Efficiency Canada is urging the government to recapitalize the Greener Homes Loan program in its fall budget and turn it into a permanent statutory program, warning that the $600-million top-up it received in the December 2024 Fall Economic Statement will run out by mid-November in the absence of new funding.

The program offers 10-year, interest-free loans between $5,000 and $40,000 to help cover home retrofit costs like insulation, air sealing, new windows and doors, smart thermostats, efficient space and water heaters, solar panels and inverters, and climate resilience improvements.

“This loan program was part of the promise that has been made to Canadians across two different prime ministers now and on multiple occasions to ensure middle-class Canadians have an opportunity to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs,” the organization’s senior director of policy strategy, Brendan Haley, told The Energy Mix.

“The skilled trades sector is watching, homeowners are waiting, and contractors who’ve built their businesses around this program shouldn’t have to wonder if they’ll have work next year,” Efficiency Canada added in a LinkedIn post this week.

Running out of cash

The concern that the program will soon run out of funds traces back to a July 10 access-to-information request from government relations consultant Fernando Melo, text of which The Mix has seen, asking the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) the total value of loans the program had approved to date. “We have not had an update on the usage rate of this program in quite some time, and understanding the remaining duration is critical for the stability of energy retrofit companies and the general public,” Melo wrote.

A CMHC official responded that the program had committed to 115,751 loans under the wider, $2.78-billion program, including 6,052 that used up $155.3 million of the $600-million top-up, as of June 15. The agency estimated that new loans were being approved at a rate of 3,500 per month.

Based on those numbers, Efficiency Canada says the loan program risks running out of cash by about mid-November.

“It definitely shows that there’s an interest in the loan program, and I don’t think that interest should be unexpected,” Haley said, after federal loans and grants boosted the country’s annual energy retrofit rate from 0.5% to 1.7% of the residential building stock between 2020 and 2024.

In a pre-budget submission [pdf] that cites the Carney government’s own policy priorities as a call to action, Efficiency Canada urges Ottawa to:

• “maintain and evolve” the Canada Greener Homes Loan program with long-term funding, beginning with a $4.3-billion infusion over four years

• prepare to develop a Canadian version of the Energy Star program and to market it internationally if the Trump administration shuts down the widely acclaimed U.S. version

• increase funding for low-income energy efficiency to $2 billion under the Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program

• use Canadian technologies and expertise to double the pace of energy-efficiency improvements – and treat the work as a nation-building project

The ‘business transformation’ Carney craves

“It’s a great time in the government’s mandate to rethink a program like this,” Haley told The Mix. “The Liberal Party platform had a very firm commitment to fund home retrofits and lower energy bills. Mark Carney’s leadership platform, when he promised to get rid of the consumer carbon tax, included some quite clear promises to have both loans and grants for home energy retrofits. It’s quite consistent with the government’s stated mandate priorities around affordability and careers in the skilled trades. And it is a loan program, with the repayment booked as an asset in the government’s balance sheet, so it meets the criterion of not having a significant operational spending cost for the government.”

With the Carney government focused on business transformation, Haley added, a revamped energy retrofit initiative would enable contractors to boost productivity and introduce more innovative business models, while offering consumers a simpler retrofit process that delivers the funding they need, when they need it. That might mean an efficient, fast-turnaround funding mechanism to help homeowners out when a furnace or air conditioner breaks down, or a staged, co-financed plan to coordinate energy-efficiency improvements with other home upgrades.

Either way, Haley said, “we can deliver more value for both the consumer and those skilled trade-oriented businesses, and that should really be of interest to the current government.”

No more boom and bust

But it wouldn’t be the first time a federal energy retrofit program ran out of funds ahead of schedule. In May 2021, Efficiency Canada executive director Corey Diamond was at the table with Trudeau-era cabinet ministers Seamus O’Regan and Carla Qualtrough when they announced a $10-million fund to train 2,000 new energy auditors across the country. “Energy-efficiency policies and investment are the right path,” Diamond said at the time. “It’s impossible for Canada to meet its international climate commitments without reducing the amount of energy waste across the country.” He added that activity would create hundreds of thousands of jobs while helping out “the 22% of Canadians struggling to pay their energy bills every month.”

By February 2024, industry sources were warning of “massive fallout” as Natural Resources Canada prepared to wind down a wildly popular Greener Homes grant program that ran through its available funding so quickly that it was deemed too successful to continue. Less than a month later, advocates were urging the government to salvage the grant, with the home retrofit sector in chaos and consumers abandoning ship. “I can’t recall another instance where the government ended a program because it was too successful and we had to ask them to renew it,” Environmental Defence programs director Keith Brooks told The Mix at the time.

“Oh, sure, the layoffs have started,” said Kai Millyard, EnerGuide service organization manager at Green Communities Canada. “A lot of people had bookings to enrol in the program, but almost all of them cancelled because the incentive matters. It works. It makes a difference in enabling people to go ahead and do retrofitting.”

That’s not an experience the Carney government should want to repeat, Haley said this week. “A boom-and-bust cycle for a program like this is incredibly disruptive,” he said. “It can kill businesses. It can destroy the careers of the skilled trades the government says are one of its top priorities. It can reduce the productivity of our country because it creates incentives for Canadians to make unproductive decisions by chasing government support, rather than undertaking retrofits in a planned way that saves them the most energy at the lowest cost.”

The $600-million top-up saved the Greener Homes Loan program from that kind of disruption in the run-up to this year’s federal election, Haley said. Now, “it’s important to remember the history here. When the grant program was abruptly cancelled, the loan program was presented as the main avenue for middle-income Canadians to continue to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and costs. When the federal government took the carbon price off oil, the loan program was the key to their messaging about the supports they would offer Canadians. Then when Carney promised to get rid of the consumer carbon tax, it was again the grants and loans for home energy efficiency that were put up front as the new policy.”

The best way to make good on those provinces would be to fund energy retrofits as a “statutory program that is available when Canadians want it,” Haley said. “It needs to go beyond a project stage and be automatically funded as a service that is going to be consistently available for Canadians.”

Mitchell Beer is publisher of The Energy Mix, a non-profit community news site and e-digest on climate change, energy and the shift off carbon. This article first appeared on The Energy Mix. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here. 

The post Funding shortfall looms for signature energy retrofit program in Canada appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The letters were both due for release Tuesday at 9 AM local time.

Cancelling the program “would set us back years in achieving our [greenhouse gas] emissions reduction goals, and denies the majority of Canadian homeowners the supports they need to create energy-efficient and climate-ready homes,” Green Communities Canada tells Wilkinson. “The forests are burning, and nearly all houses in the country need to be retrofitted. Now is not the time to slow down.”

