Deep Retrofit Accelerator Initiative
The Deep Retrofit Accelerator Initiative (DRAI) provides funding to organizations (i.e. “retrofit accelerators”) that help building owners in the development of deep retrofits in commercial, institutional, and mid- or high-rise multi-unit residential buildings in Canada, and that drive market transformation in a given region or market segment.
Background
In March 2022, the Government of Canada released its 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP) – the first under the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act. This road map outlines a sector-by-sector path for Canada to reach its emissions reduction target of 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050.
In order to meet its climate targets, the Government of Canada must increase the depth and rate of building retrofits. Retrofits, especially deep retrofits, are complex projects with many moving parts – from project pre-development to financing and project implementation – and involve many players. This complexity generates barriers to the development of deep retrofit projects across Canada.
A new type of organization has been emerging in Canada to help address these challenges. These organizations (i.e. retrofit accelerators) convene and coordinate retrofit actors, support building owners through the deep retrofit process, and drive market transformation in a given region or market segment.
The objectives of the program are to:
- build capacity for, and address barriers to, deep retrofit project development and implementation
- facilitate the development of deep retrofit projects in Canada
- contribute to transforming the buildings sector in support of the Government of Canada’s climate goals
Funding opportunities
Status: Currently closed for applications
The Government of Canada is investing $200 million between 2023 and 2027 for this initiative. The funding will support organizations (i.e. retrofit accelerators) in their work to convene and coordinate retrofit actors, support building owners through the deep retrofit process, and drive market transformation in a given region or market segment.
Specifically, funding from this call for applications will support projects that include all of the four following elements:
- identify and/or aggregate deep retrofit projects
- guide individual building owners in the process of developing and implementing specific retrofit projects
- identify available funding and financing for specific deep retrofit projects
- conduct capacity building activities
Note: Capital costs (e.g. equipment or materials purchase or lease and other deep retrofit implementation costs) are not an eligible expenditure under this program.
Recorded information session
The video below is a recorded webinar to share information about the DRAI and its application process.
Transcript
Dianna: Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining our webinar about the deep retrofit accelerator initiatives call for applications. I'm going to allow a little bit more time for everyone to sign in. Just to note that this webinar is going to be recorded, so for those of you that do not want to be a part of a recording, feel free to log off. This recording will be sent to everyone who has registered for this webinar, so you will still receive a recording as well as the presentation and any questions and answers that have been addressed during this webinar. Just going to allow a little bit more time for people to log in. And again this this meeting will be recorded. The uh question and answers section of Microsoft Teams, and I think you'll see it in the upper right hand corner of your screen, is how we will be communicating with the participants of this meeting. And you'll notice that in the chat we have pinned a link to the application guide. Sorry, not the chat, the question and answers section. We've pinned a link to the application guide and we have also pinned some information about government of Canada recordings. And so you can read a little bit more about access to information privacy and how we will be using the webinar information. All right, I think. I think we have a lot of participants filling in. I'm going to get started. So just to introduce myself, my name is Dianna Miller. I am the senior manager of the Deep Retrofit Accelerator initiative for Natural Resources Canada's Office of Energy Efficiency. And this is a webinar that is going to cover off some elements of the program and how to apply. And so thank you all for joining us today. Just have some housekeeping items very quickly to cover. So again, this is a note that we are recording this session. For those of you do not wishing to be a part of a recording, umm, feel free to log off as registration as having registered for this webinar. You will receive a link to the recording so that you can still see what was covered during the presentation. You'll also receive a copy of the presentation as well as questions and answers. That have been covered during this presentation, so feel free to log off if you do not want to be a part of a recording. All right. Another element that I just want to cover very quickly is the fact that we do have a lot of participants that seem quite interested in. Obtaining funding for performing a retrofit of one or several of their own buildings or those that they're managing. So this is not that type of program. We do not fund actual retrofits, so the program does not cover capital costs such as. Equipment or machinery or things like that to implement an actual retrofit. So if that is something that you're looking for, there are other government programs, Government of Canada programs that cover that and when you are sent the information included in this presentation, there will be links to other programs that you might be interested in. I mentioned earlier I we are going to use the questions and answers section of Microsoft Teams for you to ask any questions you wish over the course of this presentation. Please ask questions as they come to you. You don't have to wait till the end of the presentation. We have facilitators on the line that are going to be helping answer those questions throughout the presentation. So please, if you've asked a question, check back and see there your your answer might already be there. But yeah, by all means, submit any questions that you have. We'll try to get to as many as we can during the presentation and the questions and answers section at the end. And for those that we were not able to get to, we will endeavor to answer any or all of them. And we will be sending a questions and answers document to all participants of this webinar and all that have registered for this webinar via e-mail and you'll also receive a link to the recording and this PowerPoint presentation. So I encourage all of you to follow along in the application guide for the program. The link I mentioned it's in the chat, but it's not. It's in the questions and answers section, so it's pinned at the top of that section. So please follow along and make things a little bit easier for you. And again, I'd like to reiterate. That this meeting is being recorded and with that, I'm going to just pass the mic over to the director of the Buildings Division of the Office of Energy Efficiency. It might go over that way. There we go. Jerome billadeau. So Jerome.
