Thank you.
I'll jump right into it because I've heard my colleagues speak to the benefits of retrofits, and Mr. Dicaire spoke to the durability of markets.
We know that retrofitting our homes is important and that there are high returns on investments, resulting in both lower energy costs and utility savings today. Also, in terms of decades to come, we need to prepare our homes, prepare our households, for increasingly frequent extreme weather.
The point I want to make is that these benefits won't reach households at scale through short-term incentives or through isolated projects. To meaningfully increase the rate of retrofit activity, we need that durable approach that builds a reliable and, preferably, made-in-Canada retrofit industry that attracts both public and private investment.
Retrofit measures that prioritize efficient use of energy and materials can, as well as helping with climate resilience, help protect people from extreme temperatures—things like wildfire, smoke and other hazards. They also, as we've heard, help reduce energy waste and emissions. At the Pembina Institute, we've seen this through our own retrofit of six multi-unit residential buildings, each housing vulnerable tenants, to which we've been able to add cooling, thus enhancing the resilience of those buildings. In doing so, we've really seen this as a pilot project, in which we are encountering challenges, many of which you've heard today, but we are seeing breakthroughs with each iteration.
On the residential side, retrofits are important because they do protect insurability. This is a growing concern across Canada as insurance premiums are rapidly increasing, and we're now seeing areas that are at risk of uninsurability due to the losses from extreme weather. Those same retrofits are also supporting economic development and affordability.
On the affordability side, we've heard about the reductions in energy costs, lower energy and operating costs for households. Again, we've seen this through our reframed buildings, where households have cut energy costs by more than 50%. We've also seen these same retrofits use measures that help to harden the building against extreme weather events: This could be something like hail-resistant roofing. These are important measures, this hardening of the building and climate resilience retrofits, because they can help protect Canadians and save Canadians the three dollars to four dollars of uninsured costs, paid directly or through their taxes, that are associated with each dollar of insured losses.
These retrofits also help build the economy. Ten jobs are created for every $1 million invested, which surpasses job creation in conventional sectors like oil and gas, forestry and trucking. However, as I've heard my colleagues express today, there are connected barriers to scaling retrofits that continue to remain. Households may lack affordable financing, trusted advice or a qualified contractor. Renters have little control over building upgrades and may not receive the benefits of those retrofits if those costs or disruptions are passed on to them. Apartment owners may struggle to coordinate upgrades or secure approvals. Governments, utilities and municipalities all may offer programs that are fragmented, difficult to navigate or short-lived.
How do we achieve a long-term and durable strategy for retrofits that combines public policy and market-led investments? Today, this may include maintaining public funding supports. We've heard that the much-needed advancements, through the deep retrofit accelerator initiative and the greener neighbourhoods pilot program, have worked towards embedding essential delivery models and workforce capacity in the market. Again, we've seen this in our reframed cohort of buildings, in which the capacity for things like panelization, which Mr. Dicaire spoke to, for procurement of high-performance retrofits has been improved over the course of that project.
A new approach would also look at targeted delivery. This is really the continuation of things like the greener homes affordability program, as well as the CMHC affordable housing fund. Each of these help to improve affordability and living conditions for the the nearly two million Canadian households that experience energy poverty today.
Going forward, the federal government can also help create this durable retrofit market by shifting from an incentive dependence environment towards market enabling policy, really de-risking private capital rather than subsidizing it.
It's really using the financial levers that we've heard about: loan guarantees, clean building tax credits, project aggregation and more. All this helps finance and insurance better recognize asset value, durability and reduce climate risk, and make those benefits visible in standardized financial and climate risk evaluations. It will then help insurers and finance utility markets all recognize and reflect risk-reducing retrofits in pricing and compensation.
For government's part, it can reinforce these through procurement, stringent building codes and long-term program signals, all of which help create demand and certainty that help bolster supply chains and also give workforce an anchor to build their career around.