The post Abrupt end to Canada’s green retrofits program leaves industry in chaos appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The need to address these blockages is critical, the clean energy think tank writes [pdf] in a new report, noting that Canada’s building sector contributes 13% of the country’s total emissions. And with an estimated C$3.1 billion in extreme weather event losses accrued in 2023 alone, Canada also needs to rapidly build resilience.

“Retrofitting existing buildings is the only climate action that can both drive down emissions and protect Canadians from weather events that are increasing in severity and frequency as our climate changes,” Pembina says.

But it will be a long road ahead to decarbonizing enough buildings to meet Canada’s 2050 net zero emission goals: “We will need to retrofit 4% to 6% of our building stock, or roughly 600,000 homes, each year,” writes Pembina analyst Raidin Blue in a blog post.

And only deep retrofits going beyond simple renovations—“holistic energy efficiency upgrades to homes that improve occupant health and make housing more affordable by lowering bills that are achieved through the use of low-carbon materials, new technologies (like heat pumps), and the use of smart electricity grids”—will serve both to lower emissions, and protect Canadians from harm.

To get the job done, Canada’s deep retrofit supply chain will need to be substantially improved, Pembina notes. After surveying some 80 people employed along that supply chain—from designers, to contractors, to those who monitor building operations post-retrofit—Pembina cites the lack of market certainty, resulting from a lax regulatory environment, as the weakest link in the retrofit chain.

That means “implementing regulations that require deep building decarbonization” and help reassure prospective investors, will be job one.

“Setting energy performance standards for new buildings” and introducing “high-efficiency equipment standards to require replacement heating equipment be at least 100% efficient,” are two of the regulatory changes recommended by sector workers.

“Such regulations can take time but are coming in some jurisdictions,” Pembina adds, citing Ottawa’s efforts to craft its Alterations to Existing Buildings code, now delayed to 2030. British Columbia’s Highest Efficiency Equipment Standards for Space and Water Heating is also slated for that year.

Canadian policy-makers also need to address the persistent problem of low demand, which owes significantly to consumer ignorance about deep retrofit processes. “Clarifying the benefits of deep retrofits, helping to build trust in industry, and helping reduce complexity” will help solve this problem, says Pembina.

Canada also needs more grants and incentives to mitigate “the high cost of innovative, low-carbon technologies used in deep retrofits.” Those currently working in the residential deep retrofit sector identify a shortage of skilled labour as the third major pinch point.

“Deep retrofits require unique skill sets,” notes Pembina. “As such, the federal government should commit C$1.5 billion over five years for skill development, capacity building, and recruitment.”

That commitment should prioritize inclusivity and equity, recognizing that “deep retrofits present an opportunity for communities throughout the country.”

Local job creation and training “will help to build inclusive and equitable workplaces that attract workers from equity-seeking groups—a win-win-win for people in Canada, industry, and policymakers alike,” Pembina says.

The article first appeared in The Energy Mix. Read the original story here. 

The post How Canada can climate-proof more than half a million homes appeared first on Corporate Knights.

As more people become concerned by the heat waves, forest fires and flooding exacerbated by climate change, they’re switching their carbon-emitting home appliances for electric, emissions-free alternatives. The impact of millions of electric vehicles, heat pumps, induction stoves and heat pump water heaters can be measured not only in carbon emission reductions, but in significant savings too.

Corporate Knights partnered with the Toronto Star to analyze the co-benefits of these clean technologies, quantifying just how much households can save by adopting them, and what their impact will be on emissions.

If someone had told you in 2008 – the year after the first iPhone was released – that in the next 15 years, virtually everyone in Canada would have a smartphone, you might have rolled your eyes all the way to the internet café (as you slowly tapped out a text on your numbered keypad).

Nowadays, it’s hard to believe we ever lived without the internet in our pockets. But that’s how adoption curves work: new technology is adopted slowly at first, then all at once.

The digital technology that swept our lives into this millennium changed the way we communicate and shop, plan trips and watch shows. But it also came with a heavy cost to the planet. The greenhouse gases produced by online video streaming exceed 1% of global emissions. Bitcoin miners produce more carbon emissions than all of Serbia.

The next wave of technological upgrades to our lives, however, will emit zero carbon. It’s going to change how we get around, the way we heat and cool our homes, and what we use to cook and take showers. The electric vehicle, heat pump, induction stove and heat-pump water heater may not alter our behaviour so much as texting and email. But they will revolutionize society, allowing us to continue to do many daily activities – only faster, more efficiently and without producing any emissions.

And they are poised to go from curiosity to ubiquity more quickly than you think.

Their carbon-saving potential is enormous. According to an analysis by Corporate Knights’ research division and shared with the Toronto Star, these four technologies alone would cut the average Canadian household’s carbon footprint by 80%. If everyone made the switch, it would eliminate 92 megatonnes from Canada’s national emissions annually – more than the entire oil sands produces.

The financial benefit is even greater. If everyone in Canada swapped out their existing gas-powered car, furnace, stove and water heater for these green technologies, the collective yearly savings would be more than $65 billion, the analysis found. That’s $4,300 per household.

If everyone in Canada swapped out their existing gas-powered car, furnace, stove and water heater for these green technologies, the collective yearly savings would be more than $65 billion and 92 megatonnes of CO2 – more than the entire oil sands.

These ecological and economic incentives have created the conditions for rapid adoption, motivating governments that have emission-reduction targets to meet and individuals feeling the squeeze of fossil-fuel-driven inflation.

Critics say fear of climate change will not prompt people to adopt new technology. They argue that we just love our gas stoves and gas-guzzling SUVs too much. But dozens of car dealers and HVAC professionals who spoke with the Star said EVs and heat pumps are popular not because they’re green – people are buying them for other reasons: convenience, comfort and cost savings. The end result is a win-win. People’s lives get better. They save money. And the faster these technologies are adopted, the fewer emissions Canada will produce.

Corporate Knights partnered with the Toronto Star to analyze the co-benefits of these clean technologies, quantifying just how much Canadians in each province can save by adopting them, and what their impact will be on emissions. The results vary widely across the country.

In Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia, where hydro dams provide cheap, carbon-free electricity, the benefit of ditching fossil fuels is the greatest. An average British Columbian household switching to these four technologies would save more than $4,800 per year and virtually eliminate their carbon footprint (83% average).

