Seven of the thirteen Canadian audit firms we reviewed say they help clients access rebates and incentives. None of them explains a single programme’s eligibility, cap or application sequence. At least two still name programmes that have closed. This page is the opposite of that: every figure sourced, every entry dated, and a section at the bottom for what is no longer available.
Programmes are grouped by who pays: IESO Save on Energy for electricity measures, Enbridge Gas for natural gas, Natural Resources Canada federally, and municipal or local distribution company offers on top. Each entry gives the cap, the hard eligibility gate, whether pre-approval is required, and the date we last checked it against the administrator's own page.
Pre-approval. Custom programmes will generally not fund work that has already started. The sequence is apply, get written approval, then work — and the approval step takes weeks.
Baseline first. Pay-for-performance programmes measure savings against a baseline established before anything changes. Install first and the baseline is gone, along with the incentive.
Pay-for-performance for industrial, municipal, institutional and healthcare facilities. Up to $15 million per project. Minimum 600 MWh per year of anticipated electricity savings. Project feasibility studies are cost-shared at 50%. Project incentives at $300/MWh up to 75% of eligible costs. Payment follows approval of the measurement and verification report and requires achieving at least 50% of anticipated savings. A baseline measurement is required before any system changes. Projects must complete within five years of agreement execution. There is no online portal; applications use IESO-provided templates.
Status: active. Verified 3 October 2026 against saveonenergy.ca.
Pay-for-performance at $0.30/kWh for summer peak savings (1 June to 30 September, 3–9 p.m. EDT) and $0.08/kWh outside that window. Rates doubled on 1 January 2025. Incentives run for three years. Requires a commercial, institutional or industrial facility in Ontario, a three-year commitment, a minimum 5% energy saving within two years per facility, and twelve months of hourly interval meter data. The portal auto-generates baseline models and annual savings reports. Applications approved by 31 December 2027 receive the full three years of incentives.
Status: active. Verified 3 October 2026 against saveonenergy.ca.
Three phases. Investigation: up to $0.06 per square foot of building area to a maximum of $50,000, or 75% of participant costs to the commissioning provider. Implementation: $0.03/kWh of confirmed savings, capped at 30% of annual electricity consumption or $50,000, whichever is lower. Persistence (twelve-month monitoring): $0.03/kWh of persisting savings at the same cap.
Eligibility: at least twelve consecutive months of energy data; minimum 750,000 kWh annual consumption, excluding industrial and manufacturing process load; baseline models meeting the programme's minimum standards; no commissioning exercise in the previous two years; connected to the IESO-controlled grid or a distribution system. Programme incentives require an accredited building commissioning provider from the programme's qualified provider list.
Status: active. Verified 3 October 2026 against saveonenergy.ca. Full explanation: EBCx in Ontario.
Up to 50% of eligible project costs, with a double incentive rate for most non-lighting projects in electricity-constrained areas — still capped at 50% overall. Two streams: Prescriptive, paying set incentives from an eligible measures list, and Custom, calculated from verified kWh or peak kW reductions. An eight-step pre-project and post-project workflow with pre-approval. Eligible: commercial, industrial, municipal, universities, colleges, schools, hospitals, multi-residential and agricultural facilities; lessees need owner authorization.
IESO states that changes to the Retrofit Program came into effect on 30 June 2026. Any figure you have been given for this programme from before that date should be re-verified before you build an application around it. We re-check it per project.
Status: active but modified as of 30 June 2026. Verified 3 October 2026 against saveonenergy.ca. Note that the programme page does not state that an energy audit or ASHRAE-standard study is required — a condition several competitors imply.
Expanded Energy Management Program, Peak Performance Program (commercial and institutional HVAC load reduction at peak), Instant Discounts, the Energy Management Excellence Awards, and local initiatives including BizEnergySaver in Ottawa and Toronto's Richview South area.
ieso.ca still lists programme names that do not all appear on the saveonenergy.ca programme index — the Small Business Program, the Industrial Energy Efficiency Program, the Strategic Energy Management Program, Retrofit Regional Adders, Commercial CoolSaver and Peak Perks for Small Business. Since XLerate's page directs existing Industrial Energy Efficiency Program participants to its portal, that programme appears to have been superseded. We do not name any of those six as available, and we would re-verify before anyone did.
