Ecology Action Centre

The Ecology Action Centre is a prominent Atlantic Canada public policy think tank founded in 1971 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Prominent board members include MLA Howard Epstein. The Centre, like most ecological and social activists in Halifax, is closely associated with the City's scientific and medical communities and often presents scientific findings as part of its policy advice. Early recycling, composting, and energy conservation projects were influential especially in Nova Scotia provincial policy, including the introduction of e-waste charges and a demand management charge on every electricity bill to pay for conservation measures. It may also have been influential in expanding transmission capacity to Hydro Quebec as an alternative or complement to new dams and coal power. The Centre focus areas "include Built Environment, Marine Issues, Coastal Issues, Wilderness, Food, Transportation and Energy Issues." . It advocates the SeaChoice marine sustainability program and a greenbelt zoning system for Halifax . It has challenged the NS government's Muskrat Falls hydroelectric dam plans in a legal challenge, critiqued greenhouse gas claims in Newfoundland and Labrador and opposed oil and gas exploration in the Gulf of St. Lawrence .

EAC was named "one of the Globe and Mail's 10 best-run charities in Canada, 2000", won "Arthur Kroeger Awards for Public Affairs in the category of Citizenship and Community Affairs, 2009" and was "one of Tides Canada's Top 10, 2003 and 2010" . EAC's Fern Lane headquarters, a renovated building incorporating many green building technologies, is notable as an example of an ecological organization putting into practices the principles it teaches. .