In provinces with carbon-intensive electricity, such as Alberta and Nova Scotia, switching off fossil fuels has a smaller impact – and can even make your emissions rise in some cases – but the financial benefits are not insignificant. An average Nova Scotian household adopting the four green technologies would save $5,200 per year and shrink their emissions by five tonnes (or 64%).

Switching now is also future-proofed. As the carbon tax rises, the cost savings grow – reaching an additional $790 per year on average* for every Canadian household in 2030. And as the electrical grids in these provinces decarbonize, the already low emissions will piggyback them right down to zero.

In the U.S., those figures will shift state-to-state as well. But in New York, households switching to these four technologies would save an average of US$2,133 per year while reducing their carbon footprints by 7.3 tonnes.

We’ve reached out to early adopters in Canada to find out about the benefits and challenges of these technologies and have created online calculators so you can figure out the estimated cost and emissions savings associated with each technology depending on where you live. While no one would say these four pieces of green technology are a panacea for solving climate change, they’re a big start. And they’re something individuals can do without waiting for the government to act (though the incentives and rebates help).

Each EV, water heater, heat pump and induction stove on its own may not make a big difference for the warming planet, but they will save a family hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a year. And as North Americans switch away from burning fossil fuels and electrify their lives, the cumulative power of individual action is undeniable.

Savings from switching to an electric vehicles

David Hollingworth is an active skier, someone who heads up to Whistler from his home in North Vancouver for a day on the slopes whenever the powder is fresh. But unlike many of his neighbours, he straps his skis to the top of his EV – a Nissan Leaf – for the trip into the mountains and leaves his family’s gas-powered car – a Honda CRV – at home. “It’s just a no-brainer, the cost savings,” he says. While it costs more than $100 to gas up the CRV, Hollingaworth estimates that an overnight charge for the Leaf runs him only about $2.

In the eight years since he bought his EV, Hollingworth says, he’s grown more enamoured with it. The electric car serves his family’s day-to-day needs so well they’ve cancelled the insurance on their gas-powered car except for a few months in the winter when they go on longer ski trips.

“I don’t keep a log of the expenses for both vehicles, but it’s just obvious. I’m sure that we’ve saved thousands of dollars in fuel and maintenance [with the EV],” he says. “Even driving the CRV a lot less, it seems to cost us at least $1,000 in repairs every year. And the Nissan Leaf, it’s basically maintenance-free.” Fuel and maintenance savings are often cited as the top benefits by EV owners. In B.C. – which has the highest gasoline prices in the country and some of the lowest electricity prices – those savings are $2,450 per year on average, according to the Corporate Knights analysis.

The savings assume charging at home using average electricity prices. Of course, many EV owners minimize their costs by charging overnight when electricity is cheaper and searching out free charging, still widely available.

While EVs have a reputation for being expensive, this is changing quickly. Many of the early high-end models are now making way for entry-level EVs priced far lower than the average cost of a new car in Canada, which hit $58,478 at the end of last year.

A survey of Toronto car dealerships last year turned up four EV models with a listing price below $40,000 and nine more between $40,000 and $45,000. These prices don’t include the $5,000 federal EV purchase subsidy, which is topped up by certain provinces, ranging from $2,500 in Newfoundland and Labrador to $7,000 in Quebec. (Ontario cancelled its EV purchase rebate in 2018 when Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives came into power.)

In B.C. and Quebec, the purchase subsidies are coupled with a sales mandate, requiring dealerships to have EVs available for purchase. (The federal government announced a nationwide sales mandate last December.) This combination has fuelled the fastest uptake of EVs in the country. Last year, EVs made up 16% of all new car sales in B.C. and 12% in Quebec.

Ontario lags behind. Only 6.5% of new car sales in the province were EVs last year. Since automakers send their EVs to the provinces that have sales mandates, Ontarians have to wait for months or even years on Canada’s longest EV wait lists.

In addition to savings, EVs also boast souped-up climate impacts. Even in provinces with electricity generated from fossil fuels, EVs dramatically reduce emissions because they’re so efficient. In an EV, up to 91% of the energy in the battery goes directly to turning the wheels, while in a gas-powered car, 84% of the energy in the gas tank is lost to heat and friction.

So in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where most electricity is generated by burning coal and natural gas, an average family would reduce their carbon emissions by 1.2 tonnes by switching to an EV, the Corporate Knights analysis found.

In Quebec, Manitoba and B.C., where most electricity comes from hydro dams, an EV would reduce a family’s carbon emissions by far more: 3.1 tonnes per year.

Nationwide, if everyone switched to an EV, it would reduce Canada’s carbon emissions by 57.8 megatonnes, or about 8.6% of all emissions. This assumes we maintain our current electrical generation sources. But if the federal government succeeds in getting our electrical grids to net-zero by 2035, EV adoption would reduce emissions by 67 megatonnes, or 10%.

On each trip up to Whistler in his Leaf, Hollingworth has to make a 20-minute stop in Squamish for a quick charge. He uses the opportunity to stretch and admire the mountains, taking pleasure, he says, in knowing he’s doing his part to protect them from climate change. “There is some type of endorphin or dopamine that happens when you know you just saved a bunch of carbon emissions.”

He says he thinks everyone will soon be driving EVs, not only to reduce emissions, but because they’re so much cheaper and more convenient to operate. “We’re in a transition period now. People will roll their eyes in the future when they look at how we lived today.”

Savings from switching to an electric heat pump

Shortly after Brian Gifford retired and moved back to Halifax, he knew he had to do something about the oil furnace in his basement, which was costing him $2,500 to run each winter. Not knowing that he had any choice but to continue to use oil, he added insulation to his basement, walls and attic – and saw his heating bills go down to $1,700.

Five years later, he was told his firebox had a crack and the furnace would have to be replaced, so he looked at switching to natural gas – newly available in the Maritimes – or buying an electric heat pump. “Both environmentally and financially, heat pumps made a whole lot more sense,” he says. Installed in 2015, the heat pump has reduced his annual heating bill to $700 – about a quarter of what it used to be. “The heat pump is a huge, huge benefit, especially in places like the Maritimes, where heating costs are relatively high because we use oil,” he says. “We’re saving a lot of money. We’re really happy with that.”

For decades, heat pumps weren’t powerful enough to heat through Canadian winters. But a new generation of cold-climate heat pumps now available have been shown to work in the deep cold of Whitehorse. They also do double duty, running in reverse to provide air conditioning in the summer.

Much like the EV, the heat pump electrifies something that’s traditionally powered with fossil fuels. And like an EV, switching to a heat pump to heat your home saves money and reduces emissions – even on a dirty grid, like Nova Scotia’s – because the technology is so much more efficient.

