Did you miss out on the ecoENERGY home retrofit grants? Then get busy — they’re back, but only for a year.
The federal government officially reopened its ecoENERGY Retrofit for Homes program Wednesday. The popular program, which offers homeowners up to $5,000 if they renovate their homes to use less energy, slammed shut to new applicants on March 31, 2010. The Conservatives brought it back in this year’s budget, but only for one year.
Plenty of Edmonton-St. Albert residents have called for the return of the program, said member of Parliament Brent Rathgeber in a press release. “With this program, we are not only helping Canadians save money, but also creating thousands of jobs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions that will protect our environment.”
The program returns with two changes. First, you have to get a registration number from the Natural Resources Canada website before you apply. Second, in addition to getting a pre- and post-retrofit energy audit by a licensed auditor, you have to show the auditor the receipts for all your expenses during the retrofit.
That’s an excellent change, said Leigh Bond of St. Albert’s Threshold Energies Corp., a renewable energy company, as it keeps people from wasting money or cheating the system. “That should help get some value out of the program.”
The program has previously helped about 500,000 Canadians save about 20 per cent on their energy bills, according to Rathgeber.
That proves it’s effective, said Peter Amerongen, who builds net-zero homes in Edmonton. “It’s obviously got a lot of people to act who might not have otherwise done it.”
As most of the homes of tomorrow already exist today, he and others argue we need to retrofit them if we want to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Still, Amerongen added, it’s “kind of goofy” that the program has been brought back for just a year. Applicants must complete their renovations and have their two energy audits completed by next March 31 in order to qualify — sooner, if the fund’s $400 million runs out. That’s a challenging timeline, he said, as these renovations often require a lot of planning.
As energy prices are set to rise, any energy savings in your home will eventually pay off, Amerongen said. “In the long term, it makes terrific economic sense.”
The fund should help about 250,000 homeowners and create about $4 billion in jobs and investment, Rathgeber said. For details, visit ecoaction.gc.ca/homes or call 1-800-622-6232.
Electronics will get a little cheaper next month as a provincial board cuts its recycling fees by more than half.
Electronic recycling fees are set to plummet this Aug. 1, according to Betty Gray of the Alberta Recycling Management Authority (ARMA). The fees, first set in 2004, are used to offset the cost to collect and recycle TVs and computers, and are usually listed as a separate item on your receipt.
The fees were the first of their kind in Canada, Gray said, so they had to use their best guess when they set them. But today’s electronic devices are about 30 per cent lighter than those of 2004, which has cut transportation and processing costs considerably.
The recycling fee for a 46-inch TV is set to drop to $24 from $45, for example, while those for computer monitors will drop to $6 from $12. The fees for servers, laptops and printers are also set to fall. These are the first changes to the fees since their introduction, Gray said.
Full details are available at albertarecycling.ca.
