Of the thirteen Canadian commercial audit firms we reviewed in October 2026, not one mentioned this. Enbridge Gas funds the exact service an energy consultant sells — up to 50% of the assessment cost — and the funding has to be approved before the work starts. If you are about to pay for a study out of your own capital budget, read this first.
Enbridge Gas Ontario runs an incentive called Commercial Custom Audits & Studies. It cost-shares assessments on natural gas, steam and hot water systems. The numbers below are taken from Enbridge's own programme page.
| Item | Terms |
|---|---|
| Share of cost funded | Up to 50% of eligible assessment costs |
| Cap — commercial | $10,000 per project |
| Cap — institutional | $20,000 per project |
| 100,000 – 2,999,999 m³/yr | Up to $6,000 |
| 3,000,000 – 9,999,999 m³/yr | Up to $10,000 |
| 10,000,000+ m³/yr | Up to $20,000 (institutions) |
| Minimum consumption | 100,000 m³ of natural gas in the previous year |
| Pre-approval | Required before the study starts |
| Limit | One incentive per address per account |
Verified 3 October 2026 against Enbridge Gas's Commercial Custom Audit page. Programme terms change; if you are reading this well after that date, ask us to re-check before you rely on it.
The offer names four categories of work:
Steam trap surveys and air and water balancing are funded by name by a utility, and in our October 2026 review of thirteen Ontario and Canadian competitors, not one offered either as a named service. If your building has steam or hydronic distribution, this is the cheapest recoverable saving available to you and the market has not bothered to tell you about it.
This is the part that costs owners money. The incentive is a pre-approval programme. Work that has already started is generally not fundable, and no amount of good paperwork afterwards fixes it.
The single most common way to lose this funding is to commission the study, then apply. Allow time for pre-approval in your schedule before the audit begins — not after.
The study incentive is the front end. The Commercial Custom Retrofit Program funds the work the study recommends: up to $0.40 per cubic metre of natural gas saved, to a maximum of 75% of upgrade costs, capped at $100,000 per project for commercial and $500,000 for institutional. It covers commercial, retail and office, multi-unit residential, educational, healthcare and government buildings in the Enbridge service area, runs year-round with no stated deadline, and pays within eight weeks of commissioning.
Verified 3 October 2026 against Enbridge Gas's Commercial Custom Retrofit page.
Taken together, that is the argument almost nobody in this market makes: the study can be half-funded, and the work it recommends can be three-quarters funded. The question is not whether you can afford an assessment. It is whether you are leaving a utility's money on the table.
Enbridge also publishes periodic enhanced offers at higher cost-share rates. We are deliberately not quoting them as available. The 2026 prescriptive limited-time offer at 75% closed to purchases on 30 September 2026, and the Controls Enhanced Offer required purchase orders before 1 July 2026. Both dates have passed.
This is the discipline the rest of this market does not keep. In our competitor review we found firms still naming the Canada Greener Homes Grant, which Natural Resources Canada's own page now titles Closed. A programme page that is a year stale is worse than no programme page, because it tells a buyer exactly how much attention you pay.
Not under this offer. Depending on your electricity consumption and building type, IESO Save on Energy routes may still apply, and Enbridge runs prescriptive equipment incentives with different gates. Tell us your gas volume and annual kWh and we will tell you which doors are actually open.
Yes, and some owners do. The application turns on how the study scope is written, so the useful thing we add is scoping it to be fundable. If you would rather run it in-house, ask us for the scope language and use it.
No. This funds assessments and studies on gas-fired systems. Benchmarking and EWRB reporting are separate obligations with no equivalent incentive.
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A compliance deadline, an incentive application, a financing requirement, or a capital plan. Tell us which, and we will tell you what you need and what it will cost — as a fixed fee, before any work starts.
If you do not need an audit, we will say so.