Government of Canada’s new Green Buildings Strategy: A Plan to help Canadians save money on their energy bills

From: Department of Justice Canada

News release

July 16, 2024 – Toronto, Ontario – Department of Justice Canada

Today, the Honourable Arif Virani, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, along with the Honourable Kamal Khera, Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities of Canada and Julie Dabrusin, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources and to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, on behalf of the Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, announced the launch of the Canada Green Buildings Strategy (the Strategy) to save Canadians money on their energy bills, create good jobs, and seize the economic opportunity the clean economy presents for Canada. The Strategy will improve energy efficiency in Canada’s homes and buildings, with a key focus on addressing the great challenges of our time: affordability, the housing crisis, and climate change. 

Delivering the Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program (CGHAP)

The Strategy introduced the $800 million Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program (CGHAP) to help low- to median-income Canadians, including renters, upgrade their homes to save money on their energy bills. This new program will replace the $5,000 grant maximum of the Canada Greener Homes Grant 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 households with up to four times more support than the former grant program.

Recommended retrofits such as heat pumps for heating and cooling, better insulation, windows, doors, or ventilation, will be determined by experienced energy efficiency professionals, ensuring everyone receives what their home needs and to be more affordable and comfortable.  

The Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program builds on the progress made to date through the Canada Greener Homes Grant, 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, those homeowners save an average of nearly $400 on their energy bills and reduce their emissions by 1.18 tonnes. Over the next couple of years, the Canada Greener Homes Grant will continue to help hundreds of thousands more existing program participants complete retrofit projects that will help them save money on their energy bills.

Additional Measures

  1. In addition to Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program, 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. When switching to an electric heat pump, households that were fully heating with oil, save from $1,500 to $4,500 per year on their home energy bills.
  2. Ensuring new homes and buildings are energy efficient from the beginning will make buildings affordable to operate and maintain. The Government of Canada has 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.
  3. The Government of Canada is also greening federal 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. The federal government is leading by example and is on track to achieve its goal of reducing emissions by 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2025 – saving taxpayers money every year.
  4. The low-carbon economy presents an enormous opportunity for Canadian workers and businesses. To keep Canada’s position as a supplier of choice for clean materials like low-carbon concrete and wood, the Government of Canada’s new Buy Clean approach will shift to low-carbon materials and design through federal construction procurements and public infrastructure asset investments, such as public buildings and public transit projects, which cuts pollution and fosters manufacturing competitiveness and jobs for generations to come. This approach will build on Canada’s clean manufacturing advantage.

Today in Toronto, the Government of Canada also announced over $25 million in related investments in Ontario-based proponents, including;

  • Over $13 million for The Atmospheric Fund to decarbonize and improve the comfort and performance of apartments, condominiums and social housing buildings in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area;
  • Nearly $12 million for Purpose Building Inc. for an innovative green building project through the Deep Retrofit Acceleration Initiative;
  • Nearly $370,000 for the Canadian Standards Association to advance energy efficiency standards to improve energy use in products sold across Canada;
  • $640,000 to Volta Research Inc. to establish a platform to support builders, energy advisors, and others adopting upper-tier building codes and construction practices that are more sustainable, affordable, and resilient;
  • Over $585,000 for Sustainable Buildings Canada to encourage the adoption of the highest tiers of the 2020 National Building Code and the 2020 National Energy Code for Buildings, accelerating the modernization of Canadian buildings.

To succeed, close collaboration will be needed between the federal government, provinces, territories, municipalities, Indigenous communities and organizations, businesses, financial institutions, and industry. As Canada builds stronger communities and with more housing at prices people can afford, the Canada Green Buildings Strategy will ensure we are doing so in a way that cuts energy bills, enhances creates good-paying jobs for Canadian communities, and makes our homes and buildings more comfortable, efficient, and resilient.

Quotes

"Making our homes and buildings more energy-efficient is important for the environment, our society, and the economy. The Canada Green Buildings Strategy focuses on affordable and efficient energy upgrades for communities across the country. This is a big step towards reaching our sustainability goals and creating a better future for everyone. It ensures that all of us can live in homes that are safe, affordable, and environmentally friendly.”

The Honourable Arif Virani, P.C., M.P.
Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

“Making life more affordable for Canadian families is our government’s top priority. With the Canada Green Buildings Strategy, we’re helping  Canadians, including tenants, upgrade their homes so they can save money on their energy bills and cut pollution. We know that less carbon emissions and green buildings provide better quality of life, and those investments will create healthier, cleaner communities, and a fairer future for every generation."

The Honourable Kamal Khera
Minister of Minister of Diversity, Inclusion and Persons with Disabilities

“Canada’s Green Buildings Strategy is a plan to cut energy bills, make our homes more resilient, create strong Canadian supply chains, and support good jobs in every community – including right here in Toronto. The centrepiece of this effort is the Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program, which will help renters and homeowners to upgrade their homes and save money.”

Julie Dabrusin
Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources and to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change
Member of Parliament for Toronto-Danforth

“As a leading urban college in Canada, George Brown applauds a national Green Buildings Strategy, which aligns with our mission to educate and innovate while protecting our environment. Our landmark mass-timber academic building, Limberlost Place, which is set to open in 2025 at our Toronto Waterfront campus, exemplifies global best practices in sustainable design, technology, and construction. Limberlost Place will not only be climate-resilient and net-zero carbon emissions but sets a new standard in sustainable infrastructure for large institutional buildings.”

Michelle McCollum
Vice-President, Facilities and Sustainability, George Brown College

Quick facts

  • Totalling $903.5 million, 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.

  • 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.

  • The Canada Green Building Council estimates that ambitious action on buildings could create up to 1.5 million jobs and inject $150 billion into Canada’s economy by 2030.

  • 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.

  • As of June 8, 2024, retrofits from the Canada Greener Homes Grant alone are removing over 306,540 metric tonnes of GHG emissions, equivalent to taking nearly 94,000 fossil fueled powered vehicles off the road.

Associated links

Contacts

For more information, media may contact:

Chantalle Aubertin
Deputy Director, Communications
Office of the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
613-992-6568
Chantalle.Aubertin@justice.gc.ca

Media Relations
Department of Justice Canada
613-957-4207
media@justice.gc.ca

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

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

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