Jerome: Thank you Dianna, first I want to welcome everybody to this info session. We have a lot of you on the line and that's fantastic. We had a lot this morning as well and I wanted to provide a little bit of context before we delve into the details and the specifics of this particular call for applications. So of course, as you know, we do have at the national level, net zero goals for 2050. And when it comes to the building sector, it means that we need to retrofit a lot of our existing buildings given that they're going to be standing still. That most of them by that date. So the Government of Canada has taken a number of initiatives and as well as initiatives we're seeing at the provincial level, territorial level, municipal level and outside government as well. So there's a series we're seeing an emergence of a lot of programs and initiatives, right. So a lot of incentive programs for buildings and building retrofits on one hand and also a lot of progress on things like codes and regulations to bring up the performance and transform the market. In general now it's a lot. And what we've been hearing from a lot of stakeholders, building owners is that it's retro. Undertaking a retrofit in this environment is in some cases can be hard, confusing, overwhelming. There's a lot of barriers, there's a lot of players, there's a lot of steps, especially if you want to do in departure fit, and we'll talk about what that means later on. And there's a gap in the market, there's a gap. There's a need for some supporting organizations that will help, that will guide building. There's in navigating this complex retrofit process now we're starting to see some of these groups emerging across Canada and I can't name names, but I'm hoping that you're aware of who I'm talking about here. Some people call them retrofit accelerators, hence the name of this program. Some people call them concierge services, market development teams, retrofit enablers. They're essentially the groups that provide an expertise and to building owners and a certain area in a certain segment to help them overcome market barriers and to also help. Innovate and create new ways, streamline ways, better ways faster ways to undertake the retrofits we know we need. So this program broadly has three objectives which you may have seen in on our website. First is to build capacity for and address barriers to deep retrofit project development and implementation in Canada. Second is to facilitate an emphasis on the word, facilitate the development of deep retrofit projects in Canada and lastly to contribute to transforming. The building sector in support of our broader climate goals. So really we're talking with market transformation here. So I'll tell you very briefly about what this program or this call for applications in particular supports and what it does not support or not directly supports. And then it will go in a lot more detail in a moment, but I just wanted to give you a bit of flavor here. So in the spirit of what I mentioned earlier, these groups that are helping that are there to help navigate, help building owners navigate the retrofit ecosystem and to also kind of build this capacity that's needed. The way we are outlining that in the particular program is we're looking for projects or proposals rather from organizations that want to do 4 at least four things. One is to originate retrofit projects and that means identifying and aggregating. Project 2 is and this is a big categories to guiding and supporting building owners throughout that process especially helping them through the pre development stage but also shepherding throughout the process as well during the implementation. Three is those groups that will also work with identifying all the funding and stacking and putting together the finance or the funding that's required to make these projects happen because as I mentioned there's a lot of fine funding and financing out there, utilities, government, banks, all these folks, private capital. Putting that together is can be daunting in in this very evolving space. And lastly and very importantly, groups that will also conduct capacity building activities in this space, which means developing new novel replicable, standardized able approaches to the retrofit process. And so we'll talk about what that means, but we're looking for those kinds of groups that do all of those things together. So we call some people, as I said, call them accelerators, enablers and so on. There's different names for them, but you can get the sense and these groups, we hope the ones that we fund. And become focal points, resources for building owners and the broader ecosystem in their region and in their market segment. What this program does not support or this at least this call for applications, I want to be clear and Dianna mentioned that this program, this call for application does not fund the retrofits themselves. So if you're looking for, if you're looking for funding to change out your heating system or put in some insulation, this is not the program for you and in a similar way. This program again, I mentioned what we are supposed to support. If you're an individual bone building owner and you have three or four buildings and you want to do some audits and things like that, you're eligible. But I I would argue that you know other projects, other initiatives, applications that follow more along the