Seven years ago, in the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest on the Central Coast of British Columbia, we began our first community-wide home energy retrofit project with the Haíłzaqv Nation. Since then, Ecotrust Canada’s Community Energy program has grown its team and partnerships in this critical work — to advance energy justice and climate resilience in homes in Indigenous communities.
Before heat pumps were in the headlines or advertised on highway signs, Graham Anderson, our Director of Community Energy, was travelling the Interior of BC in St’át’imc territory, where he met an Elder from a remote Indigenous community. The Elder was on his way to Lillooet to pay his BC Hydro bill, shockingly $1,000 for only two months of electricity use. While this region has the most extreme temperature fluctuations in the province, this story isn’t uncommon. Rural and remote Indigenous communities in BC often face energy costs three times the Canadian household average. Why? Limited access to affordable energy sources or grid electricity, and homes with outdated, energy-intensive heating systems and poor insulation.
In ‘Na̱mǥis First Nation, on northern Vancouver Island, most houses on reserve were built between the 1960s and 1990s and are primarily heated by old, inefficient electric baseboard heaters. Diana Shaughnessy, the Housing Manager for ‘Na̱mǥis First Nation, said the heat loss is terrible. In 2020, ‘Na̱mǥis First Nation and Ecotrust Canada’s Energy team connected during a visit to the North Island, where they were investigating high heating costs. Since then, we have been working together to improve heating and cooling in homes across the community by installing heat pumps, which can significantly reduce costs and add affordable air-conditioning to homes, an increasingly necessary and desired function amidst our changing climate.
“The objective is to get a heat pump in each home that is occupied on reserve,” Diana said.
They’re on track to achieving the goal of having 218 homes with heat pumps, plus eight band-owned homes off reserve. As of October 2024, ‘Na̱mǥis First Nation has installed 77 heat pumps with Elder’s homes prioritized in the first wave of retrofit funding. None of the community members have had to contribute toward the cost of a heat pump or retrofit. The partnership between Ecotrust Canada, Coastal Heat Pumps, and ‘Na̱mǥis First Nation has been working hard to make sure it stays that way.
“For the most part, it’s been positive, especially for the Elders on a pension and really low income,” Diana said. The one challenge has been getting contractors to service the new systems in their remote community, and Coastal Heat Pumps has been working hard to remedy that.
In our mission to achieve energy security for all, Ecotrust Canada researches, collaborates, and seeks solutions with communities on retrofitting homes with cost-effective, efficient technologies.
“We’ve made so many connections with communities who are interested in making upgrades to their homes through clean energy and Indigenous housing networks, which has resulted in a natural growth of projects over the last five years,” said Phil Climie, Retrofits Program Manager.
Once we partner with a community, we fundraise to help them achieve their community goals. When the funding is available, we work with the band staff and leadership who identify homes that will receive priority. Then, we work with the Nation to help manage the contractors (electricians, HVAC technicians, energy advisors, etc.).
Phil was drawn to this work after taking a month to kayak the North and Central Coast of BC, where he spent time on the Koeye River estuary in Haíɫzaqv Nation territory. He volunteered with the Haíɫzaqv youth, science, and cultural camp program and was inspired to see the harmonious integration between people and the environment. Seeing the immense benefits of this interconnected work, he went back to university to get a master’s in Indigenous community planning. During his studies, he reached out to Ecotrust Canada to see if he could work with us through a student internship. We brought him on board.
That summer, he reviewed the early stages of the Haíɫzaqv heat pump pilot project, where 37 mini-split ductless heat pumps were installed. That project is wrapping up this year with over 300 homes retrofitted, saving homeowners thousands in heating bills, and eliminating over 1,000 tonnes of harmful greenhouse gases each year.
Seven years into this work, we have supported community-wide retrofit programs for the Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) Nation, Quatsino First Nation, ‘Na̱mǥis First Nation, Hupačasath First Nation, and more recently, Kwakiutl First Nation as well as two St’át’imc communities, T’it’q’et and Xaxli’p. While most of our partners are on the coast, the latter is in Interior BC, where the source of the issue was identified many years ago. St’át’imc Territory is drier and sunnier than the coast, with around 500 hours of more sun each year.
“We’ve been doing a lot of research around solar energy because it makes much more sense there,” Phil said.
The Energy team is close to completing plans with the Xaxli’p and T’it’q’et communities in St’át’imc territory. In July, the team visited to engage residents in discussions about the safety, comfort, and affordability of their home energy systems.
“That’s the most crucial part of the planning phase, which is to be confident that the community understands what is going on, is supportive of the work, and if so, contributes to the strategy around it. We bring a lot of helpful knowledge about energy efficiency, but they’re the ones who know their homes best,” he said.
While building community trust is critical to our work, we also navigate other challenges these projects face — the cyclical and highly administrative process of funding the work. For example, achieving community goals, like getting heat pumps in every home, often requires fundraising in the millions of dollars from dozens of different funding programs, each with its own application, eligibility, and reporting requirements. That’s a lot of extra paperwork for Housing Managers who already shoulder the responsibilities of addressing housing shortages, new housing developments, maintaining the existing housing stock, supporting the well-being of their community, and much more.
“In my experience of being a Housing Manager, Ecotrust Canada just gets it, and they treat us with a lot of respect and dignity and provide that flexibility where they can step in and help. The services that they’ve provided are filling in the gaps. As a Housing Manager on reserve, it’s a really challenging job. So, to have a team involved in a project and able to support with federal funding programs is phenomenal,” said Diana Shaughnessy from ‘Na̱mǥis First Nation.
The caring and dedicated work of community leaders like Diana inspires our team to try to match their passion. To date, we have fundraised well over $8 million and installed over 500 heat pumps, along with other housing upgrades, in Indigenous communities. Over 15 years, we estimate that these retrofits will reduce homeowner energy bills by up to $12 million and eliminate nearly 19,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.