The Stewardship of the Environment Committee is a volunteer-led body of the Anglican Diocese of Montréal (covering some 75 congregations (each with a church building and sometimes a church hall) organized into some 35-40 self-supporting parishes with full- or part-time clergy).

Our priorities are entirely practical; we believe that our members, and society at large, is convinced of the need to act, and we are going to try to help our congregations exercise leadership in action. Our mandate, approaches and starting points are outlined on our web page at https://www.montreal.anglican.ca/stewardshipoftheenvironment.

Our first discovery when we evaluated our goals and started planning anew in January, 2021 was that most of what we needed was already available through the Green Churches Network. So rather than re-invent the wheel, our general approach will be:

1. Get a list of strategic congregations and buildings from the diocesan leadership
2. Invite them each into a process of energy-use assessment (starting with measures of heat loss through thermal imaging)
3. Encourage each of them to form their own Green Team, including membership in the Green Churches Network
4. Try to establish partnership with one or more university and CEGEP teams to benchmark buildings, plan for end-of-life of heating equipment, assess options for retrofits (including long-term funding), and identify supportive grants
5. Publicize case studies of specific buildings, so that other congregations learn what works and what doesn’t
6. Encourage congregational members to implement similar measures for their own homes.

Our effectiveness as a committee will be measured by the change in GHG emissions of our total building footprint (adjusted for changes in attendance, whether up or down). No more guilt-trips; no more tokenism; we will be paying attention to the areas of our greatest pollution which can now be converted at a reasonable cost; we will try to implement proven technology early in the change cycle rather than as reluctant laggards!

We also hope to encourage clergy and members to switch to electric cars and public transport, including trying to find ways to subsidize the up-front cost of electric cars from the later savings in operational costs.