lines I mentioned earlier will have more of a chance. So you're a group that wants to support owners of warehouses or hospitals and really help them figure out and navigate this process and also build capacity. In that space that has a good chance of scoring highly in the evaluation. Whereas if you're in one group that has a couple of buildings and you want to look at the work for yourself, maybe a bit more challenging. But if we encourage you to speak to us to understand, you know, if your project fits well in the program or if there's some things perhaps you could tweak to, to have more chance of funding. So we'll go, we'll go through that. Rad today I do want to encourage you and Dianna will introduce her team shortly and we have an e-mail address on our website if you have any questions and we've been getting a ton of them keep them coming. We're here to help and we're really looking forward to a very strong applications and we're looking forward after the fact to have this constellation of groups across the country that that really help nailed not nail down strike down some barriers in the in the building space. So again big thank you to to everyone for joining us. For Dianna and we'll go in more detail then Dianna.
Dianna: Great, thanks. Thanks Jerome. So yes, that's all really helpful information, Jerome, I just realized I forgot to mention one thing in in the housekeeping items, you will probably all notice that your cameras and your microphones don't work and that there is no chat function available for this particular webinar. Again, there's no chat function we're using. The question doesn't answers only we will not be able to see you. If you raise your hand. So again, please just ask your questions and the questions and answers section. Similarly like I said. Microphones and cameras have been disabled for this webinar. We've learned through the pandemic that sometimes people can contribute unwittingly and by surprise to webinars and and while hilarious, sometimes these unintended interjections are not helpful. So again, please use the questions and answers functions. Thank you very much. I'd like to begin my presentation. First, by acknowledging the land on which we gather is the territory of the first peoples of Canada and they are the original stewards of our environment, our lands and water and air. And they're significant contribution to Canada's environmental and climate change goals and ethos is is very apropos given our subject matter today. On a personal note, I'm I live in Ottawa, so I'm joining you today as a third generation settler from the traditional unseated territory of the ocean. Anishinabek Region nation, sorry. And since this is a virtual meeting, I also acknowledge the fact that many of us are participating from all over Canada, different places, so you'll be joining us from other traditional territories. So I encourage you to take a moment to just reflect on that and to acknowledge and learn about and learn from and engage with the First Nations or Inuit or Matee nations and people in your own regions. Um, I'd like to introduce my team very quickly. And so we have a couple on camera and a couple that are not on camera. But for those of you that are on camera wave and everybody can get a sense of who we who we have here joining us today. So the two senior managers in the program are Allison Noble. And Kerry and Bourne? So they're leading the charge. And we also have asked Ashley Mascarenhas and Karen Boutros as project project officers as well as program officers, pardon me. And also joining us today is Megan Diezmo, and she's in charge of the dray or deep Retrofit accelerator initiative mailbox. So the chances are you're going to be hearing a lot from her if you're corresponding with us. So thank you, team for joining us today. And I'll just jump right into the subject at hand, which is deep retrofits. So what is a deep retrofit? Umm, there's a lot of definitions out there. And when we were trying to nail this down as a program, this is what we landed on to try and encourage. What we want is to be a holistic approach to upgrading buildings and optimizing energy performance. And by holistic approach, of course, I mean you know that you're taking a look at not just the retrofit, but how the retrofit fits in with everything else about that building or structure that you're looking at. And by by looking at multiple systems, so you're not just looking at lighting or roofing or siding, you're looking at the whole picture. Then you know there's a better chance that you're going to achieve the savings that you were hoping for. And again, we're talking about deep retrofits. We know that they're hard, long, expensive. So what we're really trying to do is to kind of make inroads in that part of the market, typically a deep rush if it can save 50% or more and we say up to 50% or more in energy consumption or up to 80 to 100% in GHG savings. And we know that this is possible. We've seen it elsewhere, it's. It's not easy and we know that and that's why we're here and that's why we're we're launching this program. So. Moving on. The objectives. Now Jerome already mentioned this when he was speaking to us. The program has three main core objectives. We're supporting third party organizations and as George mentioned, they might be called deep retrofit accelerators. We could call them concierge organizations, market development teams, what