These realities, coupled with the fact that government incentives for environmental retrofits are surprisingly hard to find, led St. Paul’s innovator Bailey Jacobs to develop the idea behind her startup: Green2Green. The premise is to help homeowners have more easily accessible information to empower them to make informed, sustainable building decisions.
While Bailey first became interested in this topic during a previous schoolterm, the project became very personal last October, after a bad fire at her family’s Cambridge home.
Bailey hopes that by the end of term, Green2Green will be prototyping and testing a mobile application that contractors and homeowners can use.
In the meantime, Bailey was selected to be a student delegate at the November COP22 UN Climate Change Conference in Morocco. Not only is she excited about being in the room where important decisions are made, but she also brought a list of organizations to meet with. This list includes regional governments that are strong role models for promoting environmental incentives for home renovations.
The residential sector is one of Canada’s biggest sources of carbon emissions. Bailey says, “If we can scale back residential emissions through small, smart decisions, we can potentially hit the national goal we were talking about at COPP.”
Bailey was attracted to GreenHouse because of its social innovation focus.
"Having 24-hour support from peers and coaches has been a great base for me. Knowing others are going through the same strains and stages of their projects helps me get through long days. GreenHouse staff have been hugely supportive and have expanded my networks exponentially.”
- by Susan Fish