For the third consecutive year, Canadian Colleges for a Resilient Recovery (C2R2) and Wawanesa Insurance are funding youth-led climate projects through the Wawanesa Climate Champions: Youth Innovation Grants, awarding a total of $150,000 to five college-based initiatives across Canada.
The program sits within Wawanesa's broader Climate Champions commitment, under which the mutual invests $2 million annually in climate resilience initiatives, including youth innovation, local resilience grants, and community wildfire prevention.
Since the Climate Champions program launched in 2023, Wawanesa has directed more than $480,000 into local climate grants and over $660,000 into wildfire prevention across 46 communities, alongside the youth awards.
This year’s Wawanesa Climate Champions: Youth Innovation Grants provide $30,000 each to five projects focused on climate adaptation, mitigation, and community resilience.
The funded work ranges from green hydrogen production using industrial wastewater and community-scale diversion of algal blooms into biofuel, to controlled-environment agriculture for food security, UAV-based mapping of stormwater ponds, and passive de-icing systems for power infrastructure in cold climates.
Each student will work with faculty mentors and applied research teams at C2R2 member institutions to move from concept to prototypes and field pilots, with an emphasis on practical solutions that can be replicated or scaled in other communities. Earlier cohorts have gone on to present at national forums and partner with municipalities and industry, helping to connect college research with on-the-ground resilience work.
“Young innovators are not just imagining a more resilient future, they’re building it,” said Jennifer Figner, provost and vice president academic at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. “With support from Wawanesa, students gain the resources needed to test bold ideas and deliver real, long-term impact.”
The youth grants sit against a backdrop of escalating climate-related losses in Canada. Insured damage from catastrophic events totaled roughly $2.4 billion in 2025, the ninth-costliest year on record, following a record $8.5 billion in 2024 driven by wildfires and severe convective storms. That trend is putting pressure on pricing, capacity, and reinsurance, and sharpening the focus on prevention and resilience.
Through Climate Champions, Wawanesa is partnering with organizations such as the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, FireSmart Canada, and Youth Climate Lab to support mitigation work ranging from wildfire fuel management to community heat and flood resilience. The youth innovation stream adds an applied research component that touches directly on risk drivers relevant to P&C portfolios, including infrastructure reliability, water management, and low-carbon energy.
“Addressing climate change requires collective action and bold ideas,” said Mitchell McEwen, director of sustainability, climate resilience and community impact at Wawanesa. “Through our partnership with C2R2, Wawanesa is proud to empower these young climate leaders and help bring their innovative solutions to life. By working together, we’re strengthening our communities and building a safer, healthier, and more sustainable future.”
The projects funded this year align closely with areas where insurers are seeking better data and mitigation tools. Work on stormwater pond mapping and passive de-icing systems links directly to flood and grid-interruption risk, both of which are increasingly material in catastrophe models and critical-infrastructure underwriting. Green hydrogen and algal biofuels intersect with transition risk and liability in industrial and energy sectors, while controlled-environment agriculture and algal-bloom diversion speak to food security, water quality, and contingent business interruption.
If these college-based pilots prove successful, they could inform future loss-prevention standards, engineering guidance, and even parametric trigger design, particularly where they improve visibility into local hazards or reduce the frequency and severity of claims.
The C2R2 network itself is becoming a more visible part of Canada’s climate-resilience ecosystem.
Formed in 2020, the coalition of colleges, cégeps, institutes, and polytechnics works with government and private partners on decarbonization, resilience, and nature-based solutions, including workforce training for green and adaptation-related roles.
In a Canadian market where climate-related insured losses have more than tripled over the past decade and affordability concerns are mounting, initiatives such as Wawanesa’s Climate Champions grants point to a model where underwriting, risk engineering, and community investment are more tightly linked. Staying close to these innovation streams may give insurers and brokers an edge when advising clients on how to adapt to a more volatile climate and, over time, help support a more sustainable loss profile.