have you, but we're supporting organizations like many of you here today. To help. Make deep retrofits of reality in Canada. And so rather than giving you the name retrofit accelerators or concierge services or what have you, I'm looking to you as applicants. I'm looking to you as organizations that are, you know, interested in being a part of this community, nascent community practice to develop the appropriate terminology that works for you for this type of operational model here in Canada. So, you know, I'm very interested in what you have to say. With that, our goal is that your organizations are going to help owners of commercial and institutional and mid or high-rise residential buildings navigate the complexities of deep retrofit projects, their implementation, their development and that kind of thing, so. You know, we talk about capacity building. I think there's already mentioned that there is a lack of capacity in the marketplace all over the place. And and so when you take a look at what we're expecting from projects, you'll understand what we mean by capacity building. So I'll get there in a second, facilitating the development of, so not actually doing deep retrofits, you're facilitating that development and then you know, fostering market transformation and ideally I think holistically that's what this program is. Is destined to do. We're designed to do. Pardon me. So getting into what an eligible project is, we have 4 buckets of things. And. And your project, the project or sorry application that you're submitting, really you have to demonstrate as an applicant how you are going to do these four things. These four buckets are necessary for every single project. So #1 identifying or aggregating deep retrofit projects, you don't have to have it all cooked right now. You don't have to know. Which? 100 buildings you're targeting or? 50 buildings or thousand buildings you're targeting, you don't have to have it all cooked right now I I understand that some might, but the idea is that your goal and your and your objective is to identify and aggregate those projects. Now that could be also just an interesting point and I think Jerome kind of touched on it. It could be in one geographic area. So for example, you're covering the province of Manitoba or it could be in a particular sector you're doing healthcare organizations. You know, that's, yeah, I mean, there are different approaches. I've I've heard from potential applicants that are looking at one or both of those elements or sometimes it's, you know. Uh. Just a variety of buildings and and you're just making yourself available to any building owner that that wants to come to you for assistance. So I mean we're looking to you to implement the business models that make sense for you and your organizations. Secondly, you're guiding business owners in the process of developing and implementing deep retrofit projects, but by developing we're talking about pre development. So you could be helping them carry out their own audits or sourcing an audit or identifying measures. You're helping them find or carry out feasibility studies, doing business case development, other activities associated with with planning a retrofit project and even you know helping them find service providers. So for implementation, helping them find someone to carry out their retrofit or manage their retrofit including also reporting and maybe even labeling, measurement, verification. I do want to reiterate again that this program excludes. Capital expenditures to undertake retrofits so you as an organization are not funding retrofits for an organization or your clients. You're identifying available funding and financing, and this could include supporting building owners. They're looking for public or private funds going to banks or other financiers. It could be helping them find rebates or incentives from other government programs or crown corporations or utilities. You could also work, pardon me, but you could also work with lenders or banks to maybe develop novel approaches, which moves me into #4, conduct conducting capacity building activities and developing or implementing novel standardized or replicable approaches to deep retrofits. And and when I talk about this, you know, you could be helping develop a standardized way to do a business case. Um, to seek permission to get to to implement a deep retrofit. So you could do that perhaps for a specific public sector type of organization. So then you know, for schools, so then all schools can apply. You know, because you're making it easier for them. For example, you could be developing methods or tools to support carbon audits or energy audits. You could be developing retrofit, project management, or implementation approaches. Reporting or measurement approaches, so there's any number of things that you could be doing to help. Not just the individual building owners and managers, but the buildings community across Canada writ large by making it faster and easier and less painful to plan and implement retrofits. So as Jerome mentioned. Umm, if you're building owner or manager and you're looking for funds, you're not going to see yourself in all these 4 buckets and so you're not an eligible applicant. But if you're building owner or manager and you want to undertake deep retrofits, and even though you're not looking for capital expenditures, you still want to, for example, do