Daily Home Renovation Tips

Yesterday we wrote about the Provincial and Territory participation rates  after the first 18 months of the ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit program.

Today we want to examine more of the program’s 18 months participation data which was provided to DailyHomeRenoTips.com by the Media Relations group of Natural Resources Canada with our sincere thanks.

After the first year and a half, the program has paid out to participating Canadian home owners energy conservation grants totalling $45.5 Million. While this seems short of the $40 Million each year of the current 4 year program, it must be remembered that home owners have up to 18 months from the first energy efficient assessment to have the second, so there will be a natural time lag.

Curious about the average amount of Federal grant money paid to those home owners who have had the second or ‘E’ energy efficient assessment? How about $1,053, which is pretty close to the target from prior conversations with Natural Resources Canada officials.

There are some differences in the average grant money paid by Province and Territory, but from what I am seeing it is based upon certain Provinces and Territories having very few home owners who have completed both energy efficiency assessments that are statistically scewing the results.

What about the actual reduction in polluting emissions? Well, the marginal CO2 savings from the energy conservation measures implemented by Canadian home owners having the second, or ‘E’, energy efficiency assessment are estimated at 141,508.06 for the first 18 months of the program.

Now, when our home (built in 1987) received it’s D energy efficiency assessment under the program it receives and EnerGuide Rating. Here is the rating chart from our home’s D report:

Our home’s current rating per the D assessment 70 is while the Ultimate (’U') rating is 80 for our home should we complete every single recommendation on the D assessment report was. Please see this prior article on a more detailed explanation of the EnerGuide rating.

For the homes across Canada who have received both the D and E energy assessment during the first 18 months of the ecoENERGY program, below summarizes the EnerGuide rating from the D assessment, the Ultimate rating for those same homes and the realized rating from the E assessment:

Home Built Period     D / U / E

• Before 1945          43 / 65 / 61 
• 1945-1959            55 / 71 / 67
• 1960-1969            60 / 73 /69
• 1970-1979            63 / 74 / 72
• 1980-1989           65 / 74 / 72
• 1990-1999           68 / 75 / 74

What does the above data tell us? Well, as far as our particular home, built in 1987, we are not too bad as is with an EnerGuide rating of 70 with the average of homes built in the same decade having an average EnerGuide rating of 65.

More generally, the obvious trend is that the older the home then the likely the less energy efficient that home will be. From the above, homes built in the 1990’s with an EnerGuide average rating of 68 from the D assessment are currently more energy efficient than those built before 1945 with an average (both improved construction methods and less worn building materials accounting for the continued improvement over the decades in the EnerGuide ratings of newer homes).

What I find interesting in the above is that while the Ultimate, or U, EnerGuide rating improves or increases from one decade to the next, it’s rate of increase slows down. For example the U rating for homes built in 1960 is a 73 while for those built in the 1990’s is only a 75. On the one hand caulking is caulking is caulking regardless if it is applied around a gap in the exterior wall in a 40 year old home or a 10 year old home.

However, what that tend to indicate to me is that home owners are less likely to be motivated to participate and to pay for energy conservation improvements the newer their home as they are already more energy efficient than older homes. I would have thought that there is only so much that can be done to older construction and that newer homes would be able to achieve significantly higher EnerGuide ratings, that is they would be able to be more energy efficient, after implementing their specific recommendations.

Additionally, notice that the achieved EnerGuide ratings for home who have completed both assessments is less than the Ultimate EnerGuide rating. What that means is that home owners are not completing all of the energy conservation recommendations identified in the energy efficiency assessment report from the D assessment.

Why?

Well, one reason is that not all energy conservation tactics result in the same degree of reduction in energy consumption.

Another reason is that the ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit program does not provide the same degree of financial incentive for all of it’s eligible energy conservation measure.

For example, installing an ENERGY STAR rated window will get you $30 from the ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit program. First, this is regardless of the size of the window. The larger the window the more that the window will cost. Second, how much does an ENERGY STAR replacement window cost? One of the smaller ENERGY STAR rated replacement window we had installed in our home last fall cost around $500 … yes, for one of the smaller sized ones!

In tomorrow’s third and final article in this short series on the 18 month results of the ecoENEGY Residential Retrofit program we will look at just what energy conservation recommendations Canadian home owners participating in the program are actually undertaking.

To continue with the 3rd article in this short series, simply select this link.