While the newest natural gas furnaces operate at 98% efficiency, heat pumps are 220 to 320% efficient in Canadian conditions. This means that in a furnace, one unit of energy in natural gas produces 0.98 units of heat in your home. But with a heat pump, one unit of energy in electricity produces 2.2 to 3.2 units of heat. This works because heat pumps use ambient heat in the air and concentrate it, gaining a multiplier effect on the energy used to power the process.

As a result, heat pumps promise cost savings not only for people who switch from natural gas and oil furnaces, but for those switching from electric baseboards, because they will use far less electricity to produce the same amount of heat.

The Corporate Knights research division calculated that for a typical single-family detached house in Nova Scotia, switching from an oil furnace to a heat pump would save $1,750 in annual heating costs. They would save even more switching from baseboard heating: $2,773 per year.

The price to install a heat pump can vary from around $4,500 for a hybrid (one that works with your existing furnace) to upwards of $20,000 for a top-of-the-line centrally ducted model. Federal government rebates of up to $5,000 and zero-interest loans of $40,000, both offered through Ottawa’s Greener Homes Initiative, can significantly reduce how much you pay out of pocket at the outset. It can even eliminate the cost: if you’re switching from oil to a heat pump, there’s a special federal program that will cover up to $10,000.

Provincial rebates stack on top of the federal ones, offering an additional $5,000 in Ontario and Nova Scotia and up to $20,000 in Quebec, reducing upfront costs even further.

Since the federal subsidies were introduced in 2021, heat pump adoption has shot up, surpassing sales of natural gas furnaces in Canada for the first time, according to wholesale shipment information tracked by the Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Institute of Canada.

Because of their efficiency, heat pumps use far less energy to heat than furnaces, but just how big their impact is on carbon emissions is mostly determined by how the electricity is generated. In Nova Scotia, where the majority of electricity comes from coal and oil, switching from an oil furnace to a heat pump will reduce a typical household’s emissions by 1.2 tonnes. In provinces with lots of carbon-free renewable electricity, the greenhouse gas reductions are even greater. In Ontario, for example, a household making the switch to a heat pump would reduce their emissions by 4.2 tonnes and save $489 a year at today’s gas prices – savings that will nearly double by 2030 as the carbon price increases.

Canada-wide, if everyone switched to heat pumps, it would produce annual savings of $13.5 billion and emission reductions of 26.3 megatonnes, equal to 4% of Canada’s total GHG emissions, according to the Corporate Knights analysis.

For a peek at the future, look no further than Sweden, where heat pumps have almost entirely replaced oil for residential heat. Since 1990, heat pumps have been responsible for reducing carbon emissions from heating by 95%, according to Martin Forsén, the president of the European Heat Pump Association, who gave a recent presentation in Toronto. The adoption of heat pumps has gone so well in his Scandinavian country that he sees their global dominance as an inevitability. “I don’t think it’s a question of if. It’s just a question of when,” he says.

That’s a sentiment Gifford shares. Heating by burning fossil fuels in your basement will soon be a thing of the past. “It’s a necessary change and I’m looking forward to it,” he says. “It can’t happen soon enough.”

Savings from switching to an electric water heater and induction stove

Anya Barkan’s water heater was 15 years old and “a piece of garbage” when she called her rental company and asked for it to be replaced. After some back and forth that left her frustrated, she decided to break free from the rental contract she had inherited when she bought her home and get a heat-pump water heater. “It just made sense. We wanted to stop that monthly fee and get something that is much more energy-efficient and also not reliant on natural gas,” she says.

Breaking the contract proved much harder than getting the heat-pump water heater. But ever since, Barkan says, she has been happy – and not only because she no longer pays the monthly rental fee. “It’s like shooting two birds with one stone. It’s not just one thing or the other. You can make your house more efficient and lower your bills. But also, it’s better for the environment in terms of fighting climate change.”

Water heaters don’t have a huge impact on gas bills on their own. But like gas stoves, they are often one of the few links to the natural gas system in a home. If swapping these two gas appliances for electric means being able to cut your gas line, it supercharges the savings because it eliminates the fixed monthly charge for natural gas, which comes to $325 a year in Ontario.

The Corporate Knights research found that swapping out the gas water heater for one that operates with a heat pump would save an Ontario family $124 per year. Similarly for an induction stove: the annual savings in Ontario for switching from a gas stove are only $5, but if switching allows you to cut your gas line, those combined savings jump to $454 a year.

But it’s not just economics. There are other reasons people are looking to get rid of their gas stoves. Worries about air quality in the home surfaced earlier this year after an official with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said the agency was considering banning new gas stoves amid research that links them to childhood asthma.

While the ensuing uproar prompted the head of the agency to walk back talk of a ban, the health hazards are real. Health Canada’s residential indoor air-quality guidelines estimate that 25% of houses with gas stoves exceed the exposure limit for nitrogen dioxide, one of the toxic compounds released when a gas stove is turned on and “for brief periods of time after cooking,” even with “moderate ventilation.”

Meanwhile, some professional chefs recommend switching to induction stoves for performance reasons alone, saying they’re faster to heat up, more responsive, not as hot to work over and easier to clean.

Soon, people moving into new houses and apartments could have no choice but to go without gas appliances. Dozens of cities across the United States, recently joined by Vancouver, have banned natural gas hookups in new developments. New York State just passed a similar ban statewide, and Toronto and Montreal city councils are considering similar measures.

Even though they burn little gas, the climate impact of eliminating these gas-burning appliances isn’t negligible. Switching from a gas stove to induction will reduce an average Ontario household’s indoor emissions of greenhouse gas by 370 kilograms. Swapping a gas water heater for a heat pump version saves 640 kilos.

If everyone in Canada made these changes, the collective impact would reduce emissions by 7.6 megatonnes, more than 1% of all emissions in the country. It’s what analysts refer to as the light-bulb effect. When incandescent light bulbs were replaced by LEDs, the difference in electricity consumption was tiny for a lamp or light fixture. But multiplied across households, apartment buildings, university campuses and sport stadiums, the cumulative impact was enormous.

That’s where we’re at right now with climate change. The solutions are all readily available. The wind turbines and solar panels that will provide clean electricity are being adopted much faster than anyone predicted. Now it’s time to electrify and use that clean electricity to eliminate carbon emissions.

“It’s not just your individual action that will change the world,” says Barkan. “We need to go at it together.”

