$5 Million Prize Category Winner: Town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia

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Success Stories

Read about how Energize Bridgewater is positively impacting locals:

Energize Bridgewater: Illuminating the Path to a New Energy Economy

For more information, visit: Energize Bridgewater.

Final Proposal

Executive Summary
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"By prioritizing our most vulnerable residents, we are creating positive outcomes for the entire community… The Smart Cities Challenge is allowing us as a community to focus on what the energy system of the future looks like in this community, in a rural context and to design that future in a way that we would otherwise not have access to."

– Leon de Vreede, Sustainability Planner, Town of Bridgewater
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Challenge Statement

Our community will lift its residents out of energy poverty, starting by reducing the energy poverty rate by 20% by 2025.^{Footnote 1}
Summary

Energy poverty is having a profound and debilitating impact on our community. It systematically strips many of our residents of their dignity and damages their physical and mental well-being.

Yet, the real, lasting, and practical solutions to this problem are so close at hand that we can already see them emerging. Our community is planning for a new kind of energy economy - one where energy services are universally available and affordable, clean, efficient, and secure. We are ready for a massive shift toward a smart energy economy…one that leaves no family behind. We are also ready to show Atlantic Canada, and the nation, how it can be done.

With $5 million in Smart Cities funding, our town will install sophisticated energy monitoring and communications equipment in over 1,000 low-income homes, develop a self-funding energy retrofit financing program, improve its transportation systems, and increase local clean tech sector training and literacy. It will allow our community partners to increase their capacity to exchange knowledge and work more efficiently and effectively to reduce, and ultimately end, energy poverty in our community.

Every dime will be used, because the need is so great.