Existing Building Commissioning incentives
Incentives help owners, operators and managers of Ontario commercial and institutional buildings tune existing systems and earn payments for verified electricity savings.
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A qualified commissioning provider inspects and tests your existing building systems, analyses their operation, and helps you implement changes that reduce electricity use. Eligible work includes adjusting temperature settings and equipment schedules, balancing air and water flows, changing maintenance practices, and repairing equipment. The aim is to reduce energy waste and the building’s carbon footprint.
There are three payments within one programme:
- Investigation: up to CAD 0.06 per square foot of heated and cooled gross floor area, excluding parking garages. This is capped at CAD 50,000 per facility and 75% of eligible costs paid to your commissioning provider or other third-party service provider.
- Implementation: CAD 0.03 per kWh of electricity savings confirmed by IESO after the work. The programme limits this incentive to CAD 50,000 with a further limit tied to 30% of the facility’s annual electricity consumption calculated using its baseline model.
- Persistence: a further CAD 0.03 per kWh of confirmed savings maintained through the following 12 months. This phase has its own CAD 50,000 ceiling and the same further limit tied to 30% of annual baseline electricity consumption.
The investigation covers third-party inspection and testing, analysis and measure design, and project management. Your internal costs, financing, insurance, permanently installed equipment or appliances, tool purchases or leases, HST, and third-party contributions are excluded from these eligible investigation costs.
Eligibility
You must own, operate or manage a commercial or institutional building in Ontario. You must be an electricity customer whose facility is connected to the IESO-controlled grid or a connected distribution system, including a facility behind another connected customer’s meter. You must not be insolvent and must enter into a participant agreement with IESO.
Your facility must:
- Have at least 12 consecutive months of energy data acceptable to IESO and annual consumption of at least 750,000 kWh excluding electricity used by equipment for manufacturing goods, conveyance or transportation (the programme’s “Process Loads”).
- Have a baseline model meeting the Measurement & Verification Guide’s standards. This uses at least 12 months of energy-use and weather data to predict what the building would consume without the improvements; your commissioning provider uses it to establish and verify savings.
- Have had no recommissioning exercise in the previous two years, and not participate in a building certification programme that requires existing-building commissioning as a prerequisite.
IESO must approve the measures. Lamp and lighting-fixture additions or replacements, measures affecting equipment used for manufacturing goods, conveyance or transportation, on-site electricity generation, and switching electricity uses to another fuel are excluded. Adding, modifying or replacing lighting controls can qualify. A measure funded by another Ontario government or IESO programme incentivising electricity or peak-demand savings cannot also receive this incentive.
If you completed BOMA Enspire’s Audits and Analysis offering, meet the EBCx eligibility rules, and submit the approved audit report for the same facility, you can qualify for implementation and persistence payments but not the investigation payment.
You must maintain the improvements through the 12-month persistence phase. Additional measures introduced during that phase receive no incentive and change the baseline used to calculate savings; ineligible measures also trigger a baseline adjustment.
How to apply
- Estado
- Abierto continuamente
- Condiciones de la convocatoria
- Apply through a qualified commissioning provider and enter the participant agreement after IESO approval.
Email EBCx@ieso.ca to sign up or request programme information. Select and retain a commissioning provider from the programme’s qualified list. The provider makes the application; after IESO approval, you enter into the participant agreement.
Submit 12 months of historical facility energy data and an estimate of potential savings. IESO determines the measurement and verification requirements from the combined implementation and persistence incentives. Your provider prepares the phase reports, and you submit them for IESO review. For the BOMA Enspire route, the accepted audit report replaces the investigation report.
Complete implementation and submit its report within 18 months of IESO approving the investigation report or accepting the BOMA Enspire audit report. Reports for earlier phases must be approved before you submit later ones. Each payment follows approval of its report, submission of an invoice, and delivery of the required supporting evidence.
Share monthly utility data from the baseline period through the end of persistence using ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager. An organisation already benchmarking multiple similar facilities can submit its custom benchmark instead. Maintain and monitor the changes for the following 12 months; persistence verification includes photographs and attestations from you and the commissioning provider.
Get IESO approval before materially changing the measurement and verification plan. Keep programme records throughout the agreement and for at least seven years after it expires or ends, longer if applicable law requires it, and cooperate with verification and audits. You must repay overpayments. If an unresolved default ends the agreement, unpaid incentives stop and IESO can recover all or part of the implementation payment; the investigation payment is protected from that termination recovery, subject to the separate overpayment rule.