January 20th, 2022
By Lauren Clark, Project Coordinator, EOS Eco-Energy
Back in the fall, Canadians across the country experienced extreme weather with flooding and devastation in BC, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. As reiterated in the latest IPCC report, these storms will get more intense and more frequent because of climate change. The need to reduce emissions has never been more urgent and increasing energy efficiency is a critical part of the solution.
EOS Eco-Energy knows the importance of energy efficiency. We are an award-winning environmental charity, based in Sackville, New Brunswick. For more than 17 years we have been helping people in our region save energy by organizing educational workshops, facilitating draft proofing work parties, sharing energy saving tips, and performing energy retrofits for homeowners. We also work on issues including water quality monitoring, climate change adaptation, promoting renewable energy, composting, and more.
Back in November of 2021, Efficiency Canada released its 3rd annual Provincial Energy Efficiency Scorecard. The Scorecard results have some important lessons for New Brunswick. Saving energy will become more important with the federal government requiring a coal phase-out by 2030 and rising energy costs.
New Brunswick is in 6th place, out of the 10 Canadian provinces this year, which is an improvement from last year’s Scorecard, when New Brunswick came in 8th place. Each province is given a score out of 100, based on 5 categories: Programs, Enabling, Buildings, Transport, and Industry. We scored relatively well in the Industry and Enabling sectors, but fell short in the other categories, particularly Buildings.
One important change is that the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board approved a plan for smart meters to be installed in New Brunswick, starting in 2022. These have the potential to support energy efficiency efforts by providing real-time analysis of energy use. If used strategically, these meters can help us identify the buildings most in need of energy upgrades or with malfunctioning systems and help customers with features like high bill alerts.
This past year, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) awarded more than half of their energy related grants to New Brunswick energy efficiency projects, which is something to celebrate.
But what more can New Brunswick do? Some opportunities available to New Brunswick include Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing, mandatory energy labeling for buildings, updating building codes and increasing low-income support.
PACE financing would allow more New Brunswick homeowners to afford renewable energy projects, financing the cost via a surcharge on their property tax bills. It is also beneficial because the loan is connected to the property, not to the homeowner – so those energy savings can continue to be financed, even if the building changes ownership.
New Brunswick supported the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change, which included requiring energy use labeling for buildings. Mandating energy labels when a house is sold would incentivize the market to value energy savings. Also, if energy ratings were easily accessible, like they are on the city of Edmonton’s Home Energy Map, it would encourage competition between homeowners, which would help to drive down emissions from the housing sector.
The province of New Brunswick recently adopted the 2011 National Energy Code for Buildings, even though two newer versions of the code are available. They also adopted the 2015 National Building Code only in January of 2021. Newer building codes incorporate better energy efficiency measures which make them a key component of the emission reduction equation. New national model building codes are expected soon, which will use a “tiered” approach to eventually reach a code where buildings are required to be net-zero energy ready, which was also agreed upon in the Pan-Canadian framework. So, New Brunswick should start planning now to make all new buildings net zero.
New Brunswick needs to increase efforts to help low-income residents. Low-income programs saw a large spending increase recently, but we are still far behind the other Maritime provinces. 37% of households in New Brunswick are spending more than 6% of after-tax income on home energy costs. This amounts to 114,085 households that are experiencing energy poverty (Energy Poverty in Canada: A CUSP Backgrounder. October 2019).
Implementing these policies would help EOS tremendously in the work that we do and allow New Brunswickers to be more comfortable in their homes and contribute to reducing emissions, as we aim for net-zero.
