Residential solar thermal systems get huge incentive boost
The Canadian government boosted its incentives for home energy retrofits yesterday by 25 per cent for most items, which the Ontario government said it would match. It’s all part of an effort to stimulate “green” home renovations as part of a larger effort to kickstart economic activity.
I said “most” items because solar thermal hot water systems got an even greater boost. The current rebate is $500 from the federal government, matched by a further $500 from Ontario. The feds increased its rebate dramatically to $1,250. So if Ontario matches, as it says it will, that will mean anyone who purchases and installs a residential solar hot water system will get $2,500 back. Not bad, considering you can get a system for as low as $6,000.
Expect more “thermal” and energy efficiency announcements from Ontario in the coming weeks. Here’s my article in the Star if you want some more details.
Tags: EcoEnergy, energy efficiency, solar thermal
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca
March 31st, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Solar thermal for supplemental space heating as well as hot water is the ultimate value. It will probably lower your natural gas or oil bills by a large magnitude. Using it only for hot water is not the best use of your system. High performance means very low bills.