Research & Development
Scaling deep retrofits through evidence and action
Scaling deep retrofits across Atlantic Canada requires a stronger evidence base. Important gaps remain in what we know about the region’s buildings and the pathways that can move projects from planning to implementation. Closing these gaps is essential to making better decisions and enabling action at scale.
ReCover’s Research & Development team is focused on delivering evidence-based research and advancing the decision-support tools needed to inform real-world planning, policy, and investment decisions.
Together, this work gives building owners, governments, industry, and other partners a stronger foundation for prioritizing action and scaling deep retrofits across the region.
Build Understanding
Understanding Atlantic Canada’s buildings, retrofit opportunities, and the factors that shape them is essential to making better deep retrofit decisions across the region.
Through applied research and analysis, ReCover works to close critical data and knowledge gaps and strengthen the evidence available for deep retrofit decision-making. We turn that evidence into accessible insights that help building owners, governments, industry, and other partners make informed decisions and advance deep retrofits.
Data Investigation
Data can reveal important patterns about the building stock. ReCover consolidates and analyzes available data to build a clearer picture of the factors shaping deep retrofit opportunities across Atlantic Canada. Bringing data sources together helps us identify patterns, uncover gaps in what is known, and generate insights that can inform future research, planning, and investment decisions.
This work helps make complex information easier to understand and strengthens the evidence base for deep retrofit decision-making.
Knowledge Sharing
Research creates the greatest value when it can be understood and used. ReCover translates findings, insights, and evidence from our research into practical, accessible resources that support deep retrofit decision-making.
By sharing what we learn through reports, roadmaps, case studies, presentations, and other resources, we help bridge the gap between research and practice and make deep retrofit knowledge easier to apply in real-world contexts.
Featured Research
Atlantic Canada Deep Retrofit Roadmap
The Atlantic Canada Deep Retrofit Roadmap is a two-part body of research that establishes the first retrofit planning framework for Atlantic Canada’s building stock. It includes two comprehensive reports: one focused on Part 3 commercial and institutional buildings, and the other on Part 9 residential buildings.
Drawing on building stock analysis, energy modelling, and financial modelling, the two reports identify region-specific priority building archetypes, examine the barriers and opportunities affecting deep retrofit adoption, and set out pathways for scaling action across the region.
The Roadmap provides governments, utilities, building owners, industry, and other decision-makers with evidence to inform policy, programs, investment, and long-term planning for deep retrofits.
Coming Soon
Socioeconomic Study
Scaling deep retrofits across Atlantic Canada will have impacts that extend beyond building performance and energy use. Understanding and quantifying those wider effects is important to planning for growth in the sector and making informed decisions about future investment.
ReCover’s Socioeconomic Study models how scaling deep retrofits could affect energy demand, household energy costs, workforce needs, health and safety, and other socioeconomic outcomes across the region through 2080.
The dynamic model and study will provide governments, industry, communities, and other decision-makers with a broader evidence base for considering how deep retrofits are planned, supported, and scaled over time.
Enable Action
Insights alone don’t move deep retrofits forward. Turning them into action requires practical tools that help turn evidence into practical solutions.
Drawing on ReCover’s research, we develop digital tools that make information easier to access and apply in deep retrofit planning and implementation. These tools bring evidence into real-world decision-making and help users move projects forward.
Open-Source Tools
Building Stock Explorer
Explore Atlantic Canada’s largest building stock database through interactive maps, charts, and dashboards. The foundational evergreen database brings together more than one million building points from over 40 datasets to make regional building information easier to access.
Retrofit Resource Navigator
Find deep retrofit resources, templates, reports, and tools in one place. AI-powered search helps users quickly locate information relevant to their needs.
Retrofit Case Study Navigator
Search real-world deep retrofit case studies and find examples relevant to your building, project, or area of interest.
Coming Soon
ReCover is continuing to develop digital tools that support deep retrofit planning, feasibility, and decision-making.
Panelization Tool
Supports early-stage exploration of prefabricated building-envelope panel solutions for deep retrofit projects.
Developed in collaboration with the Carleton Immersive Media Studio (CIMS) at Carleton University.
Building Attributes Tool
Brings together building and spatial data to support early-stage building characterization and help identify retrofit opportunities more efficiently.
Developed in collaboration with the Applied Geomatics Research Group (AGRG) at Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC).