About the report

Meeting Canada’s 2050 greenhouse gas emission goals requires significant efforts to decarbonize existing homes. While much of the technology needed to achieve this goal already exists, the market uptake of these technologies, such as heat pumps, insulation and air sealing, has been slow.

A crucial part of solving this puzzle involves people decarbonizing homes by installing heat pumps, upgrading insulation, air sealing homes, etc. Policy initiatives should be more focused on their perspective.

Our discussion paper, Designing Home Retrofit Policy for the People Who Do the Work, looked at designing home energy efficiency and decarbonization policy for the people and businesses doing the work. In that paper, we outlined the critical role of changing business models and what policy can do to facilitate business model changes that meet societal goals for net-zero emissions and create good jobs.

This report proposes policy initiatives that can — from the perspective of contractors themselves — work together to support and empower the home improvement industry to drive retrofits at the scale, pace, and quality needed to achieve Canada’s net-zero goals while achieving the vision of a sustainable and resilient home performance sector.