ecoENERGY Retrofit – Homes – 3 Year Anniversary

March 31, 2010 marked the 3rd year anniversary of the Federal ecoENERGY Retrofit – Homes program in Canada. The intent of the program is to provide financial incentives to Canadian households to undertake prescribed energy conservation investments in their homes such as replacing inefficient major ‘appliances’ such as central furnace or air conditioner with a high efficiency model, improve the attic or wall insulation, reduce air leaks through various means including replacing windows and doors with ENERGY STAR rated windows and doors, etc.

March 31, 2010 also marked the announcement that the program was “…no longer accepting bookings for pre-retrofit evaluations. The program will continue to be administered until March 31, 2011. ” No replacement program was announced’ this at a time when the United States Federal government recently announced a financial incentive grant program to encourage American households to undertake energy conservation investments in their homes. Kind of makes one scratch one’s head.

Since our household began it’s participation in the program approximately two years ago, we have written about the progress of ecoENERGY Retrofit – Homes program based on data provided to DailyHomeRenoTips.com by Natural Resources Canada. To review the statistics and our analysis thereof on the 2 year ecoENERGY Retrofit – Home anniversary, simply access the first of our 4 part series we wrote earlier this year.

We thought it would be interesting to continue this analysis upon the 3 year anniversary, even with the program now discontinued.

Who knows what we might uncover.

Here we go.

The following statistics were provided to us by Media Relations Assistant | Adjointe aux relations médias  of | de Natural Resources Canada | Resources naturelles Canada, with our sincere thanks.

First, we look at the extent of incentive (grant) payments from the program (Federal portion only) to Canadian households:

2007-08    2008-09    2009-10

# of E&F Audits 17,787        70,032       198,639

Average Value     $   1,069     $   1,149    $    1,364

Total Payout**       $      19.0     $     88.5    $     271.1

(**millions)

Look at the huge increase both the number of second / follow-up (E&F) energy audits, as well as the Total Payout, from year 2 to year 3 in the above summary. What was the cause in the dramatic increase? Well, several possibilities:

- maturity of the program leading to increased awareness and thus increased participation levels

- temporary 13 month Home Tax Credit program (expired early 2010)

- 25% across the board increase in amount of available grant payments

What about the savings in pollution generated from participation in the ecoENERGY Retrofit – Homes program over the program’s 3 years?  Here are the numbers:

2007-08     2008-09        2009-10

Marginal Savings** 59,863      263,250        577,831

Marginal Savings

per House                   3.37            3.42              2.91

Ave. Energy Savings***     48.3           51.6             44.4

(** CO2 tons / year)

(***GJ)

Again, we see a huge increase in the Marginal Savings in total. However, look at the Marginal Savings per House as well as the Average Energy Savings which both went noticeably down in year three from both years 1 and 2.

Interesting.

Select this link to were we look at more statistics on the 3 year performance of the ecoENERGY Retrofit – Homes program.

Suggested Articles For You:

• ecoENERGY Retrofit – Progress After 30 Months? – 2 (1)
• ecoENERGY Retrofit – Progress After 30 Months? – 1 (1)
• ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit – Provincial Grant Cheque Received (1)
• ecoENERGY Retrofit – Progress After 30 Months? – 3 (1)
• Home Energy Conservation Government Grants – ecoENERGY Revisited – 1 (1)