As defined in Scotiabank’s Net-Zero Pathways Report (released March 2022), Scotiabank is committed to reducing home energy emissions through collaborations to improve home emissions data capture and quality and to increase homeowner awareness and adoption of energy-efficiencies. Today, we are pleased to announce our partnership with Lightspark Software Inc to roll out the Energy Efficiency Concierge platform through a pilot in Calgary and Edmonton. In addition to helping homeowners connect with energy-saving home retrofits and reduce their carbon footprint, the Lightspark Energy Concierge will also provide critical emissions data collection to help financial institutions, cities and utilities address emissions-reduction barriers. 

Lightspark provided us with a wealth of data that helped us understand the program design options, the total greenhouse gas emissions and energy we could potentially reduce, options for grants and loans we could use to hit those targets, and providing an energy equity lens for assessing options. This work also lays the data foundation for a “virtual” digital home energy audit tool to support our planned home energy retrofit program here in London.”

Lightspark’s program design work for the CIty of Kingston gave critical insights to determining the very hot, hot and warm homes to target for carbon reduction. Using machine learning and data modeling, Lightspark has taken this kind of work to the next level.

Lightspark’s data solutions can give us a never-before- seen level of clarity on the energy and GHG emissions intensity of our building stock. In addition, their consumer platform shows tremendous potential to simplify energy efficiency decision making for homeowners, which we see as one of the biggest challenges in reaching our municipal housing retrofit targets.

The work completed by Lightspark has contributed not only key quantitative information, but accompanying visuals allowing for easier understanding and communication to decision-makers. By analyzing real data we can provide comprehensive justifications for program development and focus.

Clean Air Partnership was pleased to work with Lightspark to bring their very practical and usable housing energy analysis expertise and software to a cohort of 7 Ontario municipalities for their residential energy efficiency retrofit market analysis and program design. Better enabling Canadians to act on their carbon reduction opportunities is critical to following through on our climate commitments while advancing the energy efficiency economic development opportunity. Lightspark helps make that a reality.

One of the challenges we have as a utility offering energy efficiency programs is getting access to the best possible data. Lightspark’ approach should help create a more unified data model, and that will be a positive step for the energy efficiency industry in Canada, and globally.

Lightspark’s platform gets at the heart of the main barrier to effective energy efficiency program design, delivery and customer engagement. Across Canada, the industry has invested heavily is digital infrastructure, and yet we continue to work with disparate data sources. Developing a digital ecosystem that effectively and accurately unifies information to remove this barrier will add significant value to all stakeholders, most importantly end-use customers.

By incorporating machine learning and other offerings into their platform, Lightspark offers a promising approach to accelerating retrofits in the existing housing stock. We know that a map-based approach, linking it both to strategic planning and directly to consumers could potentially be more effective in targeting demographic segments by building type.

Every municipality and climate researcher needs to take a look at this tool. Lightspark has created an extremely timely and useful tool to map carbon in residential areas. As cities transition to Net Zero, they will need to provide user-friendly tools that help citizens take action to reduce their carbon footprint. The Lightspark Platform shows us where our carbon intensity is in the city and where we can take clear actions to reduce it. Every municipality and climate researcher needs to take a look at this tool.