Name
Lightning Rounds
Date & Time
Tuesday, June 10, 2025, 2:55 PM - 3:35 PM
Speakers
Tanya Doran, Stantec Consulting
Melanie Johnston, EnviroCentre
Zac Jolliffe, VCT Group
Donovan Woollard, OPEN Technologies
Tanya Doran Melanie Johnston Zac Jolliffe Donovan Woollard
Description
  1. Designing Cost-Effective Net Zero Buildings
    This session explores innovative design strategies and practical solutions for achieving net zero buildings. It will focus on balancing sustainability, performance, and cost-effectiveness in both new construction and retrofit projects.
    Tanya Doran, Stantec Consulting
     
  2. Building an Open-Source Social Housing Database: Unlocking Retrofit Potential
    This session explores EnviroCentre’s development of a regional social housing database in Eastern Ontario, in partnership with the Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) and the Building Decarbonization Alliance. The tool is designed to support mass retrofit planning, demand aggregation, retrofit project planning and social housing asset management.
    Melanie Johnston, EnviroCentre
     
  3. Making the Case for Solar: Understanding the Ontario Landscape
    This session will provide a practical overview of solar implementation in Ontario, beginning with background on VCT’s approach and project experience. It will clarify the key differences between net metering and load displacement, outline current incentive programs, and explore how to evaluate the business case for solar investments. The discussion will be grounded in real-world considerations relevant to both policy and project development.
    Zac Jolliffe, VCT Group
     
  4. From Innovation to Impact: Unlocking System Change in Retrofit Services
    Smart retrofit planning is critical to project success but is often a core barrier to getting projects off the ground. Even with the growing number of attractive financing options for deep retrofits, the cost and complexity of submission requirements directly reduces the number of buildings pursuing them (particularly in the affordable housing sector). This presentation will discuss the role that tech-enabled virtual tools can play in streamlining the decarbonization planning process, and the crucial role that system actors can play in supporting their adoption.
    Donovan Woollard, OPEN Technologies