Municipalities needed a better way to drive energy solutions in the residential market and make local eco-efficiency programming accessible and relevant to homeowners. That’s why it’s such big news that CEF is now a standing GMF offer, and that we approved 26 CEF projects in 2020-2021. We are truly helping to fill this business gap.
This $300M initiative helps municipalities, municipally owned organizations and not-for-profit organizations accelerate investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy generation in the residential sector. It will also benefit contractors and energy advisors, financial institutions and regional efficiency program administrators indirectly by increasing demand for their services.
With backing from CEF, communities of all sizes will be able to offer innovative financing programs to homeowners so they can cut GHGs, make their homes more comfortable and affordable and keep the local economy moving. CEF supports numerous solutions, including Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs, on-bill financing and other types of loans, and complements policy tools such as incentives and more stringent construction standards and building codes. We expect it to indirectly create local jobs and pass on significant energy savings (~ $300 per month) to participating homeowners.
This year’s roll outs
CEF rolled out in three phases from March 2020 to March 2021. Phase I was for capital projects to recapitalize or scale up existing financing programs or to launch new ones. Phase II was for grants supporting early program development and deployment work (e.g., feasibility studies, detailed program design work). And Phase III was a standing offer, with an open call for applications to support all stages of program development and implementation.
CEF is only one year old, but there’s already been an incredible amount of capacity building through regional and informal peer networks. There’s a clear and growing interest in connecting and sharing across jurisdictions. In fact, we’ve created a Community of Practice to further build capacity, with a mandate to set up GMF-funded projects and share knowledge on how to effectively design, implement and scale up local financing projects. The core members of this Community of Practice are project leads from municipalities and partners that design and implement financing projects with GMF funding along pioneering municipalities that were already active before CEF launched.
The numbers are in...
The GMF Council approved an investment of $87.8M in CEF projects this fiscal year, including $85.4M in 10 CEF capital projects, $800.8K for two pilot projects, and $1.59M for 14 feasibility studies. These energy home upgrade financing programs span a range of municipality sizes, from the Municipality of the District of Lunenburg (population of 2,263) to the City of Toronto (population of 2,731,571). The direct and indirect impact of the CEF investments increase the Canadian GDP by $89,065,453 and creates 996 person-years of work.
Many of the participating municipalities have long-standing commitments to climate change action, with 16 of them being members of the Partners for Climate Protection program (also from FCM).
CEF AND COVID
With CEF being so new, pivoting to a full virtual delivery wasn’t ideal: face-to-face connections are critical to establishing a new, national product. But our online approach was more successful than we had anticipated and will affect how we operate in the future. We now have more confidence in our ability to foster strong connections among our program, municipalities and communities. And we reduced our carbon footprint for travel and gatherings! We’re pleased to see how many smaller communities are participating in CEF, and we’re finding that online programming is a straightforward and affordable way to reach them.