audits and seek financing and do commissioning and maybe other elements that are considered eligible in the application guide, your project is technically considered considered. Eligible, but it doesn't necessarily fall within the spirit of the program. You might be covering off all these buckets, but the program really is to establish the creation or strengthening of organizations whose mandates or missions or business models provide ongoing and varied concierge type services to a vast number of building owners and operators, and not just for one or two owners with a finite number of buildings. So you're welcome to submit for this type of project, but it's real mentioned. He might not score as well as a project that is going to get the Canadian building landscape to, you know, closer to its ultimate goal, or our ultimate goal, which is easier and faster and more affordable deep retrofits for everyone. There are asset criteria as well. So this is to say when I say an asset, these are not necessary for your application and if your application does not cover any of these elements, you are equally eligible for to be considered financing. So these are just asset criteria, you kind of get a little bonus mark. So we you know would love to see projects that are focusing on buildings occupied by households with low income or projects that address or benefit. Indigenous peoples and communities, projects that have equity, diversity and inclusion consideration. So for example, you know, you could, you could be looking at how to address those considerations within your own organization or within the communities that you're serving. So that kind of thing. And again, these are asset criteria, they're not necessary. Anyone, not anyone can apply, but you'll see it's a pretty it's a pretty vast group of, you know, eligible applicants. So basically either for profit or not-for-profit organizations. Any government level of government except for the federal government, because the federal government has its own programs for for this kind of thing. And any crown corporation or agency associated with those other levels of government, indigenous organizations of course. And I put utilities here separately even though they could fall into anyone or several of those already existing categories, just to be clear, so that you know any, any organization that generates or distributes energy or administers energy efficiency. Programs are also vulnerable. Our target building types, again pretty self-explanatory, commercial buildings, institutional buildings and merbs. When I talk about multi unit residential buildings, they have to be 3 1/2 stories above ground, they must have a footprint of 600 square meters or greater and they must have a common entrance. And so when I say common entrance, you know, I've been asked a couple of times, well I have, you know, I have three groups of, you know, townhomes or garden homes or row units or whatever you would like to call them. That I'm targeting, you know, are they eligible? And the answer is no. So each of those individual units has its own entrance. So there is no common entrance. Thus it is not considered eligible for this. The purposes of this program. There are other programs that do target that. In particular the program that launched on the same day as ours, the Greener Neighborhoods Pilot program, does take a look at those building types. And so I encourage you to Google them or go to the buildings. Website and click on their program and like I said it launched the same day as ours. So take a look at your their eligibility criteria and I attend encourage you to attend their webinars and information sessions. Oops, pardon me. All right. My bad. OK. So we're going to talk a little bit about expenditures, so. I kind of touched on this a little bit earlier. There are a number and please follow me, follow with me in the guide for this and or visit the guide after this session for a full complete list of eligible and ineligible expenditures. They're not all on this slide and I'll describe them to the best of my ability. So for eligible expenditures, these are things like salary and benefits of your own organization for the employees that work for you and you have to be able to demonstrate. That those employees worked on this particular project, so the subject of this application. And, um, if you're unsure about how to do that, if you do get approved for funding, I encourage you to talk to your. Project Officer or project manager here at NRCAN to understand how to demonstrate those expenditures because. We we want to make sure that your, your funding comes to you for this particular element in particular we also have professional scientific management, technical data collection and contracting services. So that's a huge, huge, huge moniker. But basically if you if you have contractor fees, they are eligible, they're not eligible expenditure and I'm going to come back to that in a second. They're just just put a pin in that. Travel expenditures are eligible, but I want to. Emphasize the fact that they are eligible within the rates that by the National Joint Council. This is in the guide so you don't have to remember right now. But please, when you're going through the guide, make sure that if you are going to seek funding or financing for or claim travel expenditures, that you're staying within the guidelines set by the National Joint Council.
