Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank you for the opportunity to provide you with more details about our program, ecoENERGY retrofit homes. It's a welcome opportunity to discuss this program, which, as I think you heard from the first hour, is one that we feel has been very successful.
I've provided a handout with which I hope you can follow along.
There are about ten million low-rise housing units in Canada, and that's our target market for this program. Fewer than 2% of homes in Canada are built new each year, so we have a very large stock of existing homes to worry about the efficiency of their energy use. Indeed, this program is targeting the renovation of those homes so as to reduce their energy usage in order to reduce greenhouse gases and provide cost savings for Canadians on their fuel budget.
Energy efficiency in the housing sector has increased by 22% over the last decade and a half. That's pretty much due to the fact that the appliances we use are 50% more efficient than they were a decade ago, building practices are building more airtight, more efficient homes, and the furnaces we put in our homes are significantly more efficient than they were a decade and a half ago.
But with all of that, energy use in the sector has still grown by 5% in absolute terms over the last decade and half. This is due to the fact that there has been about a 30% rise in the population, so there are more homes for more Canadians, and the homes we live in are on average 10% larger than they were a decade and a half ago. Maybe a more significant impact on all of our lives is that for the things we plug into the wall—the computer equipment, the audio equipment, many things that didn't even exist a decade and a half ago—the energy use associated with those electronics has grown by 105%. So while there have been efficiency gains in this sector, so too have there been absolute increases in energy use.
I'm moving on to slide 2 now.
Hence came the introduction of the program to offer up to $5,000 in grants to homeowners to put energy efficiency retrofit in place in their homes.
It's a three-step process. The consumer calls up a certified energy adviser who has been certified by Natural Resources Canada to do evaluations in people's homes. The evaluation takes place, and the homeowner receives a list of energy efficiency measures that they could put in place in their home.
The second step is for the consumer to decide which measures they want to put into place and to do the work. They have 18 months, or until March 31, 2011—that has always been a rule of the program—to put their investments into place.
The third step in the program is for them to call back the energy evaluator, who returns to their home and does an assessment of what work was put into place. This gives the Government of Canada a credible, evidence-based program whereby we know that we're providing incentives for which the work has actually been done.
It's at this point that the homeowner would apply for the grant.
I'm moving on to the next slide here.
The program has proved very popular. The government has continued to invest. We had an original budget of $160 million for four years. It was meant to reach up to 140,000 households and reduce emissions by about 0.4 megatonnes—that's 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas or their equivalent. However, given the very high level of demand that the program was experiencing, the government decided in budget 2009, as part of the economic action plan, to increase the budget by $300 million. The expectation was that this addition in funding would reach as many as 200,000 additional homes and allow them to retrofit and receive a grant and reduce emissions by a further 0.8 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, the government increased the grants so that homeowners would have an extra 25% of incentive for their measures, and this helped the uptake of the program and spread the money across Canada more quickly, having a stimulus effect on those who manufacture and install energy efficiency goods and practices.
Demand for the program continued to escalate, and the government has put two more increases in budget in place: a $205-million increase and an $85-million increase, which together will reach a further 180,000 homes and reduce emissions by another 0.5 megatonnes.
In total, Mr. Chair, the program has a $745-million budget over four years to reach as many as 520,000 households. That's a nearly fivefold increase in budget.
Moving to the next slide, we've been very successful in leveraging investments from partners in the provinces and territories and in the utilities. All the provinces and territories, with the exception of Nunavut, offer complementary programs, where they provide incentives, low interest loans, and in 10 cases they also help subsidize the cost of the energy evaluation for the homeowner.
In addition, a number of utilities, such as Terasen Gas, Enbridge Gas, and BC Hydro offer their own grants, further adding to the federal dollars, and many cities do the same thing.
In thinking of the end user and how easy it is for them to apply to the program, as we heard a comment from Monsieur Guimond here, we are thinking about the Canadian homeowner so that they only have one application to make and the federal government processes that application and provides the information to the partner programs.
On slide 5, you can see the impact of this program from coast to coast. We have provided you with the statistics in each province of Canada and each territory of Canada. The box in each case shows how many energy advisers are certified to work for the program in that region. It shows how many Canadians have taken advantage of the pre-retrofit evaluation---600,000 in total--and then it shows how many post-retrofit evaluations have taken place. That's the number of Canadians who have applied for a grant. And the final number is the average size of the grant: $1,300.
On slide 6, we indicate the types of measures that Canadians have invested in. There has been a preponderance of air sealing: replacement of heating systems, windows and doors, as well as insulation.
Then I will draw your attention to the support for emerging technologies. This question has come up a couple of times this morning. You can see we have support for the implementation of solar domestic hot water systems, over 1,100 of them, and 7,700 ground-source heat pumps have been installed with support from the program.
The last slide is a wrap-up of the statistics to demonstrate the impact that this program has had on the Canadian residential sector. There have been over 600,000 pre-retrofit evaluations, so that is 600,000 Canadian households who have detailed information, in hand, about their house and the improvements they can make to reduce their energy use. To date, $340 million in grants have been paid out, with an average saving in each household of 22% . That means the participating households can reduce their energy bill by almost one-quarter. That's a very significant reduction, particularly when energy prices tend to keep rising. Three tonnes of reduction in greenhouse gas per home...2,000 energy advisers across Canada.
We have over $300 million left in the program for dispensing in this year to the homeowners who are still remaining in the program. In total, the $745 million will be spent to reduce greenhouse gases and increase the efficiency of Canadian homes and allow Canadian homeowners to divert money from their fuel bills to other more important uses.
I would be happy to take your questions. Thank you very much for the opportunity.