How energy-efficient, affordable homes could help Canadian renters and manufacturers alike

Smart building doesn’t need to mean high-tech gadgets and “smart” appliances — just ask Mark Bernhardt, who has been building high-performance energy-efficient homes across Canada for two decades.

“Actually, most of our buildings are kinda dumb,” he said. “They’re not smart buildings, they’re simple, easy to operate.” 

Bernhardt said building energy-efficient homes is all about minimizing the house’s surface area with a simple design, an envelope-first approach creating long-lasting structures with less energy, making other parts of the house like heating and cooling systems easier to operate and less energy-consuming — and that energy efficiency can and should “definitely” extend to affordable housing. 

“There’s no good business case for building a crummy building,” he said. 

Bernhardt is not alone in his desire to see more affordable, energy-efficient homes in Canada. Local leaders across the country are also making the case to federal leaders. 

Mayors and councillors across Canada signed an April 11 open letter calling for “bold and achievable” climate-related ideas for the next federal government to implement. One of those ideas is building at least two million affordable energy-efficient homes.

According to open letter signee Ottawa councillor Marty Carr, builders and experts, bridging affordability with energy efficiency reaps more benefits than lowering greenhouse gas emissions and shrinking carbon footprints. Building energy-efficient affordable homes could also increase opportunities for Canadian-based manufacturing and address Canada’s housing crisis with short- and long-term solutions. 

“The climate change crisis has been a topic of conversation for the last 10 to 15 years, and you take what’s happening south of us, the trade war with the United States, and I think now is an extremely timely conversation we’re having to see these three themes intersect,” said letter signee Marty Carr, an Ottawa city councillor and deputy mayor. “One thing we’ve heard over and over again is that we need to build here in Canada and we need to develop our own manufacturing.”

“These projects would create hundreds of thousands of good local jobs in cities, rural and Indigenous communities, using Canadian steel, aluminum and lumber,” the open letter reads.

‘This is not just a nice-to-have, it’s a need-to-have’ 

Sarah Sharma, a University of Ottawa political science professor who researches how politics and economics shape environmental policies, said “it’s welcome” for local leaders to be “putting climate change back on the agenda.” She also cited current initiatives such as the Canada Greener Homes Affordability Program as a “good start.” The program is set to provide low- to median-income homeowners and tenants with no cost home retrofits to save on energy bills, but is not yet in place. 

“We need to have policies like that moving forward,” she added. “This is not just a nice-to-have, it’s a need-to-have for Canadian households.”

Bernhardt said a benefit about energy-efficient homes is that they don’t need to cost more to build than regular housing, citing a 38-house case study from the BC Housing Research Centre that found no relationship between a home’s efficiency and increased building costs. Bernhardt added that homes built with energy-efficiency in mind could reduce homeowners or tenants’ monthly living expenses. 

“You’re gonna have an energy bill that’s a fraction of what it was,” he said, adding that his own energy-efficient house rarely incurs a monthly utility bill.

According to Statistics Canada, approximately 842,000 Canadians aged 15 or older reported living in subsidized housing during the 2021 population census. A further 245,900 households were on a waitlist for social and affordable housing in 2022.

Keith Brooks, programs director with advocacy organization Environmental Defence, said building affordable energy-efficient homes within existing urban neighbourhoods would also reduce individual carbon footprints due to their convenient locations. 

“When we add more housing to existing built up areas, that means people are going to have a lower carbon footprint, not just because they use less energy at home, but because their lifestyle can allow them to access transit more easily to walk to the grocery store and to do all kinds of things that don’t require a car,” he said. 

But for Bernhardt and his company, the focus is on their next project: a 27-unit energy-efficient subsidized rental building as part of an urban development in the small town of Pictou, NS. He said the plan is to open its doors to renters in winter 2026. 

“It’s pretty hard for somebody to care about the environment if they can’t afford a house,” Bernhardt said. “But if we’re just out there building really garbage-y buildings, that’s not gonna get us anywhere.

“It makes much more sense just to build good buildings from the start.”