Toronto opens applications for Deep Retrofit Challenge
The City of Toronto is now accepting application for its Deep Retrofit Challenge.
The endeavour aims to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from buildings in Toronto, in support of the city’s TransformTO Net Zero climate action strategy.
Through the challenge, the city will provide funding to support deeper-than-planned energy retrofits in as many as 16 privately owned buildings, with the goal of accelerating emissions reductions and identifying pathways to net zero that can be replicated in other buildings.
Selected projects will receive a grant equal to 25 percent of their total project costs up to a maximum of $500,000 to offset the incremental design and construction costs required to achieve maximum emissions reductions.
Buildings must be located within Toronto and be greater than 600 square metres or greater than three storeys. Eligible buildings include: multi-unit residential buildings, commercial office buildings, and mixed-use buildings. The projects must also involve a deep retrofit that reduces both GHG emissions and energy usage by at least 50 percent, meet a 20-year payback period or better, and be completed and operational by January 1, 2025.
Some of the retrofit measures eligible under the program include building enclosure improvements such as insulation, high-performance windows and air sealing, energy recovery systems, electric heat pumps, renewable electricity generation, and building controls.
The city says it will select projects through a competition-style process. It hopes that the challenge will spur early, voluntary compliance with its Net Zero Existing Buildings Strategy. It also hopes to use the projects as models that demonstrate the deep energy retrofits needed to move buildings towards net zero emissions, with the goal of accelerating market adoption.
Information from the projects, including designs, budgets and performance data will be open-sourced to drive case studies, technical reports and academic research that will help promote community knowledge of deep retrofits and facilitate the uptake of deep retrofits needed to reach the city’s net zero by 2040 target.
Toronto’s buildings generate about 57 percent of the city’s total community-wide GHG emissions, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels for heating and hot water. To achieve the emissions reduction trajectory needed to reach net zero by 2040, community-wide GHG emissions from all sources must be cut in half in the next eight years.
The city controls only about five per cent of community-wide GHG emissions directly through its own buildings and operations.
Applications close on October 31.