Community Energy Association
ACET and the Community Energy Association (CEA) have partnered to help communities across the province turn clean energy ideas into action.
At its core, this partnership connects applied research and innovation with real-world challenges faced by small to mid-sized communities in B.C., with a focus on northern, Indigenous and rural regions.
Combining ACET’s research expertise from across Canada’s university sector with CEA’s decades of hands-on experience advancing community energy and climate solutions, we are working together to ensure that our research responds directly to specific community needs—and that the lessons learned along the way lead to better research, policies and practices across Canada.
By collaborating with communities, practitioners and local governments, we aim to make clean energy transformations more equitable, practical and community centered.
Projects
The first projects under the ACET/CEA partnership will launch in 2026 and build on the organizations’ successful collaboration in early 2025, which brought together CEA’s Northern BC Climate Action Network and the ACET project, the Northern Regional Energy Dialogues, to convene conversations across northern BC related to local views of the energy transition. New projects will focus on challenges that communities are already facing, including misinformation, limited local capacity and government barriers that slow or prevent clean energy progress.
Grounded in lived experience and local decision-making, these projects will produce practical tools and pilot initiatives that help partnering communities to overcome their specific challenges.
Future projects may explore topics such as AI-assisted community decision-making, complex systems planning for local energy transitions, peer networks that help identify problems and develop solutions, and workforce and skills development for community energy projects.
All projects will be co-designed—meaning that communities and practitioners help shape the research questions, methods and outcomes from the start. The focus is on small, targeted pilot projects that deliver near-term value while generating insights and practices that can be used across Canada and abroad.
Objectives
The ACET/CEA partnership is built around the shared objective of strengthening the connection between research, implementation and community leadership in Canada’s clean energy transformation.
Partner contributions
ACET
- Lead and coordinate applied research activities
- Leverage interdisciplinary academic expertise to solve complex energy challenges
- Explore how ideas can move from research into action—and back again
- Generate insights that inform policy, planning, and future energy systems
CEA
- Ground projects in community realities for real-world impact
- Support community engagement, implementation and capacity-building
- Identify practical challenges and opportunities emerging from on-the-ground work
- Help translate research into tools, training and action
About CEA
The Community Energy Association (CEA) accelerates bold action by local governments and Indigenous communities related to climate and energy.
CEA grew from a committee established by the Government of BC and the Union of BC Municipalities in the 1990s, was incorporated as a non-profit in 2003, and registered as a charity the following year. CEA functions as a nonprofit consultant with members and a Board of Directors; more than half of CEA’s member-organizations are local governments and Indigenous communities.
Today, CEA’s members and staff live in communities large and small and share in the benefits of being a community of practitioners. We bring our collective expertise, experiences, commitment to Truth and Reconciliation, and passion to help lower local emissions and build healthy, resilient communities.