New Home Retrofit Program Proposal

I'd like to applaud the announcement today of a home retrofit and green mortgages program by Stephane Dion.

As the director of a sustainable energy association, I hear over and over again that a major hurdle to doing home energy retrofits is paying an upfront cost and waiting for the payback in the future, even if the net cost of the retrofit is expected to be negative. Now this is not necessarily irrational because any construction project has risks associated with it. The risk-adjusted cost of a retrofit project may not be negative.

Grants and green mortgages will help very much in making projects move forward, unlocking value in our economy (that's what I mean by costs of certain building energy retrofit projects being negative), helping to develop businesses, and creating jobs.

One thing I would caution about this proposal is that I think we also need to have more trained and experienced tradespeople to do these energy retrofits and installations. Anecdotally, (and people who know the labour markets will be able to make this statement more solid), there is a serious shortage out there of good tradespeople, and it might not be a bad idea to put some resources into nurturing more of them.