Do you want to make your church building a safer and more hospitable space for worship and fellowship? Are drafty windows and leaking taps drawing time and money away from mission and outreach? Does your parish need support in reducing ecological footprints and improving sustainability? If you answered yes to any of the above, then Creation Matters has an affordable and effective program to help get you started.
Creation Matters, the environmental working group of the Anglican Church of Canada, is partnering with Greening Sacred Spaces, a service offered through Faith & the Common Good, to offer Green Building Audits. These audits help faith communities reduce environmental impact and find simple, cost-effective measures to significantly improve building sustainability. Changes made as a result of green audits often have quick return on investment given savings on heating, electricity, and water usage.
The Green Building Audit is competitively priced on a sliding scale, beginning at $800 and moving up with the size and complexity of the building in question. The Subsidized Green Building Audit program makes this service more accessible to parishes. Successful applicants will receive grants for up to two-thirds of the cost of a Green Building Audit, to a maximum of $1,000 based on building size.
Parishes selected must agree to host a public information seminar with Greening Sacred Spaces on energy efficiency by the end of 2014. Additionally, parishes selected for grants must agree to provide one year’s worth of energy consumption data to Greening Sacred Spaces. This data helps parishes measure performance improvements year over year and track energy consumption as well as costs.
To apply for this program, please complete the attached Green Building Audit Support Application Form, and submit it to Greening Sacred Spaces by June 30, 2014. Recipients will be selected by July 9, 2014 and audits scheduled for the fall of 2014.The number of grants awarded depends on the number of applications received and the size of buildings involved.
If you have any questions about this program or the application, please contact Stephen Collette at [email protected] or (705) 652 5159.
Faith and the Common Good is an interfaith organization that helps faith communities make connections between their faith and care for the environment. Greening Sacred Spaces is the main program that Faith and the Common Good uses to help communities make environmental changes in their place of worship.
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