Home upgrades of any sort can be expensive.  Home upgrades around household emissions reduction can be even more costly due to the magnitude of certain suggested options, including solar panels and heating and cooling equipment.

We’d like to share the steps involved in taking advantage of the current programs / opportunities being offered to homeowners.  The benefits are greater if you are served by Enbridge or one of the companies that is under the Enbridge umbrella; however, any homeowner can reap some of the benefits—no matter what it is a win-win situation right now.

The aforementioned benefits come in two forms: rebates for selected approved work, and an interest-free loan, also for approved work.  So clearly the key is ‘approved work.’  The steps are as follows:

1. Have a home energy audit performed by an approved company.  There are companies out there fraudulently advertising home energy audits so be careful when you choose.  If they are on this list of approved organizations you can proceed with confidence.  This process will examine the energy efficiency of your home and result in a detailed report about upgrades you can make to improve it.  Areas covered include things like the draftiness of your home, the home insulation rating, whether your heating and cooling system could be improved, and much much more.


2. Once you receive your home energy audit report you are able to proceed with upgrades.  For Enbridge customers this means that you are part of the Home Efficiency Rebate Plus (HER+) program, a partnership with Enbridge and the Government of Canada’s Greener Homes Grant program. This allows for up to $10,000 in rebates according to the upgrades you choose to do. If you are not an Enbridge customer then the Canada Greener Homes Grant will be the program you want, and it provides up to $5,000 in rebates. If you are an Enbridge customer ensure that the company who does your audit properly enrolls you in the HER+ program when they send you your report.


3. Now the fun begins: it’s decision time.  Most people will have limitations on what they choose to do based on the costs, ourselves included.  However, the interest-free, 10-year payback loan cinched it for us—in fact, we have opted to do enough of the recommendations that we are owed more in rebates than the program allows!  We discussed our options and decided that even if an upgrade won’t get us a rebate because of being maxed out it was still worth doing, both for our own comfort and future savings as well as for the health of the planet.  Every household that becomes less reliant on fossil fuels is making a difference.
   Having identified that money is the most likely deterrent to making significant upgrades, we now come to a very exciting opportunity that didn’t previously exist as part of various greener-home programs: the Government of Canada is offering an interest-free loan with a 10-year payback period to help homeowners complete their upgrades, or some of them anyhow.  The loan is anywhere between $5,000 minimum and $40,000 maximum and is SPECIFICALLY for upgrades outlined in your home energy audit report, which is why this is the critical first step.


4. If you intend to take advantage of this loan it is important that you do not do any of the work first.  For this part of the process the steps are:
   
   • Get exact quotes for the upgrade you plan to do.  For us we decided on a new heat pump and air handler unit, a heat-pump hot water tank, several new windows, and upgraded insulation.  We did our research and chose the companies we wanted to work with and had them come give us detailed quotes.
   
   
   • Apply for the loan—this was a straightforward process but you do need to have some information on hand to complete the application.  It’s the same as any loan application in the sense that you need things such as proof of identity, proof of income, etc.  You also need the quotes you obtained in order to upload them and to have a precise ‘ask’ in your application. The loan is specific to the upgrades you provide quotes for and not just a general pool of money you can use for whatever upgrades you later choose.  You can neither add to the loan amount nor get a second loan, so be as thorough as possible in determining what you wish to do and to ask for.
   
   
   • Wait until you receive your loan approval before completing the upgrades you included in your application.  This is not mandatory but is a safeguard in case your application isn’t approved.  We had enough confidence we would be approved that we went ahead and booked things beforehand, including a couple which required deposits; however, if we had not been approved we would have been committed to paying for the upgrades we initiated without the benefit of 10 years worth of interest-free money! 
   
   
   • Be aware that the money doesn’t get delivered to you until you have completed your upgrades and done a post-upgrade home energy audit. This is critical: you need to be prepared to pay for the upgrades out-of-pocket initially and then get the loan money delivered.  The exception to this is that money you paid out in deposits before applying can be advanced from your approved loan total if you include those deposits in your application.
   
   
   • Enjoy doing significant upgrades all at once, without having to save up from year-to-year to do larger upgrades (Windows & doors? Solar panels? Heat pump?).
   
   


5. Once you are certain you have completed everything you intend to do that is rebate-eligible, get your post-retrofit home energy audit done.  In this stage they will verify the work you had done, so be sure to have detailed invoices, leave stickers on new windows, etc—carefully read the expectations on the website detailing the process.

That’s it.  You now have a much more energy-efficient home, one that will be more comfortable and less expensive to run, but without having to do the upgrades in a piecemeal approach.  More information and links can also be found on our Resources page.