Advertising, recruitment, training costs, facilitator fees, promotion costs and fees. Um, licensing fees, purchasing data, certification costs, informatics, hardware and software materials, supplies and equipment rental. And again, when we talk about that supplies and equipment rental, this is not equipment installed as a part of a retrofit. This is equipment that you need in order to deliver on the project that you've submitted to us. So only equipment that you're using. In order to perform the eligible tasks or activities that are in your application. Rental and facilitate facilities, audio and visit visual supplies and other costs such as that. This includes hospitality and prizes. So for example, if you're delivering workshops, training, conferences, meetings, that kind of thing, those rental of services and AV services and facilities are eligible. But door prizes and stuff are not. Your overhead expenditures or overhead costs can also be claimed and are also eligible expenditures up to 15% of your total eligible expenditure budget. And of course, any rebate to which you're entitled. Sorry, any taxes net of a rebate to which you're entitled? I get into ineligible expenditures. So again just going to emphasize capital costs. So nothing purchased or leased to implement a deep retrofit to a building. And land acquisition released. Leasing equipment other than anything directly related to the eligible activities that you've already claimed. Financing charges and legal fees, real estate fees, any taxes for which you're already eligible for another rebate, and. Other oh, and here's a big one. Further distribution of funds. So I've received questions about this. I'm going to do my best to kind of get rid of any fuzziness around it. Further distribution of funds for the purposes of this program, what we're talking about is if you were to use Government of Canada funds to. Say create an A rebate or incentive program for for other organizations or to give some sort of a grant to another organization, that kind of thing. Further, distribution of funds is not considered paying a partner for the costs that they've incurred. So if company a partners with Company B for the purposes of this application applying to this program, and Company B pays a contractor. Company B can then go back to company A and claim for that money. So basically company A considers company BA contractor that is considered an eligible expense. That's considered a contracting fee and just to clear up any. You know confusion around it when if you were approved for funding and you're you're acting in agreement with the Government of Canada Contribution Agreement or funding agreement. I encourage you to talk to your project officer and they will guide you through that and how to treat those types of relationships. We have mentioned eligible activities or we've touched on eligible activities. So I'm just going to. Go into some examples. So you'll notice when you talk about project plans, for example, facilitating implementation of projects, doing evaluations, recommissioning is an interesting one. Here we look at building commissioning and recommissioning as being a pretty useful measure, particularly if you're looking at your suite of buildings in your portfolio or in your, you know, in the group of, you know, identified. Buildings that that you have in your project submission. And, you know, maybe not all of them are candidates for deep retrofits after all. But that's not to say that commissioning can't be done or recommissioning. And you know, you typically see still energy savings there. And the good news is that it helps both you and the building owner understand how that structure is operating and how it can be operating better. And even better than that, it gives your client organization probably a much better energy literacy or energy efficiency literacy. Which in turn in the longer term will also help when they go to maybe implement a deep retrofit in the future. I mentioned here benchmarking, reporting and labeling. So Ohh sorry, an energy managers. That's another neat one. You know, this could be you training your own energy managers. That could be getting training for energy managers for client organizations. It could be developing energy manager training or hiring energy managers. So another another neat element when I talk about benchmarking though and reporting and labeling. You know if, if and when and I'm hoping it's when your projects. Or your, your yeah, your projects get to, you know, the space where you're ready to actually hold the hand of your client and they're about to jump into a deep retrofit. We encourage you to use the port panel, portfolio Manager, energy building benchmarking tool. So the reason being. We get to see a really good baseline performance and then we get to understand over the life of the retrofit and at the end of the retrofit where the energy savings are happening or if they're happening. So it's really, really great, not just for you and your client organization, but for us as well. And it's a great learning tool for not just the Government of Canada, but others who use government of can aggregated Government of Canada data. So just a really great tool. And yeah, we encourage you to all give it a shot if you're not already doing it. So the program was allocated $185.5 million between this April, so April 2023 to March 2027 We're asking