Full calculator

Calculate the cumulative impact of swapping out all four technologies below.

*To learn more about how averages were calculated, see our notes on assumptions and emission factors.

Marco Chown Oved, climate reporter, Toronto Star

Ralph Torrie, research director, Corporate Knights

Cameron Tulk, lead digital designer, Toronto Star

McKenna Deighton, digital designer, Toronto Star

Jack Dylan, creative director, Corporate Knights magazine

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The EPBD dates to 2010 and has been updated several times in the European Parliament, including in late 2021. An even more ambitious set of net-zero standards was proposed in March 2023, all in the service of slashing emissions by 55%  by 2030. A key piece of the new policy turned on establishing “minimum energy performance standards” and timelines for buildings across the EU, as well as targets that push upgrades in the least efficient structures. 

However, delays in the adoption of these latest regulations – which aim to spur green renovations in the poorest-performing buildings, drive the take-up of heat pumps and ensure that all new buildings achieve net-zero by 2028 – have kindled concern among climate activists, who point out that 40% of all energy consumption and 36% of emissions in Europe are related to building operations and building materials.   

The stalled process, moreover, is playing out amidst the so-called “boiler wars” in Germany – a reference to efforts to fully halt the use of fossil-fuel powered boilers as a source of space and water heating. Spurred on by the war in Ukraine, German regulators this week announced a deal to ban boilers beginning in 2024, a move that further underscores the delays in Brussels.

In response, a coalition of more than a dozen progressive businesses that participate in the Corporate Knights Global 100 council this week released a statement calling on the European Union to immediately take five critical steps: 

• Approve ambitious minimum energy-performance standards. 
• Deploy best-available energy-efficiency technologies, like heat pumps, to complement the uptake of renewables. 
• Ensure that all new buildings are actually zero-emission structures. 
• Ban fossil-fuel-powered boilers. 
• Update energy performance certificates. 

The group – which includes the Danish insulation giant Rockwool, IKEA and Schneider Electric – notes that the heavy use of natural gas for heating represents a crisis, both from a climate point of view and also economically, due to rising gas prices related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “European consumers and companies are suffering from high energy prices,” the coalition said in a statement released this week. “Reducing their bills means eliminating losses to inefficiency, reducing both their consumption and overall scarcity.” 

More than 50 global companies representing US$900 billion in revenues signed on to the Corporate Knights Action Declaration on climate policy engagement during COP27 in Egypt last fall.  

A key question hanging over the EPBD implementation involves renovation, especially of older buildings, of which there’s no shortage across the EU. At the moment, only one-fifth of a percentage of buildings are renovated in the EU. To achieve the region’s 2030 timelines, that number will have to grow to 3%, equivalent to an estimated €275-billion outlay on renovations.  

While those figures translate into enormous job-creation opportunities – the coalition estimates that every billion spent on construction translates into 19,000 long-term jobs – the goal remains daunting. Many jurisdictions have adopted voluntary energy-retrofit loan or grant programs, but take-up has been modest – in Canada, the Greener Homes program has attracted 170,000 applicants, a small figure given that the country has eight million homes; even if the program is fully subscribed, it would touch only 10% of all Canadian homes.  

The exception is Italy, where a pandemic-era program provided subsidies exceeding the entire value of a retrofit. The offer, not surprisingly, was a big hit with homeowners and property managers and is expected to cut emissions from the least efficient buildings by 50%, as Corporate Knights reported last fall. The €44-billion initiative is now completely tapped out.  

The Corporate Knights Action Declaration is also advocating that EU regulators accelerate the uptake of heat pumps using measures such as promoting a ban on the use of new fossil fuel boilers and closing a loophole that enables builders or renovators to install hybrid boilers or boilers that rely on renewable fuels, like biogas. “Electric heat pumps will always be more efficient and thus, in the long run, more affordable than burning renewable fuels,” the group’s statement says. “Waste heat re-use will also lower the demand of input energy needed to produce heat.”

With regulators in places like New York City and California really leaning in to building efficiency, fossil fuel reduction, and renewable-energy incentives, the EU’s climate policy institutions, so often lauded for their progressive outlook and green building practices, now find themselves in the unusual position of playing catch-up.   

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Seen as an occasion for developing nations to express their mounting frustrations with the lack of action and resources from the Global North, COP27 has been marred by low expectations and the absence of some national leaders (including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose government is surely aware of polls showing that climate is not a top-of-mind issue right now). “There are big climate summits and little climate summits and this was never expected to be a big one,” Climate Advisers CEO Nigel Purvis, a former U.S. negotiator, told the Associated Press. 

The same could be said of the climate moves in last week’s fall economic statement, tabled by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Thursday. The document was more about the Liberal government’s attempt to roll back inflation and spending than it was about teeing up a major climate conference with some showcase policies, as has been the case before.  

The plan earmarked $310 million over the next five years for skills training in the low-carbon economy as well as $6.65 billion in investment tax credits for clean technologies and clean hydrogen production, provided the latter meets standards set out in the Inflation Reduction Act, the giant U.S. spending bill that pumps hundreds of billions of dollars into climate investments.  

According to government documents, the tax credit – equivalent to 30% of the capital cost of low-carbon systems – applies to solar, wind and water energy equipment, as well as batteries, compressed-air energy storage, air- and ground-source heat pumps, small modular nuclear reactors, and zero-emission vehicles and chargers used on mining or construction sites. 

The tax credit, however, will be available only to businesses, not residential property owners, which means the focus of this initiative, in terms of reducing carbon from buildings, will be on commercial and industrial landlords, although it’s possible contractors could claim the credit in purchasing low-carbon equipment and pass it on to their customers.  

The government’s decision to specifically target electricity storage technologies bears noting. While some jurisdictions, like California, have moved to require that certain types of development include electricity storage devices as a fallback in the event of blackouts or overloaded grids, they have yet to gain widespread use or policy attention in Canada.  

While there are some property managers running pilot projects, there’s been little wide-scale adoption because the equipment is expensive and doesn’t yet offer attractive returns. “This new tax credit can make these hybrid systems more attractive to developers,” says Richard Carlson, director of energy policy for Pollution Probe, adding that the tax credit is well designed for corporate investors.  

There are big climate summits and little climate summits and this was never expected to be a big one.

-Climate Advisers CEO Nigel Purvis

But targeted incentives for electricity storage devices, like batteries or compressed air, could theoretically expand investment in renewables like wind and solar, which generate power intermittently. They could also foster the development of so-called microgrids – renewable electricity generation and storage systems installed on large commercial or industrial sites that allow them to reduce their exposure to high peak-period rates. “We need all of these solutions,” says Tom-Pierre Frappé-Sénéclauze, buildings program manager for the Pembina Institute.  

