FREE MONEY FOR GOING GREEN

by Darrin DeRoches March 4 - 10, 2010

Up to ten grand in grants – not loans – grants! are available to homeowners in Ontario. The Ontario Home Energy Savings Program and the federal ecoEnergy retrofit program provide grants for people retrofitting their homes.  These homes will have to undergo residential energy efficiency audit by a qualified energy advisor who is certified by Natural Resources Canada. So how do you get the ten grand?     To qualify for the grants you must do an energy audit before your renovation and another one when you are done and you have until March 31, 2011 to get it done.  An energy audit considers a home’s insulation, heating or cooling systems, windows, etc.  They put on this blower door thingy that calculates the energy loss in the home.  The energy advisor submits this report to the national guys who will pass it on to the Ontario boys who will process the audit cheque.  The homeowner can implement all the improvements or do the ones that will make the biggest improvements.  When the job is completed they will come back and do another audit and see the difference from the first audit.  The grant application will be processed and within 90 days the cold hard cash will be granted.     So these grants are based on a sliding table which you can find at nrcan.gc.ca.  The biggest payback is updating your furnace, air conditioning and hot water heater to Energy Star rated equipment.  A furnace with a 94 per cent efficiency with a brushless DC motor qualifies for $1300 in rebates, while a furnace with a 92 per cent rating kicks back only $750 in rebates.  Plus when changing to these furnaces an average home should see about $500 savings in gas per year, so it keeps on giving.   The government was also trying to make these audits mandatory when selling a home, but they have now made them voluntary.  I guess swallowing the HST is enough to handle for now – though I am sure they will make them mandatory in the future.     So to get the whole $10,000 back in grants from the government you would have to take a pretty old home and bring it up to today’s highest standard.  This being said, it is important to consider when changing your furnace you can reap the immediate benefits by going to the high end: you’ll spend more initially, but the grants will be higher!  Being green can make you money, so go hug a tree and enjoy the cash! DARRIN DEROCHES Darrin DeRoches is a local real estate and mortgage broker. He can be reached to answer questions, comments or stories about real estate experiences through this weekly column at mail@uniquerealty.ca.