Provincial Energy Efficiency Policy Scorecard Rankings Highlights

WRITTEN BY ANGELICA SYIEMIONG PEREIRA ∙ TORONTO, ONTARIO

Energy Efficiency is one of the best strategies to tackle climate change and help utilities avoid investing in unnecessary energy generation. The cost of new energy generation is much higher than the cost of improving the energy efficiency of homes and businesses -- and the rewards are greater. Efficiency Canada’s recently published Provincial Energy Efficiency Scorecard is a Canadian version of the U.S.’ scorecard released annually by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. 

The scorecard highlights and ranks each province based on 5 key metrics: energy efficiency programs, enabling policies, transportation, buildings, and industry.  

We’ve summarized the province-by-province highlight, and will be sharing them on our blog over the coming weeks:

Ontario

Overall Score: 47/100

Ranking: 3rd 

With the highest number of Certified Energy Auditors in the country, Ontario has been able to lead the way in electricity and natural gas savings through the implementation of utility-led energy conservation programs. Ontario had the highest electricity savings in 2017 with 1.41% annual incremental savings as a percentage of domestic sales. The province has also supported low-income programs for electricity and natural gas customers. 

The province’s advanced building codes and appliance standards are more energy-efficient than most states and provinces in North America. As of December 2019, Ontario had 5 million smart metering devices serving residential and small business customers with a demand under 50 kW because it undertook the initiative of comprehensive deployment of AMI in 2012. 

Regressive policy changes, which included cutbacks in electricity program budgets by 50% and cancellation of the 2015-2020 Conservation First Framework, were steps taken backward by the province. Energy efficiency programs like Green Ontario Fund were supported by revenue from the carbon cap and trade system, which was also recently eliminated by the provincial government. 

The cancellation of the carbon cap and trade system also led to the cancellation of Ontario's EV/PHEV incentive programs. This abrupt cancellation removed the province's focus on building a green transportation system and led to the cancellation of building codes to support the construction of electric charging infrastructure.

Quebec

Overall Score: 48/100

Ranking: 2nd

As the province with the second-highest score in the Energy Efficiency rankings, Quebec owes its win to transportation policies, research and development, natural gas savings and GHG reduction funding.

Though electric utilities have made strides in their yearly savings through energy efficiency programs, natural gas utilities across the country have not been able to prove successful. Quebec, however, leads all the other provinces with their natural gas utilities saving 1.28% of the annual incremental savings as a percentage of their sales in 2018 -- higher than 49 states in the US and saving 3x more than the other provinces in Canada.

Natural gas Utilities in the province also spend the most on each of their residential customers. Apart from funding for research and development received from the NSERC, Quebec utilities such as Hydro-Quebec and Energis have kept aside a budget in their Demand Side Management plans specifically targeting R&D and pilot projects, with Hydro-Quebec's budgets of $8 million per year between 2016 and 2018.

With a perfect score for Grid Modernization initiatives and Rate design, Quebec has a total of 3.9 million smart meters processing data for their utilities. With a structured process determining the use of carbon revenues to support energy efficiency, Quebec spent $286.5 million on building energy efficiency programs of the $1.46 billion collected between 2013 and 2017 and the remaining $967 million on transportation energy efficiency initiatives.

We’ll be covering the rest of the Canadian Provinces over the coming weeks on the blog. Can’t wait? Check out the full report here.