Over 8,000 deep energy retrofits show the way, but federal incentives must grow: Report
Green Communities Canada has completed an in-depth review of federal data on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Canada’s low-rise housing sector and makes recommendations for improving the effectiveness of the Canada Greener Homes Grant incentive program.
A new report published by Green Communities Canada analyzed data from over 188,000 building retrofits documented with the EnerGuide rating system across Canada in 2020, 2021 and 2022.
“The data shows the number of home retrofit projects has increased nearly four-fold since the launch of the Canada Greener Homes Grant, but the average energy savings are modest at just 21 per cent," says Kai Millyard, Green Communities Canada’s EnerGuide service organization manager who led the data analysis. "This will result in the need to spend billions more on rapid electrical utility expansion to meet our climate goals as electricity replaces fossil fuels.”
Retrofitting Canada's Homes: Progress Report #1 recommends accelerating deep energy retrofits — renovations that result in over 50% energy savings — as the key to achieving the country’s GHG emission goals while minimizing the societal costs associated with the energy transition.
"Over 8,000 homeowners have shown that much deeper savings are possible in all parts of the country," says Millyard, "but these are just 1 in 16 retrofits now - the incentives are too small for widespread deep retrofitting."
“The retrofit industry describes a three-step strategy to retrofit and decarbonize housing." says Jared Kolb, GCC Executive Director. "The first step in any home retrofit project should be to improve the thermal efficiency of houses to reduce energy consumption, followed by the electrification of equipment, including introducing heat pumps and electric water heaters. As the last step, houses can add renewable energy systems like solar panels to create local energy generation capacity.”
The report makes recommendations for Natural Resources Canada and others to accelerate deep energy retrofits and help Canada meet its GHG emission goals.
The report is attached here.
Fast facts from the report:
Greenhouse gas emissions from the low-rise housing sector are declining. They are down 6.1% from 2005 to 2019.
The Canada Greener Homes program has quadrupled the rate of participation after its introduction in 2021.
Three steps are needed to decarbonize houses: efficiency improvements, electrification, and adding renewable supply.
Canada Greener Homes has been successful at increasing electrification and solar among participants, but improving building efficiency is declining within the program.
Similar programs in Ireland and Germany offer incentives roughly ten times the offer from Canada Greener Homes.
About Green Communities Canada
Green Communities Canada is a national non-profit that has been leading community-based climate action since 1995. The organization shares resources and co-creates programming with over 50 member and partner organizations across the country to ensure transformative and equitable climate action. Green Communities Canada has been designing and delivering home energy retrofit programs for over 25 years, including piloting the Government of Canada’s EnerGuide auditing program and designing the Province of Ontario’s first low income retrofit programs – both among the most successful energy demand management programs in our country’s history.
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