Client | New Brunswick Power Corporation (NB Power), on behalf of the Government of New Brunswick (GNB) |
Technology Partner | Climative |
Independent Evaluator | Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors |
Program | Residential Home Energy Labelling and Disclosure Pilot, Phase 2 |
Geography | Province of New Brunswick, Canada |
Completion | March 2025 |
Challenge: To take action on climate change and help NBers to better manage their energy use, GNB would like to increase energy literacy for NB homeowners and home buyers by making home energy assessments faster, easier to access, and more cost effective. GNB committed to conducting a pilot to test a scalable solution to help homeowners understand their home’s energy performance and identify retrofit opportunities. This pilot was led by New Brunswick’s Energy Efficiency Delivery Agent, NB Power.
Solution: Working with GNB and NB Power, Climative created digital energy estimates for more than 260,000 low-rise homes and supported remote assessments with registered Energy Advisors.
Key Results:
Impact: The pilot showed that virtual assessments can make home energy insights more accessible, reduce delivery barriers, and support province-wide retrofit adoption.
Virtual assessments averaged 30 minutes, compared to 1-2 hours for on-site assessments.
The vast majority of users found the Climative platform to be easy to use and navigate.
Users rated the platform 4.1/5 for usefulness when making a home purchase decision.
The majority of respondents were open to some form of public energy performance disclosure.
New Brunswick is home to more than 260,000 low-rise residential buildings (designated as Part 9 buildings). Many of these homes are aging, energy-intensive, and heated with fossil fuels. For the province to meet its 2030 greenhouse gas reduction commitments under the 2022–2027 Climate Change Action Plan, it needs a scalable way to help homeowners understand their home’s energy performance and act on it.
Traditional in-home energy assessments are thorough but resource-intensive: they require trained Energy Advisors to travel to each home, spend one to two hours on-site taking detailed measurements and capturing information about the home, and then invest additional time modelling and publishing results. At that pace, understanding the retrofit needs of the full provincial housing stock would take decades.
The question the pilot set out to answer: Can a virtual assessment platform provide accurate, cost-effective home energy insights that both homeowners and Energy Advisors will embrace?
On behalf of GNB, NB Power partnered with Climative, a Fredericton-based property-level climate intelligence firm, to pilot a digital Home Energy Labelling and Disclosure (HLD) program using Climative’s cloud-based platform.
Climative’s platform collected data from multiple sources (including household physical data from Service New Brunswick, NB Power energy usage records, and fuel type distribution studies) to generate Level 1 energy estimates for all 260,000+ Part 9 buildings in New Brunswick. This province-wide baseline was then used as the starting point for interactive virtual assessments conducted in real time with NRCan-registered Energy Advisors.
The pilot targeted past participants in NB Power’s Total Home Energy Savings Program: homeowners who had already completed a traditional in-home assessment, making them uniquely positioned to compare the two experiences.
Homeowners registered online, claimed their property on a digital map, and scheduled a virtual session with an Energy Advisor (EA). During the session, the EA reviewed and refined the pre-populated home data, conducted a live video walkthrough, and published a detailed energy report (including an updated energy rating, GHG emissions estimate, and prioritized retrofit recommendations) directly through the Climative platform.
The homeowner process, step by step:
Metric | Score |
Platform user-friendliness | 8.4 / 10 |
Convenience of scheduling | 4.5 / 5 |
Quality of interaction with Energy Advisor | 4.6 / 5 |
Confidence in assessment accuracy | 7.0 / 10 |
Comparison to prior in-home assessment | 7.1 / 10 |
Likelihood of choosing virtual over in-home in future | 6.7 / 10 |
These scores represent a strong endorsement for a virtual assessment program in New Brunswick, particularly given that all participants had a prior in-home assessment as a benchmark.
Virtual assessments averaged approximately 30 minutes per session, compared to one to two hours for a traditional in-home assessment, plus travel time. Energy Advisors reported the ability to conduct significantly more assessments per day while eliminating long drives across the province, a particular advantage during winter months and for rural properties, which can be difficult to access.
Participants rated the likelihood of using the platform to inform a home purchase decision at
4.1 / 5, a signal that energy performance data is becoming a meaningful factor in residential real estate, and that virtual labels can support informed home-buying at scale.
More information is better when buying a house. Seeing energy scores could influence the home-buying decision for me, especially if upgrades would be costly.
If I were to go for another energy assessment, it would probably be a virtual one; it depends on the cost differential between the in-home and virtual assessment, and which is available sooner.
