The Green Condo Page - Fall 2022 - CCI Manitoba Chapter

Article from Volume 9, Issue Number 4, 2022

The Green Condo Page - Fall 2022

By Alan Forbes | Other articles by Alan Forbes | Regular Column

Whether it improves the sustainability of your condo operations, reduces waste, increases energy efficiency, reduces water consumption or just beautifies the environment surrounding your property, we’d like to hear from you - just send us an email with a subject line of “CCI Green Condo Page”. We hope to hear from you soon. Please send any comments or suggestions to cci.mb.news@gmail.com.

Green Condo Guide

For those condo corporations looking to improve the energy efficiency of their property and save money for the long term, a useful resource is the Green Condo Guide published by the Alberta Real Estate Foundation. The Guide provide a good overview of the approach to take and issues to consider during the planning phase. Here is a link to it https://www.pembina.org/reports/2015-03-25-green-condo-guide.pdf

Canada Greener Homes Grant

This is an update on my personal participation in this program with the goal of reducing my energy bills and having a more comfortable cond unit to live in. An article in the Winter 2022 newsletter (https://cci-manitoba.ca/cci-manitoba-magazine/article/7) provides some background on the program and the initial steps I took in my journey to achieve my goal.

Process & Timeline

There is a simple five step process

Enrol in the program
Get an pre-retrofit energy audit done
Complete the retrofits
Get an post-retrofit energy audit done
Submit paperwork for reimbursement

It is proving to be a lengthy journey, but that is probably a good thing because there is a very high participation rate and lots of interest in the country to reduce energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions. To give you an idea of the timeline, for Step 1, I applied on Oct 16, 2021 and received confirmation of enrollment Nov 8, 2021. For Step 2, I contacted one of the approved energy auditors for Manitoba in Nov 2021 and was only able to book an appointment for the energy audit in Jul 2022. The auditor showed up on time on Jul 26, 2022, was thorough and professional, and completed the audit in under two hours. I received the audit report with retrofit recommendations on Aug 5, 2022.

As to Step 3, this is where the journey gets complicated because I live in a condo with common elements, rather than a single family home. There are three recommended retrofits

Upgrade Hot Water System
1. Estimated annual savings of $233
2. Install an electric heat pump water heater
3. each condo unit has its own water heater and mine is about 12 years old so the timing is good
4. Canada Greener Homes Grant of $1,000
5. Seems fairly straight forward, get some quotes and proceed.
Upgrade Windows
1. Estimated annual savings of $285
2. Install ENERGY STAR windows
3. Canada Greener Homes Grant up to $250 per window rough opening
4. Efficiency Manitoba is also offering a $50 rebate per window rough opening
5. Note that windows in my condo are shared responsibility between the condo corporation and the unit owner. It complicates it somewhat but not an insurmountable hurdle.
6. Just need to get some quotes and confirm economics of the upgrade.
Upgrade Heating System
1. Estimated annual savings of $518
2. Install an earth-energy system (i.e. geothermal)
3. Note that each unit here has its own furnace
4. Canada Greener Homes Grant of $5,000
5. Efficiency Manitoba also offers incentives of up to $2.50 per square foot
6. Will have to spend approximately $500 on a feasibility study to determine to the installation and maintenance/support costs, then do payback analysis
7. A big issue is how does one install an earth-energy system in a condominium setting?
8. Bigger issue is that it would probably make more sense to do all units with a district earth-energy system, but the feasibility study would cost about $12K and the Canada Greener Homes Grant of $5,000 would only be available to up to four enrolled unit owners and there is no obvious way to enrol the whole condo corporation.

Expect a followup report in a future newsletter edition.

Winnipeg’s Residential Food Waste Collection Pilot Project

The City wrapped up its two year pilot project, which started in October 2020 https://engage.winnipeg.ca/residential-food-waste-pilot-program. CBC news reports that City Council expects to get a report on the project sometime in the next year https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/compost-collection-program-funding-1.6578372. Will the program be rolled out across the City and if so, when. For now, those of you condo owners interested in such a program, you can enrol in a voluntary fee-for-service program with Compost Winnipeg https://compostwinnipeg.ca/commercial/. Note that most condos would fall into the commercial category.

Alan Forbes, Chair, CCI MB Communications Committee