CEIP is coming to St. Albert, and residents can get a sneak peek on how it works at a free upcoming talk.
Solar Alberta is hosting a free online talk May 19 on Edmonton’s Clean Energy Improvement Program (CEIP).
Alberta communities are rolling out CEIP initiatives to help owners pay for energy efficiency upgrades to their buildings and save money while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. St. Albert’s CEIP initiative is expected to launch sometime this year.
CEIP is the Canadian version of what is called property-assessed clean energy (PACE) in the U.S., said Heather MacKenzie, executive director of Solar Alberta. Both see people pay for solar panels, better insulation, and other oft-expensive energy-saving improvements to a building through their property taxes over time. Payments are stretched out over the life of the improvement, making them low enough that the energy savings cover some or all of the added cost, and are attached to the property rather than the owner, so a person stops paying for them as soon as they sell the property and stop benefiting from it.
“CEIP is going to be a massive game-changer,” MacKenzie said, especially with rising utility prices and pent-up demand for such a program.
MacKenzie said Thursday’s talk will focus on how CEIP works in Edmonton, and how that city will roll it out to commercial properties later this year.
Edmonton’s residential CEIP pilot launched March 29 and was fully subscribed in a couple of hours, said Stephanie Ripley, residential CEIP lead for Alberta Municipalities and speaker at this week’s talk. Similar programs in Devon and Rocky Mountain House also filled up quickly when they launched.
“We’ve seen a whole variety of upgrades,” Ripley noted, with owners applying to put in solar panels, new furnaces, better insulation, and more.
Ripley said she isn’t sure how quickly St. Albert’s CEIP program will fill up, as it will depend in part on the money available.
A 2021 market study by the Municipal Climate Change Action Centre projected some 254 residential projects to be completed under St. Albert’s CEIP program after four years, with about 56 happening in Year One. The program is projected to cost $5 million, save $4.1 million, add $17 million to the local economy, and prevent some 31 kilotonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions (equivalent to about 406 tanker trucks of gasoline) over roughly 20 years.
The talk runs from noon to 1:30 p.m. Visit solaralberta.ca for details.
