The United Church of Canada is at the forefront of making changes to their operations - mostly how they heat and light the buildings they own - that are helping their bottomline and the planet. They are making renovations, like that at the Grace United Church in downtown Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, built in 1920 and using oil furnaces up until the winter of 2022, but now using heat pumps instead. This change has provided not only a reliable source of heat but also reduced humidity which has, according to the church’s music director, improved the sound of the church organ.
This is not a one off for the United Church according to this article: “United Churches across Canada have been cutting carbon with thoughtful renovations since 2018, reducing annual emissions by 824 metric tonnes of CO2 overall, equivalent to removing 252 cars from the road every single year or leaving 351,029 litres of gasoline unburned.”
Renovations are funded “by Faithful Footprints, a funding stream created by the United Church of Canada and administered by the third-party organization Faith and the Common Good. Through it, each United Church congregation can apply for up to $30,000 toward carbon-cutting infrastructural upgrades, whether it be a church, office space or health centre.”
Programs like this have great potential for reducing emissions. For example in Canada “[F]aith communities are the second-largest property holders in Canada, surpassed only by the federal government. Renovating their 27,000 buildings to keep them operational and efficient is an enormous opportunity to reduce Canada’s carbon emissions in the near and long term, whether those buildings remain churches or find new life as community centres or apartment buildings.”
If you are a member of a congregation how about asking if your faith community has any interest in starting a program like Faithful Footprints?