He adds that electricity storage systems – basically banks of stationary batteries – are most cost effective when built on a larger scale. They are also an essential component of low- or no-carbon grids that include renewables like wind and solar. As the International Energy Agency notes, “The rapid scaling up of energy storage systems will be critical to address the hour‐to‐hour variability of wind and solar PV electricity generation on the grid, especially as their share of generation increases rapidly in the Net Zero Scenario.” 

While the Liberals have attempted to kickstart business investment in electricity storage in commercial and industrial properties, Frappe-Sénéclauze says the move falls well short of the much more daunting problem of retrofitting existing buildings, and particularly Canada’s 16 million residential dwellings. Carlson adds that nothing in the fall economic statement targets low-income households or energy efficiency in apartment buildings, as is the case in the U.S. 

Ultimately, Canadian governments, says Frappe-Sénéclauze, still need to find a way to encourage about $10 to $15 billion a year in home energy retrofits – everything from insulation and triple-pane windows to heat pumps and solar panels – in order to meet Canada’s building emissions targets of 40 to 50% below 2005 levels by 2030, and net-zero by 2050. “The retrofit economy needs to be seen as a nation-building-type effort over the next 20 years,” he says. “None of the programs that have been announced to date have that.”   

Doubly unfortunate is the fact that COP27, which will go on all week, is unlikely to shame Ottawa into filling that particular gap.   

The post COP27 and the Canadian mini climate budget that wasn’t appeared first on Corporate Knights.

When the federal Liberals announced the Greener Homes deep retrofit program, back in the 2021 budget, we decided to take the plunge and enroll, hoping to tap some of the $5,000 in grants available to homeowners.

About a year and a half later, we crossed the retrofit finish line, with a range of moves, from stopping up some of the leaks in the walls to the purchase of a pair of big-ticket items: a high-efficiency electric water heater and a hybrid air-source heat pump, including the electrical upgrades required to handle them. From a climate perspective, the investments are worth every penny as our home’s carbon emissions will be about 80% lower than they were previously. From a money-saving perspective, we’re already seeing lower gas bills, and a $2,200 rebate cheque (16% of our capital cost) should arrive, well, eventually.

The Canada Greener Homes Grant, and the accompanying low-interest loan, belong to the smorgasbord of incentives that aim to nudge Canadians’ dwellings in the direction of our Paris Agreement targets. Some provinces – B.C. and Quebec, for instance – offer generous inducements alongside Greener Homes, while others – notably Ontario – do very little. By contrast, Italian homeowners can get 110% of their retrofit costs covered, meaning they’re not out of pocket when they decide to cut their residential carbon.

Italy’s program (more about which in a moment) raises a critical philosophical question: if society agrees that it needs to slash building-related carbon, which accounts for up to 40% of global emissions, should individuals shoulder the financial burden?

“The retrofit industry that we have, with its emphasis on do-it-yourself, finance-it-yourself, manage-it-yourself, is not the retrofit industry we need,” says Corporate Knights director of research Ralph Torrie. “The homeowner should not have to finance retrofits any more than they are asked to finance the next power plant.”

Climate retrofit mission

Consider the statistics: there are almost eight million detached homes in Canada, and the Greener Homes inducements won’t touch the vast majority. The program has attracted about 170,000 applications (as of June 2022), with almost $40 million in grants distributed so far to approximately 10,300 households, for an average of $3,750.

The five-year program has a $2.6-billion budget, with a target of 700,000 homes. That figure is less than 10% of Canada’s housing stock and doesn’t include condos or rental apartments. “The retrofit imperative is so huge,” says Monte Paulsen, a Passive House specialist at RDH Building Science in Vancouver. “We can’t decarbonize without a massive scale-up. We’re going nowhere near fast enough.”

Canada is not the only country to grapple with the question of how to accelerate its pace of housing retrofits sufficiently to significantly bend the building emissions curve.

The United States has about 65 million homes that were built prior to the advent of more energy-efficient construction standards in the 1980s, according to federal data. A study released last year by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) pointed out that “deep retrofits that include a robust package of such upgrades can cut a home’s energy use by 58% to 79% and its emissions by 32% to 56%, depending on the home’s age and regional climate.”

“I don’t think any jurisdiction has found the magic formula for retrofitting at the scale required by climate change,” says Brendan Haley, director of research and policy at Efficiency Canada, a Carleton University think tank which has estimated that, at the current pace, it will take about 142 years to retrofit all the low-rise residential buildings in the country.

The group last year called for a national effort on turnkey project delivery and the aggregating of similar building retrofit projects into portfolios of contracts to drive economies of scale. The animating idea, argue Haley and co-author Ralph Torrie, is to put in place market structures that make retrofits simple to carry out, which, at present, they are most assuredly not.

The Italian job

Some jurisdictions have sought to crack this riddle with extremely generous incentives. Italy, in 2020, launched a residential retrofit program, dubbed “Superbonus,” that offers owners 110% of the cost of the retrofit, to be recouped via reduced future utility bills – an inducement that takes all the homeowner concerns about the upfront costs off the table in one gesture. For my own home, such a program would have allowed me to add a layer of insulation on the exterior walls, a very costly fix that would have gotten us pretty close to net-zero.

Italy’s green Five Star Movement, which was in power in 2020, set up the plan in part to revive an economy flattened by the pandemic and also to encourage homeowners to fix up dwellings that were shattered by a 2010 earthquake in the Abruzzo region. The take-up has been enormous: as of July, 220,000 applications had been approved, totalling €44 billion. While the program is meant to run until 2025, with a sliding-scale incentive structure, it is already vastly oversubscribed.

According to Michele Russo, a financial consultant based in Rome, the Superbonus program will reduce carbon from dwellings with the highest emissions by about 50%.

One of the most innovative aspects of the Superbonus program has to do with the fact that the incentives are provided not in the form of cash (rebates), but rather as credits against future energy bills for the homeowners.

This mechanism is designed to prevent huge outlays from government coffers, and also acknowledges, in its structure, that the work is paid off through long-term reductions in energy costs. “No exotic finance is part of this story,” Russo said in an Efficiency Canada online panel earlier this year. He likens the form of the financing to government bonds – low cost, low risk and liquid. “Most likely, there will be no financial bubble.”

