The Climate Change crisis requires an all-hands-on-deck approach. Building operations are responsible for 18% of Canada’s GHG emissions, making it the 3rd largest emitting sector after the oil and gas and transportation sectors. The rapid adoption of GHG mitigation measures in the building sector is essential for Canada to achieve its GHG reduction targets.

Current publicly funded GHG reduction programs have had a limited impact, are reliant on and subject to political will, and have come with a high cost to fund and administer. 

Canada needs to create a more robust and reliable Climate Change sustainability environment that will incentivize the implementation of energy efficiency and renewable energy (EE/RE) measures in both existing and new buildings, without relying on public funding or being subject to political support.

Such a program should have the following success characteristics:

•    Eliminates capital cost investment and cost recovery risk barriers
•    Guarantees funding availability to all qualified applicants irrespective of demand
•    Requires no taxpayer grants or subsidies
•    Requires a minimal level of administration by governments at all levels
•    Is readily promoted and used by a wide range of public and private sector players
•    Is immediately profitable and financially attractive to commercial property owners
•    Is easy to understand and motivates homeowners to act
•    Motivates designers and developers of new construction projects to design and build buildings that exceed energy efficiency codes and targets
•    Motivates home improvement service contractors to become certified and promote and sell the program
•    Is low risk for all parties involved

PACE (Property Assessed Clean Energy) is an innovative and proven public-good financing tool which effectively checks off all these boxes when the program adheres to established best practices.

PACE not only eliminates the cost barriers to widespread and meaningful building-level GHG mitigation measures, but also creates a robust and reliable private sector ecosystem to promote and deliver the program.

To achieve these goals, PACE requires a public-private partnership between Canadian municipalities/taxation authorities and PACE administrators and lenders.

Call to Action: The Federal Government should take a leadership role to accelerate and advance its Climate Change agenda by enabling and developing a best-practice PACE legal model for Provinces and Territories to adopt.

While PACE requires Provincial/Territorial legislative support to ensure that municipalities have the authority to participate in PACE programs, the Federal Government should play a leadership role by:

1. Ensuring that no legal barriers exist at a Federal level to the establishment of a best-practice Canadian PACE ecosystem.
2. Researching and developing a reference legal and operational  template for a made in Canada best-practice PACE program (much like the Federal Government did when it developed the National Model Energy Code for Provinces to adopt).
3. Promote the program and provide start-up funding to all provinces and territories to cover the cost of implementation.

We the undersigned support PACE Canada's Call to Action.

PACE CANADA:

OUR GOAL: Make it easy for homeowners and profitable for businesses to implement impactful energy saving and renewable energy measures.

OUR MISSION: To create a sustainable future by making energy efficiency and renewable energy upgrade measures affordable to all Canadians.

OUR VISION: Every building in Canada is optimized with renewable energy and energy efficiency measures to achieve net-zero performance with PACE financing as the tool that makes the measures affordable to all.