Political Landscape

Canada's building strategy has the following goals:

• Federal, provincial, and territorial governments will work to develop a model renovation retrofit code for existing buildings by 2022, with the goal that provinces and territories adopt the code.
• Federal, provincial, and territorial governments will work together with the aim of requiring the labelling of building energy use by 2019.

The Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources has been given the mandate to make substantial progress on the following priority:

• Create a Roadmap for the future of BC energy that will drive innovation, expand energy efficiency and conservation programs, generate new energy responsibly and sustainably, reduce GHG emissions, and create good, lasting jobs across the province.
• The BC Climate Leadership Plan commits to reduce GHG emissions to 80% below 2007. This involves local governments with respect to buildings.

Industry Landscape

• There are few "whole-home" contractors in BC currently offering the full scope of home performance products and services.

• Training, accreditation and codes/standards infrastructure that exist for new construction are generally lagging in the existing homes industry.

• Representatives from the HVAC, Renovator, Insulation, Energy Advisors, and Fenestration industries, as well as Utilities and Government, are interested in working together.

• Develop and grow a home performance industry into a sustainable and profitable market segment, that integrates the existing networks of single upgrade contractors (businesses that install just windows, insulation or HVAC) into an integrated framework that allows homeowners to complete "whole home" energy improvements.