My colleague Tianshu Huang and I recently attended the Toward Net Zero Renovations Bootcamp hosted by the Canada Home Builders’ Association (CHBA Net Zero). The attendees were Canadian, and the lessons were universal – echoing the retrofit challenges we hear across Canada and south of the border.

Read the full original article on LinkedIn.

The event brought together builders, policymakers, and innovators to offer a comprehensive, future-focused discussion on net-zero housing. Net-zero initiatives are vital long-term investments in innovation that build the necessary technological capabilities for the future.

As our team reflected on the Bootcamp, one idea in particular stood out – a concept with significant implications for the retrofit industry.

It’s what I took to calling “the net-zero retrofit hockey stick”.

The First Half of Energy Savings Has the Biggest ROI

A presentation from Thinkbright homes: energy efficiency retrofits cost roughly $1,580 per gigajoule of energy saved with average project costs around $100kto reach 50 percent of energy efficiency improvement (toward net zero). This is where the “easy wins” live:

• Critical envelope work including insulation and air sealing
• Better ventilation
• Mechanical systems upgrade, like heat pumps
• Practical low-cost upgrades that improve comfort and safety

These measures, if properly staged, are often affordable, achievable, and in many cases, they can pay back over time. This is where the retrofit economy has real momentum, because homeowners understand the value.

Most people don’t renovate because they want to achieve net-zero. They renovate because their house is drafty, uncomfortable, or expensive to heat.

That is the business of retrofits today.

Tian participating in the panel on Virtual Home Labelling alongside colleagues from Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Canadian Association of Consulting Energy Advisors (CACEA) , Properate , and @Open technologies

The Last Stretch Toward Net Zero Gets Very Expensive

The Bootcamp also reinforced an unfortunate truth: as you push closer to net zero, the cost vs. energy saved curve trends upward dramatically.  Chasing net zero may require much more extensive upgrades, such as:

• Exterior wall re-insulation & re-cladding
• Extensive air-sealing
• Replacement of windows with triple-glazed
• Specialized high-efficiency doors
• Solar panels and energy storage
• Integrated project delivery consulting cost
• Foundation wall insulation (inside and out)

The cost per unit of energy saved can reach tens of thousands of dollars per gigajoule. The presenter suggested cost per gigajoule saved over $40,000. That is not a typical homeowner retrofit market. Retrofitting homes to net zero will require a massive and concentrated injection of funding and payback timelines measured in decades.

In other words, the road to net zero is not a straight line or even a ride with bumps along the way. It’s a hockey stick where the blade is out of reach for most.

Net Zero Projects Still Matter, Deeply

It would be a mistake to look at those high-cost final steps and conclude that net-zero initiatives aren’t important. They’re critical. There is enormous merit in allocating part of any serious portfolio to speculative investments.

In academia, that means basic research on ideas that might sound strange until they change the world. In industry, it means prototyping products ahead of where the market is today. And in the retrofit world, it means the government funds net-zero experiments that may not pencil out in strict ROI terms right now, but that teach the lessons we will need later.

If we stop innovating and focus only on short-term cost efficiency, we will fall behind quickly. Then, 25 to 50 years from now, when today’s housing upgrades come due for replacement, we will still be working with 2025-era technology.

That is the real value of net-zero initiatives. They are long-term investments in capability. Technologies we now take for granted, like LEDs, high-performance windows, and modern cold-climate heat pumps, only became practical after years of early investment and experimentation.

The Retrofit Journey Is a Process (Not a Leap)

One practical takeaway from my conversations at the Bootcamp was the importance of properly sequencing the retrofit projects.  I like the term “value engineering” – it means smarter planning to get the best bang for your buck. There was consensus at the Bootcamp that one-shot transformations just aren’t realistic for most homeowners, and value engineering can help us do more with the same budget.

In a workshop activity, we were asked to work together, playing the roles of Energy Advisor, Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) Consultant, homeowner, and influencer(s), and help engineer a roadmap for a typical Canadian home. Each table had a different scenario; ours was an elderly person living alone in a 1950s home with limited budget, limited savings, and no tolerance for debt. Our hypothetical homeowner could not undertake a deep retrofit journey, let alone a net-zero retrofit. To my mind this situation is deeply representative of millions of Canadian households. Even with these restrictions, we wereable to get them through the first steps of the journey.

1. Air seal and re-insulate the attic with adequate ventilation
2. Improve indoor air quality & moisture control with an HRV
3. Provide basic air sealing around existing windows and doors wherever possible.

We then talked about how in the longer term, this would prep the homeowner for the next stages:

1. Insulation and air sealing mean that the homeowner can potentially use a smaller air or ground-source central heat pump when they upgrade their furnace.
2. Look to undertake efficiency measures like insulation under roof & wall cladding, simultaneously with normal maintenance cycles.

Retrofits can’t always be framed as one massive project. Smart deep retrofit planning sometimes means being patient and letting maintenance cycles to provide opportunities for energy-efficiency upgrades. Fortunately in Canada, we have invested in our building science experts (shout out to Canadian Association of Consulting Energy Advisors (CACEA)) and they’re ready to provide this sort of guidance for everyone.

Scaling Retrofits that Are Attainable

Being realistic, there is no point in talking about the last 10 percent of the net-zero journey if we have not helped homeowners take the first step. The real work today is enabling the first 25-50% of emissions reductions, where the business case is strong, comfort improves, and emissions fall meaningfully at scale.

And alongside that, we should keep supporting the publicly funded projects that explore what comes next. Because innovation is how the hockey stick flattens over time — hopefully into a ringette stick…

At Climative, we’re scaling home upgrade advice and improving access to the capital to make it happen. Banks, insurance companies, and governments look to us to meaningfully engage homeowners with well-timed offers and advice. DM me to learn more.

Read the full original article on LinkedIn.

#netzero #BuildingScience #HomeRetrofits #EnergyEfficiency #SustainableConstruction #GreenBuilding #ClimateTech