebate programs.
Retrofit Assist operates in Whistler, Squamish, Rossland, Kamloops, the East Kootenay, and has just expanded to Vernon in partnership with the City of Vernon.
Other contractors also see the value of Retrofit Assist. In Whistler, a local Retrofit Assist-authorized contractor has been showcasing the program on his YouTube channel.
| | | | CEA hosts its Annual General Meeting
A critical event on the annual CEA calendar is the annual general meeting, which included a presentation on the 2024 Annual Report and the election of a new Board of Directors.
Annual Report highlights projects and outreach
- Connecting more than 1,100 people from 140 communities so they can share information and build capacity for local climate action.
- Supporting hundreds of homeowners to retrofit their homes to be more energy-efficient and comfortable.
- Facilitating a unique collaboration involving First Nations, local governments, and builders to improve hundreds of homes in northwestern BC.
- Advancing EV charging projects in rural parts of BC, Alberta, and Ontario.
These are just some of the 157 projects undertaken by CEA staff and featured in CEA’s Annual Report 2024. There’s no better source about CEA, our structure, what we do, who we are, and how our work is funded. | | | | New board of directors
CEA members have elected 11 individuals to serve on the Board of Directors in 2025 and contribute to the governance and strategic development of CEA. Five of the Directors are returning: John Madden (the new chair of the Board), Allison Ashcroft, Derek de Candole, Paul Murray, and Stephen Roddick. Six are new: Denise Chang-Yen, Glen Cheetham, Brodie Guy, Cecilia Jaques, Gordon Lambert, and Sepideh Rezania.
Learn more about the Board of Directors and their wide range of experiences with communities, energy, and climate action!
Thank you to the outgoing members of the Board of Directors: Rik Logtenberg, Anna Mathewson, Melanie McCollum, Scott Sinclair, Robyn Wark, and Stephanie Yen. Together, they contributed dozens of years to the governance of CEA and oversaw years of significant growth and development. | | | | | | Solar showcase in northeastern BC
A region of BC known for its long, dark, and cold winters is also a hotbed for community solar. Participants in a solar tour of northeastern BC communities presented by CEA have now not only seen multiple examples, they’ve learned first-hand from local officials how to implement them and maximize the local benefits.
Tour participants included representatives from First Nations communities, local governments, funding organizations, and non-profits, as well as solar installers. Together, they travelled 1100km by bus from Prince George, stopping in the Saulteau First Nation, Hudson’s Hope, Fort St. John, Dawson Creek, and Mackenzie (pictured above), before completing the two-day excursion back in Prince George. At each site, local officials involved with each community solar installation shared their experiences, learnings, and advice. While each project was of a different size, age, and purpose, all now provide multiple benefits for the community: cost savings, energy security, capacity-building, and even local pride.
The goal was to inspire more community-based solar projects and the post-tour survey indicated that everyone involved with the tour was now likely or very likely to explore solar options for their own communities. CEA is producing a variety of materials from the solar tour so that other communities can learn from and apply the experiences of these communities in northern BC.
The Northeast Solar Tour was made possible by funding from BC Hydro, Gott Energy, and Northern Development Initiative Trust.
| | | | | | Encouraging local leadership on climate action
Maintaining momentum for climate initiatives and integrating climate goals with other community priorities often require the commitment of senior local government staff. CEA staff Maya Chorobik and Josie Howitt joined with Laurel Sabur of Accelerating Community Energy Transformation (ACET) at the Local Government Management Association convention last month in Kelowna where they interacted with local government staff on how collaborating across internal departments and with external partners can help break through barriers and lead to positive local impacts.
Participants in the session gained practical insights on how their leadership can support transformative, inclusive, and sustainable climate action.
Maya also joined with colleagues from the BC Climate Action Secretariat last month in a session for the Planning Institute of BC on “Planning for resilience in the face of climate change.”
| | | | | | Part of the energy in Alberta
Earlier this spring, a number of CEA staff attended Alberta Ecotrust's Environmental Gathering in Calgary, joining hundreds from non-profits, government, the building industry, energy, academia, and Indigenous and local communities.
Maya Chorobik (left), Kate Letizia (center-left) and Danielle Wiess (not pictured) shared CEA's proven strategies for engaging municipalities and fostering genuine, cross-sector collaboration. Trevor Chow-Fraser (center-right) and CEO Megan Lohmann (right) joined in to expand our connections throughout the conference. Additionally, Kate lent her expertise to two panels exploring the impact of AI on environmental and climate planning. Drawing partly on her recent experience with scaling-up local government climate planning, the panelists critically examined the opportunities and risks of AI in the environmental sector.
| | | | Our Commitment to Truth and Reconciliation
The Community Energy Association commits to the principles of Truth and Reconciliation. As an organization, we support the Calls to Action released by the
Truth and Reconciliation Commision of Canada
and recognize the importance of the self determination of Indigenous Peoples as articulated in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. | | Thank you for subscribing to the CEA Newsletter, our monthly update on local climate and energy initiatives connected to the Community Energy Association. No longer interested? You can easily unsubscribe or update your preferences | | | | | |
