Energy Efficiency Shouldn t Just be for Those Who Can Afford It

Science

Elta es

David Suzuki,
David Suzuki
Foundation

 

magine you only have a small
amount of money and you have to
for your hungry family or paying your
heating bill. What would you do?
I thought so—so would I.

decide between spending it on food

Fortunately, most of us aren’t in that
position. We can afford to feed our fami-
lies and pay our heat and hydro bills. But
for low-income Canadians, dealing with
hydro and heating bills takes a back seat to
covering basic necessities like food, cloth-
ing, and shelter.

In the UK, the term “fuel poverty” is
used to describe low-income residents
who have trouble paying their fuel bills.
The UK is not alone. Millions of
Canadians are in the same situation. The
plight of Canada’s poor might not seem
like it would affect the environment, but it
does. And that indirectly affects all of us.

Low-income housing has become syn-
onymous with low-quality housing.
Canada’s poorest, often the elderly or sin-
gle parents with young children, are
forced to live in homes that lack adequate
insulation and have outdated furnaces and
inefficient appliances. Not only are these
homes less comfortable, they also waste
tremendous amounts of energy—which
is bad for the environment and our health.

Since more energy is required to oper-
ate these homes, more fossil fuels like oil
and gas often need to be burned. And that
leads to more air pollution and more cli-
mate-disrupting gases emitted into the
atmosphere—the gases the
Canadian government has promised to

same

reduce under the Kyoto Protocol.

Low-quality housing is essentially a
double-whammy. It drives up heating bills
for people who can’t afford it and leads to
more pollution for all of us. With the
price of fossil fuels, such as oil and gas, so
high, many Canadians are even forced to
sacrifice necessities to pay their monthly
heat and hydro bills.

For many homeowners, living in a
drafty house is an expensive annoyance

May 11/2005

 

that they can fix by adding insulation,
blocking air leaks, updating windows, or
investing in a high-efficiency furnace.
Canada’s federal government also has a
great program called the EnerGuide for
houses, which provides incentives for
homeowners who want to make energy-
saving retrofits. And there’s the rub. The
program is only available to homeowners,
not rental housing, where most low-
income people live.
While the EnerGuide program is a
a step in the right direction, we’re far
ehind other countries in working
towards widespread energy-efficient
retrofits for our homes. The US and UK,
for example, have both already invested
heavily in affordable energy-efficiency

retrofits for low-income consumers.

Making low-income homes more ener-
reduce
while

gy-efficient would
climate-disrupting emissions
improving the living conditions for
Canada’s poorest citizens. It would also
create construction jobs in cities and
towns across the country. And the most
vulnerable of our citizens would see lower
hydro and heating bills and live in more
comfortable homes.

For change like this to occur, it must
come from the top down. The federal
government could start with a new pro-
gram to improve home energy efficiency
for low-income Canadians. Right now,
there is a glaring hole in the EnerGuide
program that essentially puts energy effi-

 

ciency out of the reach of millions of
Canadians. That isn’t fair. Bringing sub-
standard housing up to a livable level
should be a priority for our federal gov-
ernment, and it wouldn’t take long to get
a return on that investment in terms of
energy savings.

Canada’s Kyoto plan has a number of
weak points—including very low targets
for our industrial emitters. But there are
lots of ways to improve it that would cre-
ate jobs, strengthen our economy, and
improve our quality of life. We can start
by helping those who need it most.

Take the Nature Challenge and learn
more at www.davidsuzuki.org

 

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