Windsor City Council is taking the next step towards making homes more energy efficient to fight climate change.
Council agreed Monday night to see how much the Windsor Residential Deep Energy Efficiency Retrofit Program will cost and how it can be rolled out. The program will tap into government funding and partner with local business to finance improvements to Windsor's aging housing stock, which is the oldest in the province.
Ward 9 Councillor Kieran McKenzie says the financing would likely be repaid by the homeowner through their property tax, but energy savings would offset that cost.
"The beauty of this program is it makes these kinds of investments ... affordable and accessible to people who need them, not only from just the energy efficiency standpoint, but even just updating the infrastructure in their home," he says. "It's good for the environment because greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced. In addition, it's also good from a financial perspective."
He says the economy would also get a boost from the project.
"Three thousand jobs could be created through this retrofitting program, as well as the investment that would follow to create the capacity to do all of it," he added.
According to the report, the majority of Windsor's housing stock was built in the '50s and Windsor homes use 35 per cent more energy than the provincial average.
McKenzie hopes to see a plan ready for final approval by the end of the summer.