Green Communities Canada urges fresh start to home retrofit programs.

A new report from Green Communities Canada, 2025 National Progress Report on Retrofitting Canada’s Homes, analyzes five years of federal data from over 600,000 retrofits. These retrofits reduced fossil fuel emissions and household energy bills in Canada’s low-rise housing sector. However, more than 11 million homes across the country still require retrofitting. Green Communities Canada is calling for a fresh start and a new domestic stimulus program with greatly increased ambitions.

Canada Greener Homes Grant

The federal Canada Greener Homes Grant (CGHG) led to an explosion of retrofit activity. The CGHG pushed half a million Canadians to apply for the $5,000 grant funding to support a home energy retrofit. In February 2024, the Government of Canada announced that it would be shutting the door on new applications to the CGHG. The CGHG was exhausting its budget more quickly than expected. Higher average grant amounts were being paid than had been planned. The program was described as a victim of its own success.

The CGHG was not perfect, but it did spur an astonishing level of retrofit activity in a short period. The CGHC motivated five per cent of Canadian households to retrofit their homes, reduce their energy bills, and cut fossil fuel emissions. The CGHG also boosted employment across the country.

2025 National Progress Report on Retrofitting Canada’s Homes

Green Communities Canada analyzed data from 605,283 retrofits. These retrofits were completed from 2020 to the end of 2024 and reported through the EnerGuide Rating System. Of that total, roughly 442,000 retrofits were supported by the Canada Greener Homes Grant. Other incentive programs supported the remaining 138,000 retrofits that were completed during these five years.

The Canada Greener Homes Grant continues to allocate funds for applications that were received prior to its closure in February 2024. By the time all its funding is allocated, the CGHG will have incented the retrofitting of approximately 500,000 homes. That leaves more than 11 million homes across the country that still require retrofitting. Even at the pace of the Greener Homes Grant, Canada might reach its net-zero 2050 targets sometime in the middle of the 22nd century.

Fast facts:

• Over 600,000 EnerGuide Rating System retrofits were completed from 2020 to the end of 2024.
• Thanks to the retrofits funded by the Canada Greener Homes Grant, homeowners will save approximately $3.8 billion in home energy bills over the next 20 years. These savings are greater than the $2.6 billion investment made in the Canada Greener Homes Grant.
• The over 600,000 retrofits completed from 2020 to the end of 2024 supported at least 75,000 jobs. These retrofits stimulated approximately $11 billion in consumer spending and removed the equivalent of over 200,000 fossil fuel cars worth of pollution.
• The Canada Greener Homes Grant was designed to achieve a pace of approximately 100,000 retrofits per year. At that pace, it will take more than 100 years to retrofit Canada’s over 11 million existing homes.
• The retrofits completed from 2020 through to the end of 2024 achieved roughly half the average savings per retrofit needed to support Canada’s 2050 net-zero targets. We need programs that support at minimum 50 per cent reductions in energy use.
• Only 29,000 of the 600,000 retrofits have achieved the status of “deep energy retrofits.” A deep energy retrofit saves 50 per cent or more of the energy used in the house.

“The Canada Greener Homes Grant was a success. But it fell far short of what we need,” says Kai Millyard, Green Communities Canada’s EnerGuide Service Organization Manager. “If we are to retrofit Canada’s over 11 million existing homes and reach our net-zero targets, Canadians need to accelerate the pace. The Canada Greener Homes Grant achieved half a million retrofits in roughly five years. That needs to be concentrated into one year, and we need to double the average energy savings of each retrofit. That is what we need to sustain each year from now until 2050. This is possible if the federal government acts now.”

Recommendations

In our 2025 National Progress Report on Retrofitting Canada’s Homes, Green Communities Canada makes three recommendations for the Federal government to accelerate deep energy retrofits and help Canada meet its net-zero goals:

• Beginning in 2025, implement the promised Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program. Expand the budget and ramp up operations to reach 40,000 low- to median-income Canadian households per year.
• Launch a scaled up new grant program for all Canadians. This new program should emphasize building envelope improvements and incentives that encourage deep energy retrofits with savings of at least 50 per cent.
• Expand the Canada Greener Homes Loan to supplement the grant program. The loan program should offer larger zero-interest loans that help motivate deep energy retrofits.

“Compared to Canada, other countries have retrofit incentive programs that are funded with far greater ambition in mind,” observes Jared Kolb, Managing Director with Green Communities Canada. “Can you imagine the benefits we’d see if Canada stepped up like that and concentrated the ambition of the Greener Homes Grant into each and every year? There are all the net-zero sustainability benefits. But it would also create a made-in-Canada retrofit economy supporting over 300,000 good Canadian jobs. Provinces and utilities could come alongside with their own funding and programs that meet their own unique needs. That would be transformative. That would bring home the benefits of sustainable communities for generations of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.”

About retrofits

The challenges facing home energy retrofits have not changed: for homeowners, they are expensive and a hassle. Financial incentives, especially in the form of nonrepayable grants, are one of the most powerful tools in our policy toolkit to support the transformation of Canada’s housing stock.

To reach our net-zero targets, Canada needs incentive programs that encourage deep energy retrofits that save 50 per cent or more of the energy used in the house.

Without a focus on deep energy retrofits, a homeowner may simply replace a furnace with a more efficient furnace or a heat pump. There may be little or no focus on first improving the building envelope or insulation. That new furnace or heat pump will need to be larger and use more energy to compensate for that extra heat loss. That’s a more expensive option to buy and operate over the long run.

A deep energy retrofit plan maximizes efficiency savings and reduces unnecessary costs. These are the three steps of a more sequential, deep energy retrofit:

• Building efficiency: reduce air leakage, improve thermal efficiency, upgrade doors/windows, etc.
• Electrification: switching fossil fueled heating for electric heat pumps.
• Renewable energy generation: like systems that create hot water or electricity through solar power.

Details on these steps are on page nine of the report.

The benefits of deep energy retrofits include reduced energy consumption (leading to lower energy bills and reduced environmental impact), lower fossil fuel emissions, increased building value and improved comfort. The long-term cost savings and environmental benefits can be significant.

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.

What is Voices for Action?

Voices for Action is a series of events hosted by Green Communities Canada. Voices for Action brings together people with diverse lived experiences and professional expertise advancing transformative, equitable, and sustainable change in Canadian communities.

The goal of these events is to share knowledge, resources, ideas, and to connect community-based climate action across Canada, creating a national network of innovation and collaboration that elevates our collective impact.

Canada is a country of different regions, cultures, ethnicities, and needs. Voices for Action celebrates the work we do at Green Communities Canada. We honour, mobilize, and build on the knowledge and capacity rooted in our communities, rooted in environmental justice, and rooted in demonstrating that we have all the solutions we need to address the climate emergency – what we need is dialogue, connection, and collective action from communities across Canada.

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