Enbridge's offers are the largest uncontested opportunity in this market: in our October 2026 review, zero of thirteen competitors mentioned any of them.
| Programme | Pays | Hard gate |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial Custom Audits & Studies | Up to 50% of assessment cost; $10,000 commercial, $20,000 institutional; tiered by consumption | 100,000 m³/yr minimum; pre-approval required; one per address per account |
| Commercial Custom Retrofit | Up to $0.40/m³ saved, max 75% of cost, $100,000 per project ($500,000 institutional) | Enbridge service area; paid within 8 weeks of commissioning; year-round |
| Industrial Custom Engineering | Custom, by project | Industrial facilities in the Enbridge service area |
| Affordable Housing Multi Residential | Custom, by project | Affordable multi-residential buildings |
| Prescriptive / Fixed Incentive | Set amounts by equipment type | Eligible equipment list |
Full detail on the study funding, including what is fundable and the pre-approval sequence: Enbridge Gas will pay for up to half of your energy study.
Limited-time offers are deliberately excluded from this table. The 2026 prescriptive enhanced offer at 75% closed to purchases on 30 September 2026, and the Controls Enhanced Offer required purchase orders before 1 July 2026. Both windows have passed. We will add the next one when it opens, dated.
| Programme | Status | Note |
|---|---|---|
| ISO 50001 financial assistance, commercial & institutional buildings | Call for proposals CLOSED | Stated on NRCan's own page. Terms when open: up to 60% of costs for for-profit and 75% for not-for-profit, max $40,000 per building and $200,000 per organization per fiscal year; projects to complete by 31 March 2029. Worth monitoring for a reopening. |
| Green Industrial Facilities and Manufacturing Program, Industrial Facility Track | Reported CLOSED — unconfirmed on NRCan's own site | Reported closed as of 20 August 2026 with no reopening date. Terms when open: $40,000 to $5,000,000, up to 50% of eligible costs. Eligible activities included energy assessments and audits. The most audit-relevant federal industrial programme; we re-check it with NRCan before naming it in any state on a project. |
| Benchmarking and building performance standards toolkit | Published guidance | Identifies mandatory benchmarking in Ontario, Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto, and voluntary initiatives elsewhere. |
| ENERGY STAR certification for buildings | OPEN | Score of 75 or higher required; 16 eligible building types; a Licensed Professional must conduct a site visit and sign the application. See ENERGY STAR certification. |
CMHC MLI Select is not an incentive — it is mortgage loan insurance, where energy performance buys loan terms rather than cash. The energy points, the 2020 code baselines and the 30 September 2026 transition are covered on the MLI Select page. City of Toronto energy retrofit loans and local distribution company offers sit alongside these; we check them per project because they change without notice.
| Item | Status |
|---|---|
| Canada Greener Homes Grant | CLOSED per NRCan's own page title. Residential. Still named by at least one Ontario firm. |
| NRCan ISO 50001 assistance | CLOSED — call for proposals closed. |
| GIFMP Industrial Facility Track | Reported closed 20 August 2026; unconfirmed on NRCan's own site. |
| Enbridge 2026 limited-time offer (75%) | Purchase window ended 30 September 2026. |
| Enbridge Controls Enhanced Offer | Purchase orders were due before 1 July 2026. |
| IESO Retrofit Program, pre-30 June 2026 terms | CHANGED. Re-verify before quoting. |
| CMHC MLI Select 2015 NBC / 2017 NECB baselines | Ceased 30 September 2026 per CMHC Advice 268. The 2020 codes are now the reference. |
| Toronto Mandatory Building Performance Standards | PROPOSED, not law. See what is coming. |
Because it is the fastest way to tell whether anyone is maintaining a programme page. A list of open programmes costs nothing to write and ages invisibly. A list of closed ones only exists if somebody went back and checked.
Frequently yes, because they fund different measures and different fuels, and they are administered separately. What you cannot usually do is claim twice for the same saving. We set the measure-by-measure incentive position out in the audit report so the stacking is visible before you apply.
No. Our fee is a fixed audit or application fee agreed in advance. A success fee on an incentive gives the preparer a reason to overstate savings, and savings are verified after the fact in every pay-for-performance programme.
Send us the programme name and we will check it against the administrator's own page and tell you what we find, including if it is open and we have simply missed it. That is a useful outcome for both of us.
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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.