2020 Reflections: Individual actions can add up to something big
Well this has certainly been quite a year! Trish and I began our journey together in the spring of 2020. And I’m sure that that time in our lives will be etched in everyone’s memory - a time when going to parks was banned, a time when we all suddenly felt so isolated from each other and then, as we watched the infection rates rise, felt our global interconnectedness more acutely.
When Trish approached me with the idea for Goldfinch I initially thought that she was a bit crazy - starting a business in the middle of a pandemic! While all our kids were at home!!! But it actually turned out to be such a GREAT time to start. We found people were more willing to give us their time and so in just a few weeks we gathered knowledge, made connections and formulated a business concept that we then tested out throughout the summer.
The idea for Goldfinch came from Trish’s very own experience in the middle of a cold winter night when her furnace broke and she started talking to HVAC installers about alternatives to gas. She found their reactions dismissive at best. So while the pandemic forced many of us into uncomfortable shifts in our life - working from home, schooling our kids at home, to name a few, it also forced her (and I) to begin helping climate concerned homeowners reduce their emissions.
Despite the fact that the pandemic has occupied much of our minds this year and much of the media, it has been a monumental year for clean technologies.
In just a few weeks, the testing standard for cold climate heat pumps (developed by CSA) will will be published (they are in the final stages of the review period). Helping homeowners with the assurance that their heat pump will keep them warm, even on the coldest of winter nights.
Further west, in Vancouver, we see exciting support and incentives offered by the province, gas utilities and cities in a collaborative fashion. Did you know that a Vancouver homeowner can receive $9,000 back for installing a heat pump in their home?!? That’s no small potatoes as most installations of a 2,000 square foot home cost between $10,000 - $15,000 (talk with us if you’d like a more refined estimate for your home!)
And to further boost the collective confidence that we all need to be doing something about our home emissions, the federal government is putting precious economic recovery funds towards a program that will help reduce emissions and improve energy efficiency. Promising one million free home energy audits and up to $5,000 worth of rebates, we look forward to seeing high uptake from homeowners in the Toronto area.
On a local level, we’ve seen a huge increase in the ability of community based groups to both organize and mobilize resources. Across the city concerned neighbours in Harbord Village, The Pocket and Toronto’s East End (and more) are coming together on an often weekly basis to talk about climate and what they can do about it. Many of them have landed on a Net Zero or Energy Efficiency program - seeing that we can (and should) take action close to home.
While the pandemic has been a royal upheaval to our lives and I know I’m not alone with my pandemic fatigue, it has taught us both that we are all connected and that our individual actions matter. I need to say that again, what each of us does matters! So however you spend your holidays (and we are fairly certain it’s at home!), our holiday wish is that Canadians en masse begin to open our eyes to the importance of reducing our emissions at home, and the next time someone’s furnace breaks (or their AC breaks or they undergo a major renovation that touches on mechanicals), they seize the opportunity to explore alternatives to gas and slash their emissions.
Trish and Sarah making good things happen since May 2020