In Canada, and all areas of the USA and elsewhere, there are financial incentives of various types for different types of energy conservation home retrofit activities from low-flow toilets to high efficiency furnaces.

Well, in our area, the financial incentive program requires that you first have an energy audit done by a prescribed group of firms. Any energy conservation related home improvements you do before the audit are ineligible for these government grants.

As well, we learned a lot about home energy conservation as part of the energy audit. If you have a lot of projects to do, it could also help you prioritize which ones to tackle first, i.e. the ones with the government grants.

If you are interested, we posted our experinces with our energy audit and varios charts and portions of the report in our blog, which I will provide the URL below if this is something that you are curious about.

Dan

And, what disappoints me about the program are 5 things (no particular order):

1. negligible publicity
2. fiinancial incentives are targeted to cover on average about 10% of the retrofit expenses (although many provinces provide matching grants)
3. home owners have to pay out of their own pocket for the energy audit (you need a pre and a post energy audit; some provinces rebate around 40% of the 1st audit)
4. the intent, per my contact at the program's administration office, is to see only 1.4% of homes actually participate for both energy audits and receive the financial incentives.

The above is disappointing to me as it sends a (the wrong?) message that energy conservation in the home is not that important or relevant.

I'll post the link to the 2nd of the 2 part articles we wrote on our blog about the 1st year's results if anyone is interested.

Dan