Energy Advisors echoed the gains in time efficiency. The reduction in travel time, administrative workload, and scheduling complexity was significant. Several noted that virtual assessments are an ideal first step for homes with clear, high-impact upgrade opportunities, such as replacing fossil fuel heating with a heat pump, where comprehensive in-home measurement is not required to justify the recommendation.
Between the survey results and what Energy Advisors reported firsthand, six patterns emerged that matter for other organizations considering a similar approach.
Homeowners can access a meaningful home energy assessment without scheduling a multi-hour in-home visit. This dramatically increases the addressable audience, particularly for homeowners who are curious but not yet committed to a retrofit.
When assessment results are directly linked to NB Power’s SaveEnergyNB programs and available rebates, the path from awareness to action shortens considerably. Homeowners who understand both their home’s inefficiencies and the financial support available are significantly more motivated to act.
Climative’s platform holds estimated energy profiles for all 260,000+ Part 9 buildings in New Brunswick. Each completed virtual assessment enriches this dataset, creating a continuously improving picture of provincial housing stock that NB Power and the Government of New Brunswick can use to target programs, forecast demand, and track progress toward climate goals.
Younger homeowners aged 25–44 rated their likelihood of choosing a virtual assessment at
7.3 / 10, among the highest of any group. As this demographic enters peak homebuying years, virtual energy assessment platforms will meet them where they are: online, self-directed, and time-conscious.
Energy Advisors identified a category of homes where the retrofit decision is obvious without a full in-home audit: homes with aging electric resistance baseboard heating, uninsulated basements, or no attic insulation. Virtual assessments are ideal for this segment: they provide enough confidence to recommend the upgrade and connect the homeowner to a rebate program, without the overhead of a traditional assessment.
The pilot revealed a clear dynamic: perceived accuracy drives disclosure comfort, which drives market transformation. As the platform matures, incorporating more homeowner-provided data, Energy Advisor quality assurance review, and alignment with NRCan’s forthcoming national virtual assessment standard, confidence will increase. Higher confidence leads to more homeowners willing to share their label, which creates more market pressure to improve, which accelerates retrofits.
The pilot validated a phased rollout framework designed to build market trust gradually while maximizing impact at each stage.
| Education & Coaching | Integration with Programs | Province-Wide HLD |
Implementation | Near Term | Near-Medium Term | Long-Term |
Expected Audience | Homeowners considering upgrades | Homeowners considering upgrades | Homeowners, Buyers, Sellers |
Input Data | Property Assessment & Public Data | Virtual and/or In-Home Assessment | Virtual and/or In-Home Assessment |
Voluntary/Mandatory | Voluntary | Voluntary | Voluntary or Mandatory |
Impact | Low | Moderate | High |
Evidence from comparable jurisdictions supports the impact of this trajectory. Minneapolis’s mandatory TISH program achieved a 4% conversion rate on energy improvements among evaluated homes. Portland’s Home Energy Score policy generated granular building stock data now actively shaping incentive program design. A 2022 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study found each one-point improvement in Home Energy Score correlated with a 0.5% increase in home sale price.
New Brunswick is taking strong action on climate change and is leading the country in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. NB’s Climate Change Action Plan 2022-2027 includes 30 actions that are necessary to address New Brunswick’s climate change priorities and ultimately make the lives of all New Brunswickers more sustainable, affordable and resilient in the face of climate change.
NB Power is New Brunswick’s primary electric utility, serving approximately 400,000 customers. Through its SaveEnergyNB suite of programs, NB Power supports residential energy efficiency and home retrofit activity across the province.
Climative is a Fredericton-based property-level climate intelligence firm that aims to make home upgrades smarter for everyone involved. Its AI-driven platform gives homeowners personalized plans to optimize costs, comfort, and resilience, turning complex retrofits into confident next steps. Climative provides partners like lenders, insurers, governments, utilities, and contractors with property-level intelligence to drive better decisions, deepen homeowner engagement, and unlock retrofit opportunities across entire portfolios.
Dunsky served as the independent strategic advisor and evaluator for this project, facilitating stakeholder engagement and producing the Phase 2 evaluation report.
For more information: climative.ai • saveenergynb.ca
As Climative's VP of Product, Ian drives product strategy, focusing on customer needs and strong product-market fit. He's an entrepreneurial leader who loves paddling his homemade canoe.
Climative provides a collaborative AI-assisted data platform for organizations to enable personalized advice and offers to building owners, taking the guesswork out of building upgrades and transforming the low carbon economy.
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