all applicants to disclose all anticipated funding sources. Now, I know that you don't know right now where all of the money is going to come from for the. Things that you're asking for and the activities that you're planning and that's fine. But if you do have the intention to seek funding from various sources, we would ask that you include that in your application so that we know the Government of Canada cannot of course fund more than 100% of the total project costs or 75% for a for a for profit organization. So we would not want to find ourselves in a situation where we're asking for money back because you know, we are funding more than 100% of the project costs. We have separate a separate funding envelope for indigenous applications. Part of the reason being that the closing date for indigenous applications is. March. 31st 2025. So it's an ongoing intake, continuous intake over about two years. And that continuous intake ends once all of the funding has been allocated for March 31st, 2025. That's not to say that, you know, we can't spend more than that on indigenous applicants, for example, if we get a whole bunch of them right now during this call for applications. You know, the more the merrier, but for those that are not ready to apply immediately. Umm. The application deadline has has been extended for two years so that you can get your applications ready and apply when when you are ready. We also have a small envelope of funding dedicated to capacity building activities and projects that has not been nailed down yet. We're still refining the details. I think some of those details will come after we see what kind of projects we're going to get for this particular call for applications. And so we will announce that next stream at a later date hopefully. By this fall. So I talked about completing the application originally this said completing the application form, but I'm happy to announce that we have a application portal that we are using. It's based on the sales force application. And so all of you that are attending, I believe you've probably received a PDF or word version of the application form, but we are requiring applications to be submitted online by a sales force and. You are going to need a GC key in order to apply. If you have any issues whatsoever with either that or technical problems, or you can't use the application for whatever reason, please contact the Dre team. Our e-mail is at the end of this. Presentation, sorry and. We encourage you to give us a shout and we'll we'll walk you through it or find alternate ways for you to submit your application. So. Before I get into all of the application elements, just a quick reminder that all sections that are considered mandatory must be completed, otherwise we can't evaluate your application. I want you to consider the fact that. While something might seem evident for you, it might not be evident for those evaluating those of us who are evaluating our application. So please provide as much detail as necessary or as possible, particularly if you're making certain assumptions with regard to methodologies or whatever, or if you're using acronyms. Sometimes we don't know what you're talking about, so we can't award points if we if we don't understand your application or if you don't provide enough information, so please consider that when you're completing yours. Um, we provide an option for you to include supporting documentation as attachments. And again, you know, we do encourage you to use that if you feel it's necessary for you to really explain what your project is supposed to do. You'll note the closing date, so that is Pacific Time. And like I said earlier, indigenous applications, your closing date is 2 years from basically two years from now. So for Section 1, there's a couple of things that I want to cover here. First of all, we're looking for information about you as an applicant organization. So umm, you know your name is company a, the lead applicant is John Smith, and we want all of John Smiths details about how we're going to be able to contact him, what his role is in the organization and that kind of thing. And we want to know all about company A. If company A and Company B are partners, we also want to know all about Company B. And the contact person for Company B. If there's also a company C&D&E, great. We also need to know all about that. But I want you to keep in mind that when the Government of Canada signs an agreement, should you be approved for funding for the purposes of this program, we will only be signing an agreement with company A. And um, Company A and company A's relationship with company BCD&E and whatever. That's between company A and. And his their partners. The, uh, the contractual, I guess, relationship between the Government of Canada and this particular project is going to be between the Government of Canada and John Smith of Company. So just to keep that in mind, now that's not to say if company A and company BCD&E all want to create their own little consortium so that everybody's equal, so that there's one signing authority. For all of those guys, but. You want to create a new organization? That's entirely up to you. So you can create a quick consortium for the purposes of applying for this program. But it does have to be a legal entity, it does have to still have a signing authority, and there can only be one legal entity and one