Electrifying Concordia: A Living Lab on Sustainable and Community-Driven Decarbonization

Summary

Concordia University is working toward a fully electrified and decarbonized campus by 2040, following its ambitious Sustainability Action Plan and PLAN/NET ZERØ programs. Achieving these sustainability targets will require the ongoing commitment of the entire Concordia community—faculty, students, administrators, and campus organizations. It’s essential that these groups collaborate on both technological innovations and changes in behavior to make these goals a reality.

To meet this challenge this project will engage the Concordia community in hands-on research and implementation of decarbonization solutions. The initiative will unite researchers from various disciplines with campus stakeholders to develop and test new approaches for electrifying and decarbonizing the campus.

This Living Lab will involve ongoing consultation and engagement with campus groups to ensure that solutions reflect community needs and priorities. By working together, the project aims to create a resilient, low-carbon campus that can serve as a model for other institutions and communities looking to tackle sustainability challenges.

Key details

Principal investigator	Damon Matthews, Concordia University
Co-principal investigators	Alexandra Lesnikowski, Concordia University Adriane MacDonald, Concordia University Marc-Antoni Goulet, Concordia University Govind Gopakumar, Concordia University
Areas of Research	Modelling and Design Technologies, Building and Building Envelope Technologies, Life-cycle analysis of building energy systems, Public Policy and Governance of Energy or Energy-related Technologies, Knowledge Mobilization of Decarbonization and Electrification Processes, Living Lab Model for Community-led Research Design
Non-academic partners	Concordia Office of the Provost, Concordia Facilities Management and PLAN/NET ZERO, Concordia Office of Sustainability, Shift Centre for Social Transformation, Office of Indigenous Directions, Concordia Climate Emergency Committee, Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability and Loyola Sustainability Research Center, Future Earth Canada, Sustainability in the Digital Age, Cultivaction Solidarity Cooperative, Visualization Studio

Terms and conditions

Publications:

P. M. Forster et al., “Indicators of Global Climate Change 2024: annual update of key indicators of the state of the climate system and human influence,” Earth Syst. Sci. Data, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 2641–2680, June 2025, doi: 10.5194/essd-17-2641-2025.

F. J. Bohn et al., “Reviews and syntheses: Current perspectives on biosphere research 2024–2025 – eight findings from ecology, sociology, and economics,” Biogeosciences, vol. 22, no. 10, pp. 2425–2460, May 2025, doi: 10.5194/bg-22-2425-2025.

R. C. Evans and H. D. Matthews, “The effectiveness of agricultural carbon dioxide removal using the University of Victoria Earth System Climate Model,” Biogeosciences, vol. 22, no. 8, pp. 1969–1984, Apr. 2025, doi: 10.5194/bg-22-1969-2025.

Accepted publications in national and international conferences:

M. Dickau and H. D. Matthews, “The proportionality between tonne-years of temporary carbon storage and inertial climate variables ” Accessed: Nov. 21, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU25/EGU25-7422.html

H. D. Matthews, K. Zickfeld, A. MacIsaac, and M. Dickau, “Effect of land carbon accounting methods on the climate response to cumulative CO2 emissions.” Accessed: Nov. 21, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU25/EGU25-13389.html

A. MacIsaac, K. Zickfeld, D. Matthews, and A. MacDougall, “The reforestation-TCRE: A metric to quantify the effect of reforestation on global temperature.” Accessed: Nov. 21, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU25/EGU25-11301.html