Green Communities Canada (GCC) is proud to announce the expansion of our Deep Energy Retrofit project to improve heat pump deep energy retrofits. This work is made possible by a new 3-year funding commitment from the Peter Gilgan Foundation, along with continued funding from the McConnell Foundation and the Trottier Family Foundation.
The funding supports our new project, Heat Pump Right-Sizing Energy Concierge and Advocacy, which addresses the need to inform and train EnerGuide energy advisors and heat pump installers to “right-size” installations to maximize energy and GHG emission savings.
The project is being undertaken with our partners: City Green Solutions (Victoria), Thermalwise Building Energy Savings (Halifax), prairieHOUSE Performance (Winnipeg), Windfall Ecology Centre, Toronto Home Retrofits, Toronto Hydro, Heating, Refrigeration & Air Conditioning Institute of Canada, and Natural Resources Canada.
HOME ENERGY AND DEEP ENERGY RETROFIT PROGRAMS
As one of the first EnerGuide service organizations in the country, GCC has played an important role in influencing the program over the past 25 years. As a not-for-profit organization, GCC sought to ensure wide coverage including in under serviced areas and communities across the province. GCC currently has 8 EnerGuide service provider regional offices and 35 EnerGuide energy advisors across Ontario.
Over the years we have built a sophisticated database that records detailed information about every energy audit completed and facilitates quality assurance. We are able to evaluate province-wide performance on home energy efficiency. In 2023 we expanded our monitoring by accessing the national EnerGuide database to analyze trends across different regions including the average energy efficiency improvements across the country. It was clear in 2022 that the country needed to accelerate home energy retrofits and deepen savings. GCC secured 3 years of funding (McConnell Foundation, Trottier Family Foundation, Peter Gilgan Foundation) to develop a Deep Energy Retrofit (DER) program. Deep Energy Retrofits are defined as saving 50% of the energy used in a house. In the first year of our DER program, we were able to network with home energy efficiency organizations across the country, analyze national EnerGuide data and publish a National Progress Report #1 (November 2023), build a DER website targeted at homeowners and service providers, and begin assembling a series of DER resources and engaging with Retrofit Canada on building a national DER case study database.
Each year we compile and analyze EnerGuide data from our own service providers. Our data from 2023 indicated early progress towards more deep energy retrofits (i.e. 4% of 2021 retrofits, 7% of 2022 retrofits, and in 2023 9% of retrofits. However, savings are declining from building envelope improvements, and are moving towards heat pumps and renewable energy. Heat pumps are an important step in decarbonizing housing, but we have found that heat pump installations in general were undersized and thereby under performing and under delivering energy, financial, and GHG reductions to homeowners. Other analysts across the country have come to the same conclusion.
Recent Comments