signing authority that is going to enter into the agreement with the Government of Canada. So if you do choose to create some sort of a a separate organization or consortium, I'm that's that's entirely your prerogative. We can't dictate how you manage your relationships with your partners. All I can tell you and reiterate is the fact that the Government of Canada will only be signing one contribution agreement with one organization, so. I'll leave that there. Section 2 is ridiculously important. It is probably worth the most points in the evaluation process and for good reason. There is a lot of information here that we need from you. I'm going to just cover off some of them. So first of all, you have your, obviously the project title. I want to say that the parameters of your project, the timelines, building types and regions are pretty. I would say easy to fill out, but now we get to the project scope and I will tell you that a lot of applicants will probably see this as a daunting element. I I would recommend that you fill out everything and come back to project scope if you can or elaborate on it after you filled out other sections because I think that a lot of details about your project are going to kind of come to you, different ideas are going to come to light. And you know, I think ultimately. You're going to find it easier to fill out project scope after the fact. You have project requirements, and those are things that we're looking at. For example, your approach, your goals, your key activities. We want to make sure that you're clearly meeting the project requirements. And if required or if applicable as well your asset criteria. Um, your project work plan is you might not have it completely nailed down, and I understand that. So we're just looking for overall, I think key activities or eligible activities and kind of the time frames that you're looking at and some brief descriptions on what you plan to do. If you are interested in the kinds of information that we're seeking with expected outputs and expected benefits, again, I encourage you to go to the application guide. They're all outlined there, including any reporting elements. That might be required. Finally, your project costs and sources of funding. So there are two tables that you're going to need to fill out. We tried to keep it as simple as we could, but there are still there's math. So we're looking at your project costs by activity type or expenditure category and by year, and then your sources of funding by the year. Section 3. So this is your risks and mitigation strategy. You will be graded on that as well. So that's an that is an essential element. There are two elements here that are optional. So you can talk about your indigenous, how you are incorporating indigenous considerations into your project, or how your project might be benefiting indigenous peoples, as well as your equity, diversity and inclusion considerations. And then we're going to look at how you plan to. Disseminate knowledge and information and this is important and it also kind of leads into other supporting organizations. So what we would really like to see is how you are using other organizations, you know their networks or their you know. I guess social media for example or their in person meetings who's supporting you and who's behind you and your project and then finally your evaluation plan. So we're looking at how you plan to measure a success of your project, how you plan to report the outcomes of your project and finally, like I said earlier, we are allowing or we're encouraging you to include supporting documentation and information. The last section, pretty simple, we need the signature of somebody who is authorized to sign on behalf of your organization and that's so that you are basically saying I consent to you know I attest to the information that we're submitting and you know we we do want to be considered for funding. This is not an agreement with us for funding. So this is not an agreement for the Government of Canada then approve your project and and and provide you funding, it is just the application phase. So if you are selected as a successful applicant, you will receive confirmation from us and then we will engage in another process by which we will create a contribution agreement with you. Um, we have several programs that the Government of Canada and some of our partners are offering that might be of interest to you that. You might wish to consider seeking out funding from as well. And for those of you that are on the line that you know are particularly interested in implementing retrofits, these could also be, you know, very valuable sources of information for you when you receive the presentation deck, in the e-mail, in your e-mail. These links are live, and so they will take you to those programs. And with that. Uh, that concludes my presentation. Again, I do want to say that our e-mail address is here. This is also our web address. If you go back to just the you know, energy efficiency slash buildings that will also take you to other programs within the Office of Energy Efficiency and other buildings related programs. And I encourage you to reach out to us if you have any questions that we don't manage to cover today.
Contact us
If you have questions or comments about the program email drai-iarm@nrcan-rncan.gc.ca
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