Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) has invested $526,785 in RSI Projects Inc. to support the ReCover Initiative to make buildings in Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia more energy efficient.
The ReCover Initiative partners with public and municipal partners to offer deep energy retrofit solutions for buildings. Based on a systematic, modular approach developed in the Netherlands called EnergieSprong, the initiative involves wrapping the building in a prefabricated skin and replacing the mechanical systems with smaller, more efficient components.
The federal funding will support six front-end engineering design studies of deep energy retrofits for six municipally owned buildings, with the goal of identifying cost-effective ways to achieve energy reductions through panelized retrofits; taking risk out of future investment for other building owners; and growing confidence and experience in deep energy retrofits among municipalities and industry stakeholders.
“Even if we build every new construction to net-zero starting today, Canada still has to find a way to make its existing building stock net-zero, with as small a carbon footprint as possible,” says Nick Rudnicki, technical director of the ReCover Initiative and CEO of RSI Projects. “ReCover is excited to partner with NRCan, the province of Nova Scotia, QUEST, the Atmospheric Fund, Efficiency Nova Scotia, the Ecology Action Centre and six municipalities across Canada to develop a deep retrofit solution that is scalable at the speed required by the climate crisis.”