It was a welcome shot in the arm for Italy’s construction sector. By the end of 2021, the program was credited with creating 153,000 jobs and generating more than €12 billion in GDP, according to a study by the Consiglio Nazionale degli Ingegneri, Italy’s national engineering association.

However, the Superbonus has generated controversy, with reports of corruption and inflated construction prices. “We do not agree on the validity of this measure,” outgoing prime minister Mario Draghi said in a speech to the European Parliament this past May. “The cost of improving efficiency has more than tripled due to the 110% scheme. The prices of the investments needed to perform the renovations have more than tripled because the 110% eliminates the incentive to negotiate on price.” The government has continued to tweak the popular program to plug loopholes in order to prevent fraud.

Going Dutch – and New York – style

Haley cites more modestly scaled retrofit programs in countries like Germany, France and the Netherlands, which pioneered the concept of the “energiesprong,” a means of grouping similar dwellings or apartments all requiring retrofits into a bundle that can achieve economies of scale for equipment and labour. These projects, he says, are carried out by market development teams instead of individual owners.

The ACEEE rates and ranks national energy-efficiency programs and this year awarded France’s overall approach to energy efficiency with top honours, although the Netherlands received the highest ranking for its “robust” approach to building-related policies. “The Dutch government has also implemented mandatory building rating systems, as well as appliance performance standards and labeling programs,” the report noted, adding that all buildings must be rated on an A to G energy-efficiency scale, meaning that owners and contractors have baseline data when doing retrofits.

In the U.S., meanwhile, New York City’s Local Law 97 uses sticks instead of carrots, driving retrofits in large buildings using the threat of substantial fines for those that fail to cut their emissions. Haley says the U.S. also has a highly effective federal energy-efficiency program targeting low-income homeowners, which has no real parallel in Canada.

But retrofit experts point out that incentives and penalties on their own go only so far; what’s missing, in many cases, are market mechanisms – in effect, a kind of concierge service – that streamlines and demystifies a process that can be technically daunting, as well as front-end loaded, in terms of cost.

Paulsen adds that Canada’s retrofit sector is problematically under-developed; there’s a lack of skilled trades contractors specializing in retrofits, as well as chronic competition with the new-home construction industry. He muses that one potential solution would be the creation of a specialized contractor designation – a skilled tradesperson who is trained to deal with all the various elements of retrofits, from HVAC installation to insulation to the various electrical work required to knit it all together. The industry, Paulsen says, “would benefit from a contractor who could do all those things” – a kind of one-stop shop that delivers a turnkey fix.

Certainly, as I reflect on the retrofit journey my wife and I took, it strikes me that there’s a lot of insight about this last point, which speaks to the difficulty of such undertakings. Meaningful financial incentives for homeowners as well as landlords are necessary, as are efforts by policy-makers to clear away the underbrush of regulatory obstacles, such as zoning laws that penalize building owners who want to add exterior insulation panels and end up running afoul of municipal density regulations. And we have to acknowledge that any system that depends on homeowners to front five-figure upfront costs or take out similarly scaled loans seems destined not to get out of first gear.

What’s more, grants and loans on their own aren’t sufficient to transform a trickle of early-adopter retrofitters into a mass movement. The lessons of my own retrofit experience seem relevant, and not atypical: that 16-month journey involved an online application, two visits from an energy auditor, a search for firms that could seal leaks and add insulation, a complicated dance with three separate electricians, a search for contractors who could install the big-ticket items at a cost that didn’t make my eyes water, and various financial obstacles imposed by my gas services company for attempting to switch to electric heat.

By contrast, if something goes sideways with my gas furnace, the fix is a one-call/one-visit operation. There’s something wrong with this picture.

As Canadian policy-makers search for a retrofit strategy that will meaningfully reduce the massive amount of carbon emitted by our existing buildings, they’d be wise to remember that financial inducements, which are crucial for priming the retrofit pump, are only half the story. Making it as easy as possible is the other.

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1. Transition away from fossil fuels – namely natural gas and oil heating – by reducing energy waste and heating homes with heat pumps powered by clean electricity or renewable gas. 
2. Make sure buildings are ready for extreme weather, such as heat waves and flooding. 
3. Use building materials with low-embedded carbon to reduce upstream emissions. 

The key lies in switching fuel sources, installing high–efficiency insulation and windows, and making buildings climate–proof, all while maintaining affordability to meet the urban housing crunch. New regulations, including stiffer building codes and mandatory upgrades for existing buildings, are being developed. But we also need to increase demand for these measures – and incentives can help. 

The best way to fund these changes depends on building type. For commercial buildings, retrofits can be financed through 10– to 20–year loans tied to property taxes. For residential buildings, the challenge lies in helping homeowners pay for the retrofits and connecting them to qualified contractors who can do the work. Access to financing – a mix of loans and grants – would give millions of people the incentive they need to protect their assets. The necessary capital can be raised by the government through green bonds or other means, and then distributed by commercial banks that already have the infrastructure in place and mortgage relationships with homeowners.  

We need to ramp up all green–building funding models over the next five years, with the goal of retrofitting half of Canada’s building stock by 2030. It will take two decades to complete deep retrofits of all buildings in Canada, but once they’re done, Canadians will sleep easier knowing that their homes and businesses are ready for those heat waves and water surges – and that their utility bills are shock–resistant, too.  

Tom-Pierre Frappé-Sénéclauze is the director for buildings and urban solutions at the Pembina Institute. 

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The first “green recovery” session on April 22 explored proposals for greening Canada’s building stock: Recovering Stronger with a Green Renovation Wave.

Canada’s buildings currently contribute to 13% of our national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Based on today’s economics, we can reduce those emissions by nearly 100 million tonnes simply by upgrading the energy efficiency of Canadian buildings with mass retrofits. A nationwide program to encourage “deep retrofitting” of Canada’s residential, commercial and industrial buildings would put thousands of Canadians back to work and stimulate the economy at a time when it most needs help.

It’s a huge logistical challenge, but the good news is that it’s no longer a technology challenge, and it doesn’t have to be a financing problem.

The challenge and the opportunities

The payback from building retrofits is just one example of how focusing on green recovery strategies following the COVID-19 pandemic can be a triple-win proposition. Investing in more sustainable processes, technologies and industries will not only fuel an economic rebound; it will create more efficient and resilient infrastructure, throughout the country, that will virtually pay for itself. Plus, it will develop Canadian knowledge and leadership in a growing industry, building deep expertise that Canadians can sell to the world.

