What changed in Canadian energy efficiency — residential, commercial and industrial, coast to coast — when it changed, and the link to the page it came from.
This page is the reason to come back. Every entry states what changed, the date it changed, who published it, and a direct link to that page. We check each one again on a schedule and show the date of the last check, so you can see for yourself how fresh this is rather than taking our word for it.
Because nobody else does it in one place, and because the people this industry is made of — advisors, installers, envelope crews, small service organizations, commercial energy managers — find out that a programme has closed when a customer tells them. That is not an information problem. It is a representation problem.
The final submission deadline has passed. The grant that created the modern Canadian retrofit workforce, and the EnerGuide evaluation market that sat under it, no longer accepts anything. Applications already in the system continue to be processed.
Natural Resources Canada↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
The interest-free loan was closed to new applications abruptly in September 2025. Previously approved applications were unaffected. Energy advisers were among the first to say publicly what it would do to the workforce, and they were not consulted before it happened.
Canada's National Observer↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
The Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program is the surviving federal retrofit programme. It covers the full cost of recommended retrofits for eligible low- to median-income households and is delivered through provincial and territorial partners rather than directly. Different eligibility, different delivery, a different market.
Natural Resources Canada↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
The programme that paid up to $10,000, and more in some provinces and territories under co-delivery agreements, stopped accepting applications on 31 July 2026.
Natural Resources Canada↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
The multi-unit affordable housing retrofit stream stopped accepting applications on 20 January 2026. Submissions already made remain under review.
Natural Resources Canada↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
The $600 assessment rebate survives, but the obligation is going. Attic insulation — the highest-volume measure in the programme — now pays through a single-upgrade path with no evaluation at all. No end date for the programme has ever been published; the risk to advisors is not the programme closing, it is the programme keeping the money and dropping the advisor.
Home Renovation Savings (Enbridge Gas and Save on Energy)↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
Attic insulation moved from $1,000 to $1,250 and smart thermostats from $100 to $125. Heat pumps remain up to $12,000 and solar with battery storage up to $10,000 on the no-assessment path; insulation across attic, wall, foundation and exposed floor reaches $7,700 on the assessment path.
Home Renovation Savings↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
From 1 April 2026 eligible property assessment is capped at $1,200,000 for Levels 1 and 2 and $1,820,000 for Level 3. For applications received on or after 6 July 2026 an eligibility code is valid for three months from approval and the rebate must be claimed within six months of the invoice date. Maximum support stays high — up to $13,000 on a central ducted heat pump replacing oil — but the paperwork window is now short enough to lose a job on.
CleanBC · Better Homes BC↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
Government assistance for converting a central oil or propane heating system ended on 31 March 2026; work had to be complete and the application filed before that date. Chauffez vert was the fuel-switching layer stacked under Rénoclimat and LogisVert, so anyone quoting an oil-to-electric conversion in Quebec is rebuilding the stack from scratch.
Gouvernement du Québec↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
Rénoclimat pays on the basis of pre- and post-retrofit evaluations carried out by advisors on Quebec's own published list. It is the clearest example in the country of a province running its own qualification route rather than relying on the federal one.
Gouvernement du Québec↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
Nova Scotia and Ottawa committed $26 million — $20 million federal through Greener Homes Affordability and $6 million provincial — to widen HomeWarming and the African Nova Scotian Communities Retrofit Program to more than 1,600 additional households. Delivery runs through EfficiencyOne, so the work lands in its contractor network. More than 18,000 Nova Scotia homes took part in efficiency programmes in 2025-26.
Government of Nova Scotia↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
SaskPower confirms the rebate ended in April 2026, leaving the income-targeted Energy Assistance Program and SaskEnergy's Residential Equipment Replacement Rebate as the main remaining residential offers. Saskatchewan now has one of the thinnest provincial retrofit stacks in the country.
SaskPower↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
ERA's 2026 Industrial Transformation Challenge offered $50 million, with individual awards from $500,000 to $10 million for pilot, demonstration and first-of-kind commercial projects deployed in Alberta across manufacturing, electricity, agriculture, forestry and oil and gas. With no provincial residential efficiency agency, ERA is effectively Alberta's efficiency funder.
Emissions Reduction Alberta↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
NL Hydro received $2.7 million from NRCan's Green Industrial Facilities and Manufacturing Program, with $400,000 more from Hydro and participating businesses, to extend the Isolated Communities Energy Efficiency Program to manufacturing facilities — fish plants in particular — in diesel-served communities. The two-year expansion pays for strategic energy management, audits and capital upgrades.
Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
Hydro-Québec has increased support and added building-envelope measures to its commercial Efficient Solutions programme, with bonus assistance for multi-measure projects combining heat recovery, heat pumps and envelope work, and new support for photovoltaic panels. Only ENERGY STAR certified split-system air-source heat pumps now qualify, and support for DLC Premium LED is reduced and eliminated for standard DLC.
