The Canada Greener Homes Grant accelerated the pace of retrofits, and we are excited to dig further into the impacts of this program with the April 3 release of our 2025 National Progress Report on Retrofitting Canada’s Homes. Register here for our Voices for Action webinar to join us for a special panel discussion as we release that report.
We were curious about how Canadians are pursuing Deep Energy Retrofits, so we created this new mapping resource that plots data from 2020-2023 across the country. A Deep Energy Retrofit — or DER for short — is a retrofit that achieves 50 per cent or greater energy savings. DERs are important because this degree of efficiency gain is required — especially for many older homes — to support Canada’s 2050 emissions reduction targets.
Concentrations of DERs
Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) provides data gathered through the EnerGuide Rating System (ERS). Using that data for the years of 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, we plotted data points on two maps. This first map shows which postal codes feature concentrations of deep energy retrofits: from grey (zero DERs) to purple (>100 DERs concentrated in the postal code).
This second map shows where the best-performing retrofits were located: from red (50-59 per cent energy savings) to blue (near or at net-zero).
The first map shows high concentrations of deep energy retrofit activity in PEI, Nova Scotia, southeastern Quebec, and Vancouver Island. In the second map, net-zero energy retrofits (in blue) are concentrated in the Maritimes (outside of Newfoundland and Labrador), Southern Ontario, the southern Prairies, Vancouver Island, and B.C.’s Lower Mainland.
Champions
Prince Edward Island had the highest concentrations of deep energy retrofits, followed closely by Nova Scotia.
Both PEI and Nova Scotia have the highest rates of residential oil heating out of all the provinces. Residents likely appreciate the value of replacing highly expensive, inefficient, and emissions-intensive heating oil with high-efficiency, low-cost, electric heat pumps. Much of the deep energy savings can be attributed to a high volume of fuel-switching from oil heating (which averages ~85% efficiency) to electric heat pumps (which can range between ~200-300+% efficiency).
That said, there is more to this Maritimes success story than just the cost savings behind fuel switching. Many studies in Canada and elsewhere have confirmed that the greatest barriers to deep energy retrofits are financial. Alongside Nova Scotia, PEI has some of the highest rates of energy poverty among the provinces. The cost of these projects is often prohibitively high for many homeowners.
The federal Oil to Heat Pump Affordability Program (OHPA) provides qualified households with upwards of $15,000 to switch from oil to a heat pump. This OHPA grant can also be combined with the Canada Greener Homes Grant (CGHG), allowing some households to qualify for up to $30,000 in rebates.
These two programs (OHPA and CGHG) were geared towards addressing situations like those in PEI and Nova Scotia. The combination has been successful in improving the financial accessibility and uptake of deep energy retrofitting in these provinces.
Prince Edward Island also offers free insulation, heat pumps, and electric water heater upgrades to income-qualified households. According to Efficiency Canada’s 2024 Canadian Energy Efficiency Scorecard, Prince Edward Island also reduced fossil fuel demand by over 4.5 per cent—one of the highest rates in all of Canada!
Areas for improvement
We cannot paint the Maritimes with one brush when it comes to successful retrofit incentive programming. As Efficiency Canada’s 2024 Canadian Energy Scorecard shows, while PEI and Nova Scotia invest nearly $100 per person in low-income energy efficiency programs, Newfoundland and Labrador invest only $11 per person.
Similarly, deep energy retrofit gaps in the prairie provinces appear to align with comparatively low investment in energy efficiency programming: Alberta is the only province in Canada without utility-driven energy efficiency programs, and Saskatchewan has the second-lowest per capita spend on energy efficiency of all the provinces.
Efficiency Canada’s 2024 Canadian Energy Efficiency Scorecard further shows the lessons we can learn from those gaps on the map.
Further Reading:
- ‘Retrofitting Canada’s Homes: Progress Report #1’ and ‘Rénovation écoénergétique des logements canadiens: Rapport d’état n° 1’ by Green Communities Canada. Retrieved from:
- ‘What is a Deep Energy Retrofit?’ by Green Communities Canada. Retrieved from: https://deepenergyretrofits.ca/what-is-a-deep-energy-retrofit/
- ‘Population and dwelling counts: Canada and forward sortation areas ©’ (2021) by Statistics Canada. Retrieved from: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=9810001901
- ‘2021 Census Forward Sortation Areas’ by ArcGIS. Retrieved from:
- ‘Energy Poverty in Canada: A CUSP Backgrounder’ (October 2019) by Canadian Urban Sustainability Practitioners. Retrieved from: https://www.energypoverty.ca/backgrounder.pdf
- ‘A Time for Urgent Action: the 2024 report of the National Advisory Council on Poverty’ by Canada’s National Advisory Council on Poverty (NACP). Retrieved from: https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/programs/poverty-reduction/national-advisory-council/reports/2024-annual.html#h2.8
- ‘2024 Canadian Energy Efficiency Scorecard’ by Efficiency Canada. Retrieved from: https://www.scorecard.efficiencycanada.org/
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- Scorecard 2022:
https://www.efficiencycanada.org/scorecard-2022/
- Scorecard 2022:
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