To help inform the discussion, Corporate Knights has launched a seven-event series called The Canada We Want: Planning for a Green Recovery. These virtual roundtables, running from April 23 to June 3, include top decision-makers from government, industry, finance, labour and the not-for-profit sector. The moderator is economist and climate activist Diana Fox Carney.

Here are the highlights of the first session, on how to create a “green renovation wave.”

Takeaways

“The window of what is viable has shifted,” said Toby Heaps, the cofounder and president of Corporate Knights. “Just two months ago, the federal government was budgeting $70 billion to address the climate crisis over the next 10 years. Suddenly, it finds itself anteing up $71 billion for wage subsidies over just the next three months.”

The federal minister of environment and climate change, Jonathan Wilkinson, introduced the event, noting that as the pandemic abates, “rather than simply looking to rebuild the economy the way it was before the pandemic, we need to question our assumptions about future sustainability and our physical and economic security. We have to build the economy we want and need.”

Ralph Torrie, a long-time energy consultant and a partner in the firm of Torrie Smith Associates, co-authored an article that underpinned this discussion: “Building Back Better with a green renovation wave.” This virtual manifesto proposes a bold economic-development strategy based on retrofitting Canada’s building stock.

“Rather than simply looking to rebuild the economy the way it was before the pandemic, we need to question our assumptions about future sustainability and our physical and economic security.”

–Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Jonathan Wilkinson

Torrie and co-author Céline Bak calculate that a 10-year program for thermally retrofitting and electrifying 60% of Canada’s dwellings would reduce GHG emissions by 45% and save Canadians fuel and electricity costs of $12.7 billion a year. The renovations would include conversion to heat pumps, controlled ventilation with heat recovery, insulating to achieve thermal leakage reductions of up to 70%, and a 20% improvement in lighting efficiency.

A global advisor on climate change and president of Analytica Advisors, Bak explained how forgivable loans could finance a renovation wave. “It will be a virtuous circle,” she said, comprising several players: the federal government, to provide loan guarantees; banks and credit unions, to underwrite the $40,000 renovation loans; the home or workplace owner, who would hire and pay the contractor; and an energy auditor to measure and verify the post-renovation benefits. The owner would submit this proof of energy savings to their bank, which would then be reimbursed by the government.

Sean Mullin, executive director of the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship, lent his voice to taking action. As a former advisor to the premier of Ontario, he urged government officials to seed recovery with additional long-term investments in climate issues. “There’s no reason Canadians couldn’t devote another 1% of GDP every year for the next 10 years to combating climate change,” he said. “We have the fiscal capacity to do that, even with all the borrowing we’re doing right now. We don’t have to be constrained by the fiscal anchors or mindsets of the pre-crisis environment.”

The audience of more than 300 industry and government representatives seemed to agree. In an online Zoom poll conducted during the session, 83% of participants supported Mullin’s call for an extra 1% budgetary investment in fighting the climate crisis. Only 5% disagreed.

Gordon Hicks, CEO of BGIS, Canada’s leading provider of real estate management services, including facilities management, confirmed there is huge demand for energy refits. “Given the rate at which technologies are advancing, we see opportunities in virtually every building that exists today,” he said. In fact, he believes Torrie underestimated the multiplier effect of this work: “For every dollar spent on energy efficiency, there should be a five times multiplier on GDP.”

“For every dollar spent on energy efficiency, there should be a five times multiplier on GDP.”

–Gord Hick, CEO, BGIS

 

Canadian Green Building Association CEO Thomas Mueller supported the need for a coordinated program of energy retrofitting. “We talk about 50,000 to 60,000 buildings needing to be renovated between now and 2030 to reach a 30% reduction in carbon emissions. It’s a significant challenge, but it’s not insurmountable.” He endorsed the idea that government funding must be tied to achieving specific outcomes – and ensuring those outcomes are sustained over time.

As head of sustainable finance for BMO, Jonathan Hackett endorsed the idea of the federal government leading a renovation revolution through forgivable loans. But as the banks gain more experience with lending against energy savings, he sees the private sector taking on more of the financing. “We can push this to the point where it really becomes self-perpetuating… with small subsidies rather than complete forgiveness.”

Amidst the panel’s support for a green renovation-focused stimulus, some concerns were raised about governments alone running such a crucial program. Said RBC board director Andy Chisholm, “We need solutions that are not susceptible to a change in government or a change in political attitude.” He expressed hope that retrofit loans could become a standard “asset class” that could be assumed by mainstream lenders, like mortgages or auto loans. Chisholm suggested the government’s role should be to subsidize the program structure, not individual transactions.

“We need solutions that are not susceptible to a change in government or a change in political attitude.” 

–Andy Chisholm, RBC

 

Derek Ballantyne, chair of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, supported the bankers’ call to create an asset class rather than a portfolio of projects. “Finding a financial architecture for this and how to get it kick-started is going to be the key around any federal involvement.” He suggested adding other incentives, such as insurance products, to attract private partners: “This kind of investment will not get done on government capital alone.”

Julia Langer, CEO of The Atmospheric Fund, chimed in as an expert commentator. Noting that the Greater Toronto Area–based fund has been successfully investing in retrofits for decades, she declared it’s time to shift the discussion from “what to do” to “how to do it.” “It is very complex,” Langer said. “We need on-the-ground mechanisms to bring projects together with capital, with suppliers – a local concierge service.” Her advice to the industry, government and lenders: “Don’t forget about that intermediation, which doesn’t [yet] exist in the country at a scale necessary to move the kind of dollars we’re talking about into play.”

Other questions were raised. Angela MacEwan, senior economist at the Canadian Union of Public Employees, when asked how Canada can ensure it has sufficient talent to conduct these renovations, said, “I think you have to work with building-trade unions. They provide a lot of training to their members.” She offered an example: the insulators’ union in British Columbia has added green training to its apprenticeship process.

She wasn’t keen about creating a blended public/private lending structure. “I don’t think this is the time for us to be making new instruments for people to profit off of the green transition. We need to be thinking about a just transition.”

While prominent players from a wide range of organizations agreed there is merit in launching a green renovation wave, many issues still have to be ironed out. But if sector leaders can come together to solve these problems first, Mueller suggested, Canada has an opportunity to export its expertise in this area, especially given the global footprint of Canadian real estate investors and pension plans. “Canada is a leader in green building,” he said. “I think we’ve missed a tremendous opportunity to take advantage of that so far.”

Added Mueller, “No country has figured out so far how to do large-scale retrofits. So this whole model around scaling it up, finding a way to finance it, to execute it, creates a whole value chain – and that’s something other countries would be very interested in. I think it is a tremendous opportunity.”

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