Hydro-Québec↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
Ontario's Expanded Energy Management Program funds up to 50% of an energy manager's salary to $100,000 per facility per year, provides Strategic Energy Management coaching, and offers up to $250,000 for energy management information systems at large industrial sites. Eligibility starts at 3,000,000 kWh for commercial SEM or 20,000 GJ for industrial. NRCan-funded industrial activity has to be complete by 31 March 2027.
Save on Energy · IESO↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
NRCan's Green Industrial Facilities and Manufacturing Program covers up to 50% of eligible costs — 100% for Indigenous and non-profit applicants — from $40,000 to $5 million per proposal, across energy management training, energy assessments, energy manager salaries, ISO 50001-compliant energy management systems and capital retrofits. Round 3 closed 26 September 2025 and funded projects must finish by 31 March 2027.
Natural Resources Canada↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
NRCan's Deep Retrofit Accelerator Initiative funds 14 organizations — among them Alberta Ecotrust, the BC Retrofit Accelerator, BOMA Enspire, Hydro Ottawa, SaskPower, SOFIAC and The Atmospheric Fund — to help owners of commercial, institutional and multi-unit residential buildings develop deep retrofits. The second $8 million call has closed, but owners can still approach the accelerators directly.
Natural Resources Canada↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
Under Municipal Code Chapter 367, buildings of 50,000 sq ft and larger have reported since 2024 and had to file 2025 energy and water use by 2 July 2026. Buildings of 929 to 4,644 m² — 10,000 to 49,999 sq ft — begin mandatory reporting in 2027, first deadline 2 July 2027. That second cohort is tens of thousands of small commercial and multi-unit buildings whose owners have never benchmarked anything.
City of Toronto↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
Council directed staff on 21 May 2026 to pause enforcement of the Annual Greenhouse Gas and Energy Limits By-law, which set emissions and heat-energy intensity limits on existing office and retail buildings. Reporting stays in place — a complete report by 1 September still returns performance comparisons — and staff report back in the first half of 2027. Anyone selling compliance services against this bylaw has to re-scope.
City of Vancouver↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
Owners of commercial, institutional and residential buildings of 2,000 m² or more, or 25 or more dwelling units, must submit the previous calendar year's monthly energy consumption through ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager by 30 June. Unlike Toronto there is no size-based phasing — every qualifying building shares the date. The city's guidance was refreshed in August 2026 for the 2025 reporting year.
Ville de Montréal↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
NECB 2025 adds greenhouse gas emissions to the code's environmental objective and introduces a harmonized tiered framework provinces can select performance levels from. For the first time it applies energy requirements to alterations of existing buildings, updates thermal bridging, adds an energy-use-intensity compliance path recognising compact housing forms, and incorporates 50-year projected climate data. Provincial adoption is the next question.
National Research Council Canada↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
Since 10 March 2025 the province requires most new buildings to meet or exceed EL-1, the measure-only step, which makes emissions modelling a baseline deliverable rather than an option. Local governments can still require a higher step. Anyone modelling in BC should expect emissions reporting on essentially every new-build file.
Province of British Columbia↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
Alberta's in-force codes are the National Building Code 2023 Alberta Edition and NECB 2020, both effective 1 May 2024, with no announced adoption of the 2025 national model codes. Edmonton's published table confirms Tier 1 applies — zero per cent energy improvement and zero per cent heat-loss reduction. The gap between Alberta and the tiered-code provinces is now about a full code cycle.
Government of Alberta↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
The international standard for bodies certifying persons has been restructured, with new requirements covering artificial intelligence in assessment and remote proctoring. Any certification scheme designed from here is designed to the new edition, including ours.
International Organization for Standardization↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
The Canadian design and installation standard for ground source heat pump systems was reissued. Ground source is the highest-value residential measure in several programmes and the one with the least public clarity about who is competent to design to the standard.
CSA Group↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
NRCan is not accepting new Service Organization applications for either the EnerGuide Rating System or ENERGY STAR for New Homes, stating there are currently enough licensed service organizations to meet market demand. The closure is under review with no reopening timeline. Existing ERS-licensed organizations may still request ENERGY STAR authorization; anyone planning to start a new one cannot.
Natural Resources Canada↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
Efficiency Canada's 2025 programmes report finds active utility demand-side management plans representing $5.8 billion of committed investment and 69 petajoules of incremental savings, with utilities spending just over $2 billion in 2024 — about 20% above budget — and saving more than 25 petajoules. It counts 30 demand flexibility programmes and 76 equity-oriented ones. The federal residential programmes ended; the utility money did not.
Efficiency Canada, Carleton University↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
Natural Resources Canada maintains a national picture of home labelling programmes. Provinces, territories and several municipalities now run them, New Brunswick has a pilot coming, and Manitoba, Ontario, Toronto and Prince Edward Island are listed as upcoming. When labelling reaches the point of sale, every listed home becomes an evaluation.
Natural Resources Canada↗Checked 21 Sep 2026
If you know of a change we have not listed — a programme, a standard, a provincial rule, a municipal bylaw, a utility eligibility change, a product approval — send it. Include the link. We publish the source, not the rumour, and we will credit you if you want to be credited.
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