The results are in: Canada improves its energy efficiency

The Canadian Energy Efficiency Alliance (CEEA) recently released its 2009 National Energy Efficiency Report Card, and Canada has improved. The federal government received a B+ on energy efficiency, slightly higher than the B received on the last report card in 2007.

The report card evaluates the federal, provincial and territorial governments on their energy efficiency performance every two years. This year’s scores reflect activities occurring between January 2008 and December 2009.

"We’re very pleased with the progress we’re seeing in energy efficiency across the country," said Ken Elsey, president and CEO of the CEEA. "This is the first year that we’ve seen three provinces receive a grade of A+, and most jurisdictions have either improved or maintained their previous score."

According to CEEA’s report card, the federal government’s grade improvement can be attributed to their ecoENERGY retrofit program, which is estimated to have saved 11.22 peta joules of energy annually, with an estimated savings of $339 million to consumers who participated, and a reduction of more than 740,000 tonnes of GHG (up to February 2010). The feds have invested more than $960 million between 2007 and 2011 to promote smarter energy use by the Canadian consumer through the ecoENERGY Efficiency Initiative.

CEEA’s bi-annual report card evaluates federal, provincial and territorial governments on their energy efficiency performance across a number of key parameters: how each province has kept promises made at the Council of the Federation meeting (July 2008); the effectiveness of their own programs; initiatives in transportation; support for energy efficiency in building codes and product standards; how the jurisdictions supported energy efficiency and public outreach; the existence of public/private partnerships to support energy efficiency initiatives; and the creation of energy efficiency acts.

Report card highlights include: Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec all received an A+; the three most improved provinces are Alberta, PEI and Nunavut; Alberta scored a B+, up from the D+ they received in 2007; PEI moved from a D to a B, and Nunavut from a C to a B. Some of the provinces that saw a drop in their score included: British Columbia, going from an A+ to an A; Saskatchewan from a B+ to a B-; and the Northwest Territories moved from a B+ to a C.

This year marks the 10th year that CEEA has evaluated federal, provincial and territorial government’s energy efficiency activities.

A copy of the report card can be found online at www.energyefficiency.org/News.html.