January 26, 2022 Kingston, Ontario Natural Resources Canada
Clean air, middle class jobs, and more money in Canadians' pockets: helping people upgrade their homes to be more energy-efficient fights climate change and creates good jobs, all while making sure homeowners save on their monthly bills.
Member of Parliament for Kingston and the Islands Mark Gerretsen, on behalf of the Honourable Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Natural Resources, and Joanne Vanderheyden, President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), announced today a $15-million investment through the Community Efficiency Financing (CEF) initiative to implement a residential energy retrofit program that will reduce pollution and help homeowners save money in the City of Kingston.
Better Homes Kingston is a local improvement charge (LIC) financing program to encourage homeowners to undertake deep-energy retrofits. In addition to the primary LIC model, the City will encourage utilities providers to offer on-bill financing and third-party lending from financial institutions as the program grows over its first few years to enable a long-term scale-up. This program is expected to retrofit 25 to 50 percent of Kingston's pre-1991 single-family homes by 2040, achieving an average carbon-reduction impact of 30 percent per home.
Better Homes Kingston is planned to open starting in March and will be available to eligible properties across the City starting late spring of this year.
The Community Efficiency Financing initiative is offered through the Green Municipal Fund (GMF) delivered by FCM and funded by the Government of Canada. CEF helps communities of all sizes implement innovative local financing programs that directly help homeowners cut their GHG emissions, make their homes more energy-efficient, comfortable and affordable, and create local jobs and keep the local economy moving.
This initiative is one of the ways GMF continues to build on its 20-year record of supporting transformative environmental initiatives at the community level. The Government of Canada has invested $1.65 billion in the GMF since its inception, enabling municipalities to support projects like this that leverage local resources to drive innovative solutions.
