Learn How at the 15^th Annual North Grenville Sustainability Fair

If you’re looking for more information and options for how to make your home more efficient, more environmentally friendly and how to reduce your operating costs, you’re in luck.  On Sunday May 5^th the 15^th Annual North Grenville Sustainability Fair will have a range of local experts and businesses that are knowledgeable and ready to assist.  The Sustainability Fair will be held at the North Grenville Municipal Centre runs from 10am to 3pm and attendance is free.

The “Greening Your Home” section of the fair will include specialists in energy assessment.  They can get you started on your journey with an initial review and report on the state of your home.  They can provide advice on various options for improvement, and assistance with administration to leverage various government and utility incentive programs.

Considerations for making your home more efficient should start with your home’s outer shell, addressing airtightness, insulation, windows and window treatments.  Meet contractors doing deep energy retrofits, or designing and building Net Zero Energy homes, or even extremely efficient Passive House homes.  Have discussions about your home’s unique circumstances and get ideas for how you might be able to reduce your heating and cooling needs and costs while improving comfort.  You’ll find expertise to help you investigate approaches from simple to complex.

Uptake in heat pumps has been very significant in recent years.  They are a very important component for decarbonisation.  Find out from local contractors how they work under our coldest conditions, and how the wide range of types and configurations enable them to replace or augment existing fossil-fuel heating systems in our homes.  Learn about how they can be up to 400% efficient, and can provide homeowners with a good business case for transitioning off carbon.

Making your own power is yet another way to decarbonize.  The Fair will have experts in solar energy generation as well as battery storage solutions.  Talk with them about the feasibility of making clean electricity at home, and how to make your home more resilient in outages.  Explore the various new programs available with utilities to account for your energy generation and consumption that can help reduce your overall costs.  Find out how you might be able to connect your EV into the whole-house energy management picture, and how making your own energy can make an EV even more affordable.

If you are interested in learning more about greening your home and the incentive programs to support you doing it, there will be a presentation at 11:15am.  The federal Greener Homes program has recently been shut down, but it is being revised with emphasis on assistance for lower-income households.  Find out from Stephen Magneron – a leading energy advisor – the latest news about this and other incentive programs.

Come to the Sustainability Fair on Sunday May 5^th to discover how to make your home more comfortable, efficient and sustainable, by meeting with local and regional experts in the Fair’s Greening Your Home section.