Published: Friday, December 28, 2007
The federal ecoEnergy program needs a new tag line. What is the point of billing it as "an ecoACTION initiative" when so little appears to be happening? At this point, one year out of the starting gate, no rebates or grants have been handed out. And no one is naming the date that the inaction will finally become action.
It all started a year ago with some political fanfare and a call to "retrofit your home and qualify for a grant." A rewrite of the former EnerGuide program, the theory was that the Office of Energy Efficiency of the Department of Natural Resources' residential energy assessment initiative would "help property owners make retrofit choices to improve the comfort and energy efficiency of their homes." Following assessment by a licensed energy adviser, property owners would have 18 months to complete the suggested retrofits and qualify for grants.
From the perspective of longtime sustainable living and clean energy advocate Bill Kemp, a consulting electronics/software designer who develops control systems for low environmental impact hydroelectric utilities worldwide, the federal program is "not bad, but it is mired in bureaucracy and wrong thinking." He says a better alternative would be to raise energy prices and impose a carbon or sustainability tax to encourage people to limit energy use. But such a program is not on the books at the moment.
Instead, we have inactive ecoACTION. When the program went into effect on Dec. 6, 2006, there was no mention that bureaucratic organization would lag behind politicians cashing in on increased concern about the environment and energy use. Nothing was said six months later, when the Ontario government announced its own version of the program, about the communication difficulties between the two levels of government that would bring any distribution of cash to the public to a grinding halt. But this is exactly what has happened.
I called the federal department a couple of weeks after the big announcement last year to ask for direction on arranging a home inspection. I climbed the first hurdle -- finding someone who knew that the program existed.I was told to call back in a month when a list of licensed energy advisers would be available. I did as requested and got the same response the next month and the three months after that.
Eventually, the list was ready. I connected with one of the recommended inspectors. He had good news for me when he came to the house on July 3, the first date that he was available. (The energy audits were keeping him extremely busy, he said.) At least, it sounded like good news at the time. The province of Ontario had just announced that it would match the federal retrofit grants and would also pay back half of the $300 energy-audit fee. Five months later, I am still waiting for my rebate.
The first time I called the inspector to check on its progress, he said that it would come, but I must understand that bureaucratic wheels moved slowly. By November, he admitted that there appeared to be a disagreement between the federal and provincial governments.
Everyone I checked with seemed to be to blaming others for the delay. The federal official said that the minister had announced the ecoACTION program too soon, before the infrastructure was in place. The provincial official said the province's concern was the need to protect citizens' personal information as it was transmitted between governments.