Government of Canada’s New Canada Green Buildings Strategy to Help Canadians Save Money on Their Energy Bills

From: Indigenous Services Canada

July 17th, 2024

The Canada Green Buildings Strategy (CGBS) introduces the Government of Canada’s vision and next steps to improving energy efficiency in Canada’s homes and buildings, which will in turn cut energy bills for Canadians and support good jobs from coast to coast to coast.

Today, The Honourable Patty Hajdu, Minister of Indigenous Services and Minister responsible for FedNor, on behalf of the Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, announced the First Green Building Strategy.

As part of the CGBS, the Government of Canada introduced the $800-million Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program (CGHAP) to help low-to-median-income Canadians, including tenants, upgrade their homes to save money on their energy bills and cut pollution. This new program will replace the Canada Greener Homes Grant (CGHG) with more comprehensive support for the installation of retrofits, at no charge to participating households. Using a ‘direct install’ model, where the retrofits are managed and delivered by third parties, this program could provide participating households with support up to four times more valuable than the former grant program. Recommended retrofits will be determined by experienced energy efficiency professionals, enabling each participant to receive what their home needs and making their homes more affordable and comfortable.

The CGHAP builds on the progress made to date through the CGHG, which has already helped 240,000 homeowners install heat pumps, windows and doors, and insulation through an average grant of $4,400 per household. Each year a CGHG household will save an average of nearly $400 on their energy bills and reduce their emissions by 1.18 tonnes of CO2. Over the next couple of years, the CGHG will continue to help hundreds of thousands more program participants complete retrofit projects that will further reduce emissions and energy consumption.

In addition to CGHAP, the Oil to Heat Pump Affordability Program and the Canada Greener Homes Loan will continue to help Canadians reduce their home energy costs and make the switch to electric heat pumps. To date, nearly 160,000 heat pumps installations have been supported by federal funding. The impact of this momentum is particularly important for households that are fully heating with oil, as they could save from $1,500 to $4,500 per year on their home energy bills by switching to a cold climate electric heat pump.

The Government of Canada has also committed to introducing a regulatory framework to phase out the installation of expensive and polluting oil heating systems in new construction, as early as 2028. This phase-out would include necessary exclusions for regions with insufficient access to the electricity grid and where standby back-up heating fuel is required.

The Government of Canada is also greening its own infrastructure, with the goal of fully meeting the energy needs of federal buildings with clean energy sources, by eliminating the use of fossil fuels for space and water heating where possible and building net-zero from the start.

To help develop a sustainable foundation for years to come, the Government of Canada’s new Buy Clean approach will build on Canada’s clean manufacturing advantage. The approach supports a shift to low-carbon materials and design through federal construction procurements and public infrastructure asset investments, which reduces the full life cycle of emissions from building materials and projects and fosters manufacturing competitiveness and jobs.

Canadians want to live in sustainable communities: places with clean air, affordable homes and good jobs. The Government of Canada’s investments in greening buildings and switching from fossil fuels to clean electricity are key to lowering GHG emissions while supporting a strong and affordable economy.

Quotes

“Energy efficiency means cost savings for Canadians. At a time when we are facing challenges with affordability and climate change, this plan meets Canadians where they are at and delivers the action they need, at the pace and scale they are demanding. Canada’s first-ever Canada Green Buildings Strategy is a plan to save Canadians money, create jobs and seize the economic opportunities that a clean and sustainable economy presents.”

The Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Government of Canada
“As we work towards ending Canada’s housing crisis, we need to ensure the longevity of new and existing buildings by making them more energy efficient and resilient to the impacts of climate change. We are proud to announce these investments today that will go a long way in doing just that across the country.”

The Honourable Sean Fraser, Minister of  Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada
“The Canada Green Buildings Strategy is all about building more energy efficient and affordable homes and buildings. Cutting the wasted energy from the heating and cooling of our buildings is a win-win, both for lower energy bills and less harmful pollution going into our atmosphere. Already in Canada, we have seen a tidal shift in the adoption of heat pumps at a household level, as well as clean energy solutions for large commercial buildings and industry. It is through close collaboration of provinces and territories, municipalities, Indigenous Peoples, businesses, and individuals over the coming years that we can keep this progress going and make a big dent in the emissions coming from out buildings sector.”

The Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change
“This new  strategy will help people in Thunder Bay save on their heating bills. It’s a more flexible solution that will better protect the environment and create sustainable good-paying jobs for families right here in our region.”

The Honourable Patty Hajdu, Minister of Indigenous Services and Minister responsible for FedNor
“Our government is taking ambitious steps to achieve net zero by 2050 through our Greening Government Strategy. By implementing a Buy Clean approach to a real property portfolio of over 34,000 buildings nationwide, we are maximizing energy efficiency while minimizing the environmental impact of construction materials and design. Through these efforts, we are leading the fight against climate change.”

The Honourable Anita Anand, President of the Treasury Board of Canada and Minister responsible for the Centre for Greening Government

Quick facts

• Buildings are Canada’s third-largest emitter of GHG emissions. Nearly all building emissions – over 96 percent – come from space and water heating. To tackle this, major changes in the building sector are underway, with the potential to create hundreds of thousands of jobs and help Canadians save money on their energy bills.
• Retrofitting existing buildings, building green from the start, and choosing alternatives to fossil fuel heating equipment, such as electric heat pumps, will help Canada achieve its net-zero commitments by 2050. There is also a need to build stronger to better equip communities to withstand the effects of climate change.
• To reach Canada’s climate goals, reduce energy bills and build up Canada’s supply of energy-efficient and resilient building stock, there is a need to accelerate the retrofit of approximately 10 million buildings and construct millions of new net-zero buildings in the coming decades.
• Canadian households spend an average of $2,200 a year on home energy costs and these costs are significantly higher in homes that heat with oil and in older homes with poor insulation, ventilation and heating/cooling systems.
• The Canada Green Buildings Strategy is a commitment in the 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan: a sector-by-sector approach to reach Canada’s climate target of cutting emissions by at least 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, laying the foundation to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
• Retrofits under the Canada Greener Homes Grants have been issued to 240,000 Canadian households, with an average grant of $4,400 per household. These retrofits are removing over 306,540 metric tonnes of GHG emissions, equivalent to taking nearly 94,000 fossil fueled powered vehicles off the road.
• The Canada Green Buildings Strategy is funded as a part of Budget 2024 and is mentioned in Solving the Housing Crisis – Canada’s Housing Plan. It complements Canada’s National Adaptation Strategy, which lays out a framework to reduce the risk of climate-related disasters, improve health outcomes, protect nature and biodiversity, build and maintain climate resilient infrastructure, and support a strong economy and workers. New and ongoing federal initiatives are already starting to put the Strategy’s vision in practice.

Associated links

• The Canada Green Buildings Strategy: Transforming Canada’s buildings sector for a net-zero and resilient future
• Codes Acceleration Fund
• Deep Retrofit Accelerator Initiative
• Retrofit Hub (canada.ca)
• Toward net-zero homes and communities
• Greener Neighbourhoods Pilot Program
• ENERGY STAR Canada
• Oil to Heat Pump Affordability Program (OHPA)
• Oil to Heat Pump Affordability program at a glance – June 2024

Contacts
Natural Resources Canada
Media Relations
343-292-6100
media@nrcan-rncan.gc.ca

Joanna Sivasankaran
Director of Communications
Office of the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Canada
Joanna.Sivasankaran@nrcan-rncan.gc.ca

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