Behind the backlog of home energy audits in the NWT

A former employee of the Arctic Energy Alliance says a lack of qualified energy advisors in the NWT is behind the years-long waitlist to access a federal green funding program.

Last week, Cabin Radio reported that the federal loan program under the Canada Greener Homes Initiative was “practically inaccessible to northern residents” due to a wait of up to two years to have advisors audit homes.

The loan program provides 10-year interest-free loans to help people retrofit their homes to be more energy efficient.

To receive the loan, applicants must have an audit of their home completed by a certified energy advisor before work on the property begins – and again after the retrofits have been completed.

Cabin Radio spoke with a former energy advisor who worked for the Arctic Energy Alliance during the launch of the Greener Homes Initiative. They requested anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic without jeopardizing their current employment.

The former employee said that in their time working for the AEA, the non-profit employed between one and four certified energy advisors at a time. Audits for the Canada Greener Homes Initiative, or CGHI, were only part of their workload. 

While some companies from the south occasionally visit the North to complete evaluations for the CGHI, the AEA is the only NWT-based organization with staff who can complete these audits. 

Exhausting work

The former employee said the on-site portion of each evaluation can take anywhere from two to four hours to complete. 

Every evaluation also requires six to eight hours of modelling, reporting and communicating with the homeowner after the in-home visit. 

The former employee said they were told to budget about 10 hours per home but often found that wasn’t enough time to complete the work, especially if homeowners had a lot of questions. 

Most of the demand for evaluations came from Yellowknife but once or twice a year, they would travel to smaller communities in the NWT to audit homes. 

They said they were instructed to carry out between eight and 10 evaluations over the course of four to five days. 

“I would go and do one in the morning, one after lunch, for however many days, it’s very exhausting,” they said. “And then in the evening, you’re sitting in your hotel room trying to write up all your notes and sort photos and keep up with other projects.”

The nature of the work, they said, contributed to a high turnover rate in a position that was difficult to fill in the first place. 

“The training for the energy evaluator designation is actually pretty intense. There’s a lot that you have to know,” they said.

“When they brought out the Greener Homes program, they had a lot of people failing exams or just saying, ‘You know what? The new requirements are too hard. I can’t do this.’ There’s a lot of background information to become an energy evaluator.”

They said conducting audits in the North also presents a unique set of challenges because the housing stock is relatively old. Tailoring recommendations from the Greener Homes program to those houses and the northern climate complicated the job.

Kevin Cull, the AEA’s communications coordinator, said the organization would have enough energy advisors in most years – typically three to four – to meet the demand for audits.

However, Cull said, the Covid-19 pandemic caused a backlog because evaluators weren’t able to safely enter people’s homes.

He said that prior to the pandemic, the waitlist was a few weeks to a few months long. In 2022, the AEA began bringing in contractors to help meet demand.

“Before the big increase in demand for home energy evaluations, we could typically handle the load comparatively well,” he said.

“Often, the wait for an evaluation in Yellowknife would be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, depending on demand. Even at our busiest, it would rarely be longer than six months.

“For communities outside of Yellowknife, the timeframe could be different, however, because we will usually wait until we have several homes from a community on the list before booking a trip there.”

Tailored training for northerners

In 2022, Fort Providence-based Gonezu Energy received funding from the federal government to train a dozen Indigenous energy advisors who could conduct audits for the Greener Homes initiative, increasing capacity in the NWT. 

But Gonezu boss Jason Collard said his company “experienced a slew of challenges in terms of supporting individuals through that process.”

Only one candidate passed the first foundation-level exam and none successfully completed the second exam required to obtain certification. 

In a report prepared by Gonezu, the company asserts that candidates faced many barriers throughout the training process, such as delivery of the course material and adequate internet connectivity for remote testing.

When Gonezu’s training partners failed to deliver hands-on and interactive training that suited participants’ learning styles, the company said some candidates dropped out of the program. 

This forced Gonezu to redesign some of the course material to be delivered in a more engaging way. 

The company also had to develop additional training materials for candidates who lacked foundational skills required to complete the program.

Participants faced personal challenges throughout the program that Gonezu attributed to the intergenerational trauma of residential schools and colonial violence. 

While trainees were provided with access to online and in-person counselling services, Gonezu said many felt safer speaking with Gonezu’s course coordinator, a role the coordinator may not have been well equipped to take on. 

Gonezu noted that future iterations of similar training programs should include dedicated, on-site counsellors. 

A way around the waitlist

When Brie O’Keefe and her husband purchased their house in 2021, the accompanying home inspection indicated they should replace its 1970s windows. 

This summer, O’Keefe was quoted more than $20,000 for the work. She began researching rebates and financing options, leading her to the Greener Homes Initiative. 

She signed up for an energy evaluation with the Arctic Energy Alliance before she heard from friends that it had taken them years to have an evaluation done. 

“I don’t really want to wait years to replace my windows,” said O’Keefe. 

Having heard that a friend of a friend hired a southern company to come up to Yellowknife and perform home audits, she set about trying to do the same. She says she found several companies that would head north if O’Keefe was able to find a group of 15 to 20 people in the city also looking to have home evaluations done. 

O’Keefe posted to Facebook – on her own profile and in various groups – to recruit more homeowners. So far, she has 17 people signed up. 

She said the companies she contacted have requested roughly $100 from each household to help defray travel costs, on top of the evaluation fees.

The company that O’Keefe decided to work with, CoEfficient Building Science, said it had asked Natural Resources Canada to have its travel costs reimbursed and avoid passing those fees on to homeowners.

O’Keefe said she’s glad the Greener Homes program exists because she would otherwise be taking out a line of credit with less desirable terms. 

“It’s designed to meet the needs of northern and remote communities, but the system and the red tape surrounding this program don’t actually allow us to access it,” said O’Keefe.

“It’s hard in Yellowknife but … I imagine it’s even harder in the smaller communities in the North, where they need it even more.”

A basic need

Brendan Haley is the senior director of policy strategy at Efficiency Canada, a Carleton University-based think tank and energy efficiency advocacy organization.

“Energy efficiency in this century is going to be a basic need and a basic service,” said Haley.

“People are going to need homes that insulate them from the outside and the best way to do that is literally through better insulation, better air sealing, better ventilation, which you get through an energy retrofit.”

The anonymous former AEA employee said these retrofits have the ability to improve people’s lives by keeping their homes cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

They added it seems unfair that access to these programs is being restricted for people in the NWT.