Which home refit program is better?

The Tories have announced their replacement for the Energuide for Homes that they call Ecoenergy Refit. The Harper Government claims that Canadians will get more money from the new program than the old, despite the program only being funded to half what the old program was. Since I did my energy refits under the old program, which was canceled from under me, cutting short the time I had to do the refits by six months, lets see if I could have gotten more money under the new system or the old system.

First off, a brief description of how you get your money under both systems. Under the old system, your grant was based on the increase in energy efficiency of your home. So an expensive modification that resulted in little energy benefit would be funded less than a modification that provided more of a benefit. The "new" program, based on the Ecoenergy website, is based solely on what things have been done, regardless of benefit.

So under the old program I went from an energy efficiency index of 51 to 68, this garnered me a cheque from the government for $1049. This was for increasing my attic insulation from R8 to R48 and replacing my low efficiency furnace with a high efficiency model. Unfortunately due to the cutting short of the program, I did not have time to complete the insulation of my basement.

So lets look at how much better off I would be under the new program:

New high efficiency furnace:	$500
Increase attic insulation:	$400
Total Grant:	$900

So far I'm about $150 less than what I got under the old program. There's more though, under the old program the energy audit was paid for by the government. Under the new program, I'd have to foot that bill myself. This adds another $150 in cost that I didn't have to spend under the old program. So in actuality I'm $300 behind under the new program.

The only way I'd get ahead of the old program is if I'd replaced all my windows. According to my audit, replacing my windows with modern high-E windows would net me a 2 point gain on my energy efficiency index, there wasn't much point spending the $10,000 to get the new windows. This would have probably net me another $100 or so on my grant. Under the new program I'd get $300 for replacing my 10 windows though this isn't much more of an incentive. This would have made the balances thus:

	Old	"New"
Grant before windows:	$1049	$900
Cost of inspection:	$0	$150
Net grant before windows:	$1049	$750
Gain from windows:	$100	$300
Total grant:	$1149	$1050

So I'm not ahead even if I install my windows. So much for this program giving more money to Canadians for making the improvements. So we have a government claiming to be doing more than the previous government, but they're spending less on giving out smaller energy efficiency refit grants. The fact you have to outlay $150 for an inspection up front is going to be a disincentive as well as if all you can do to increase your efficiency is a couple of small things, the grant won't even cover the cost of the inspection. It seems that the Tories have learned well from the Liberals in the ability to spend lots of money to do little. In fact it looks like the Tories have retooled the Liberal plan to be even less effective. Green plan indeed.

If the government was serious about having people retrofit their homes, they'd pay for the audit and then base the grant on net increase of energy efficiency, not solely what the homeowner paid for. This would create an added incentive to less well to-do homeowners to get on board as well. It would also have helped improve their green image if the Tories hadn't screwed over people who were in the middle of the old program by cutting it short on them for purely reasons of spite. There was no logical reason to take someone like me who had planned on an 18 month program and trying to find the finances and time to implement it in 12 months, with only a month of notice that instead of the 8 months you thought you had you now only have two. It's an insult that they then, a few months later bring the program back, albeit in a smaller form. Makes me wonder why the Tories can't figure out why their poll numbers are stuck outside of Alberta.