City of Brantford Council approved a staff recommendation to study the feasibility of a Home Energy Retrofit program during its Committee of the Whole, Operations meeting on Tuesday, September 3, 2024.
During the meeting, staff were directed to partner with Clean Air Partnership to submit a feasibility study application (at no cost to the City) to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ (FCM) Community Efficiency Financing Program.
If the application is approved and the study is completed, staff will return to Council in 2025 with an implementation plan for the retrofit program, including whether it should be administered through grants or other financing options such as:
- A rebate program where the homeowner receives a specific amount back from the municipality for an energy retrofit project.
- Bill financing which allows the utilities to incur the cost of retrofits, and is then repaid by homeowners on their utility bills.
- Third-party financing where municipalities partner with credit unions or banks to provide loans to homeowners, or
- Local improvement charges (LICs), also known as Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing.
Following the study, the City will be eligible to receive capital funding support from FCM to cover the City’s portion of the Home Energy Retrofit program, and once its implemented, the program will help support residents in making improvements to their home.
In Brantford, residential houses currently contribute 19 per cent of the total community GHG emissions and release 1.5 to 20 tonnes of CO2e per year. If efficiency upgrades are not made, the City will be at risk of being unable to reach its net-zero targets by 2050.
By making these efficiency upgrades it will not only lower greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and utility bills, but it will also provide resilience to extreme weather events and power outages.
“Potential improvements to existing homes include: adding or improving insulation; draft proofing; replacing windows and doors; installation of high-efficiency furnaces/boilers/air conditioners; installing air/ground source heat pumps; installing high efficiency/tankless water heaters; installing waste heat recovery systems; implementing solar/PV hot water systems; electric vehicle charging; and installing low flow water fixtures,” read the staff submitted report.
Councillor Mandy Samwell said she was happy to see the report and recommendation come forward and asked for a timeline regarding the implementation of the program.
“I just wanted to say how pleased I was to see this report come forward,” she said. “Providing opportunities for retrofitting to improve the cost of energy for citizens, is something that’s very important to me. The one question I have is, after the feasibility step, what is the timeline for the next step to build and implant a program?”
Gagan Batra, Manager of Business Support and Sustainability for the City of Brantford, said the study, if approved, would take about a year, after which it would take around six months to apply for capital costs through the FCM.
“Considering the length of time it typically takes for federal approval, I’m expecting rollout probably around 2026,” she said.
Councillor Dan McCreary then asked if Batra had a preference, or how she thought the money should flow through the City and to the residents that are making the upgrades.
She said that while she didn’t currently have a personal preference, other studies show that there are few different avenues.
“So, you can go with a rebate program or a loan program through local improvement charges, or you can do a straight up grant program to cover part of the costs. The feasibility study is going to give us the recommendation based on our housing stock, and in particular, the income comparison of residents here and what they would be best to apply for,” she said. “However, the rebate program is something that’s been cited as not being as great as the other options because of the upfront costs, especially for retrofits like solar paneling or building envelope upgrades, those can be quite high and that’s not conducive to residents that are of lower income who may have some of those older homes that are in need of those retrofits.”
The vote to approve the item and its recommendation was then carried unanimously, and will come before council for final approval come Tuesday, September 24, 2024.
