Saskatoon and OPEN Make a Move on Home Energy Efficiency
Saskatoon Homeowners will soon have access to a powerful new software tool to help them understand their homes’ energy footprint, and potential for improvement.
The City of Saskatoon has engaged OPEN Technologies to deliver an online tool to boost homeowner knowledge and motivation to embark on an energy efficiency journey. Each of the 62,000 single family homes in the City will be assigned a digital energy score, equivalent to the EnerGuide for Homes framework used by energy advisors across Canada. Homeowners can then register to refine their home information and receive a customized, costed retrofit roadmap tailored to their home.
The City of Saskatoon has set ambitious and meaningful energy efficiency targets for its built environment, aiming for a 50% increase in building efficiency by 2030 and a 90% improvement by 2050. As residential energy consumption accounts for as much as 40% of Saskatoon’s GHG emissions, improving efficiency and reducing emissions in homes is critical to achieving these objectives. The Home Energy Loan Program was launched in 2021 to support homeowners in doing their part to improve energy efficiency and undertake retrofit activities, and the new tools will help to support and bring new value to homeowners and to the City.
OPEN Technologies is a Canadian software developer of climate tech solutions. This project will branch from OPEN’s flagship product offering GRID, a building energy benchmarking and disclosure platform that has been adopted by 26 Canadian jurisdictions to aggregate performance data for thousands of buildings across the country.
This tool will be publicly released in September 2023, in the form of a public facing map and analytics tool to help homeowners, policy makers, and the general public to see home-level energy ratings, actionable retrofit pathways, and aggregated insights on the key pathways and energy conservation measures that can drive the Saskatoon building stock toward its overall target. This tool will play a critical engagement role in a growing constellation of initiatives in development by both Saskatoon and OPEN to move confidently toward a low carbon future.
Contact:
For OPEN Technologies:
Media Contact Name: Donovan Woollard, CEO
Phone: 604-720-4223
Email: donovan@opentech.eco
For City of Saskatoon
Media Contact Name: Amber Weckworth
Phone: 306-986-0839
Email: amber.weckworth@saskatoon.ca