On Monday of this week, I was approached by a reporter for CBC’s The National news program to discuss different aspects of Canada’s ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit program.
Reporter Ron Charles was interested in possible ways the ecoENERGY program could be improved in advance of the Federal Government’s Budget, both from my own experience as a Canadian home owner who had participated in the program as well as the experiences from visitors to our site, DailyHomeRenoTips.com.
So I invited Ron and his camera crew to our home.
You can see the full 2 minute segment, which aired on The National Tuesday evening of this week, by using this link to the Eco Extension? segment on CBC’s web site, CBC.ca. The portion in which we appear starts at about 1 minute into the segment.
Thank you to Ron for asking us in the first place. It was an interesting and fun experience. Perhaps we will be asked to do it again some time in the future.
The points which we made to improve the participation levels (less than 5% after a full two years) included:
Make It Simpler
One reason why the now discontinued Home Renovation Tax Credit was successful as far as participation was that it was simple. The different types of expenditures included in the program were more generalized and therefore much easier to understand than those in the ecoENERGY program for home.
Financial Payback in 5 Years or Less
Households have plenty of more immediate needs for their disposable income than energy conservation devices. Food, mortgage, utilities, transportation, clothing, children’s education and retirement savings. Heck, even the RRSP program provides an almost immediate return on contributions through the refund on the person’s income tax return.
In our opinion, the majority of households will not invest large sums of money on energy conservations devices unless they are confident they will recoup their initial outlay in 5 years or less. Government grants within the ecoENERGY program need to address this need.
Include More Energy Conservation Products
During the segment we showed Ron the two energy conservation products we really like and use in our own home but which are not included within the ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit program.
First was the solar air heater. It produces air heated by the sun to supplement a home’s primary heating system. However, for us it will not provide a 5 year payback; it was just such a great concept, was simple to install (it took one full day) and produces heat without using any natural gas or home heating oil or electricity (except for the fan within the unit). If interested you can read about our experiences installing and using our solar air heater here in our Solar Air Heater series of articles.
The second were the exterior solar window blinds on our large south facing windows. This product was very simple to install (it took only a couple of hours, if that), reduces the temperature inside our home by 15 degrees Fahrenheit (per our digital temperature gauge) and paid for itself after the first summer by significantly reduced air conditioning bills. You can read about our experiences installing and using our exterior window shared from EZ Snap here in our Exterior Window Solar Blinds series of articles.
Make Both Energy Audits No Cost to Participating Households
Many, many utilities and cities in the USA provide a full home energy audit at no cost. With participation levels at around only 5% after the first 2 full years of the ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit program, one has to wonder how many more households would participate if they did not have to pay the $325 (approximately) for the first energy audited and another $175 (approximately) for the follow-up or second energy audit. Sure, many Provincial Governments, like Ontario’s, will refund $150 to the household for the cost of the first energy audit.
However, the concept of home energy audit is relatively new in Canada. And, with the existing complexities of the program, having to pay any money for the home energy audits does not motivate households to participate, even though it is to their own benefit in the long term if they do.
What are your thoughts on the ecoENERGY Residential Retrofit program? What do you think could be done to make more households participate? I’d like to know your thoughts.
