In October 2026 we reviewed thirteen Canadian firms selling commercial energy audits. Four of them also sell solar, battery storage, EV charging, LED lighting, electrical panel upgrades or backup power. A fifth bundles mechanical design. Those firms produce a report recommending work they are then paid to perform. We do not, and here is why it should matter to you.
An energy audit is a document that tells a building owner which capital projects to fund. If the firm writing it also sells one of those projects, the document has a commercial interest in its own conclusions. That is not an accusation of dishonesty. It is a structural fact, and it is the reason independence is a recognised concept in every other assurance discipline — nobody lets a company audit its own accounts.
The energy audit market in Canada has largely not adopted that norm. A firm selling solar modules will produce an audit recommending solar. A Tesla-certified electrical contractor will produce an audit recommending a panel upgrade. The recommendation may well be correct. You have no way to tell.
1. We sell no equipment of any kind.
2. We perform no installation or construction work on buildings we audit.
3. We take no commission, referral fee, rebate, kickback or margin from any contractor, supplier, manufacturer or distributor.
4. Our revenue from your project is the audit fee, agreed as a fixed price in writing before work starts.
There is no fifth clause with an exception in it.
This is the part that is worth more than the principle. Three things are different in an independent report.
Every energy conservation measure in our reports carries an installed cost estimate, annual energy and cost savings, simple payback, and the incentive available against it. The ranking follows those numbers. Nothing in our commercial position makes a $400,000 mechanical replacement more attractive to us than a $3,000 control schedule change — and in real buildings, the control change frequently wins.
A well-run modern building sometimes does not have enough recoverable saving to justify a deep retrofit. We will write that. A firm whose revenue depends on the retrofit cannot comfortably write it, so it tends not to appear.
The cheapest savings in most commercial buildings are scheduling, setpoints, drifted controls, sequencing and simple repairs. They generate almost no equipment revenue. In audits produced by firms that sell equipment, they are routinely under-weighted relative to the capital measures that follow them.
We hand you a specification you can tender. If you want help, we will compare bids against the report on a like-for-like basis and tell you where a quote has quietly changed the scope. We will not tell you who to award it to, and we are not paid on the outcome either way.
Where measurement and verification is required by a funding programme after the work is done, that is a separate engagement with its own fee — see measurement and verification.
Ask every firm quoting your audit, in writing: "Do you, or any affiliated company, sell, install or earn a commission on any equipment or work this audit may recommend?"
Ask us the same question. The answer is no. Then ask the other bidders, and compare how long the answers are.
No — but it does mean the audit fee is the whole fee, rather than a loss-leader recovered on the installation. A firm quoting a very cheap or free audit is being paid somewhere, and it is worth knowing where.
We can tell you what trade and what qualifications the work needs, and what the specification has to say. We do not maintain a paid referral list, because a paid referral list is the thing this page exists to rule out.
Yes. Programmes care about the analysis method, the report outline and, in some cases, the credential of the person signing — not about whether the auditor also sells boilers. Where a programme requires an accredited or licensed party we say so on that programme's page rather than implying we hold it.
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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.