How to Find Your Home's EnerGuide Rating and Label

Published on October 24, 2019

Whether you’re looking to see how energy efficient your home is, you need more efficient appliances, or you are simply looking to find ways to reduce your home’s heating and cooling bills, EnerGuide is the most ideal starting point.

An EnerGuide label will provide you with useful tools to help understand the energy efficiency rating of a home, appliances, or even vehicles. The rating provides an overview of a product’s energy efficiency, which helps consumers make informed decisions regarding energy efficiency.

What is EnerGuide?

EnerGuide is an official label from the Government of Canada that indicates a product's energy performance rating. The EnerGuide label is placed on items such as houses, vehicles, and appliances, to name a few.

The purpose of the EnerGuide label is to help consumers make informed decisions based on a product’s rating of energy efficiency. Since more and more consumers are making purchasing decisions based off of a product’s environmental impacts, it’s important to have a basic understanding of where a product sits on the energy efficiency scale. The EnerGuide label provides a snapshot of a product’s energy efficiency rating in an easy to understand format.

What is an EnerGuide Rating?

An EnerGuide rating is a classification given by the Government of Canada and Natural Resources Canada on how energy efficient a product is. There are a number of variations of EnerGuide labels available, including labels for houses, vehicles, and consumer products (such as appliances).

An EnerGuide rating for houses is a rating of energy usage, compared to that of a new home built to today’s building code standards. The rating indicates your home’s energy consumption, and then compares it to the standard home so you can see where your home, along with the reference house, sits on the energy efficiency scale.

How Do I Read An EnerGuide Rating?

The newest version of the EnerGuide label for houses was released in 2019. The new label offers a new gigajoules-per-year rating scale, which equates to the amount of energy your home produces in a year. A 0-40 rating on the new EnerGuide scale means that your home has essentially no air leaks, and is well-insulated. Naturally, the lower the rating, the more energy efficient the home is.

1.    Your Home’s Rating

a.    All of the data collected by your Registered Energy Advisor has been inputted into a program designed by the Government of Canada to rate your home on energy efficiency. This program is what calculates your EnerGuide rating, and produces the EnerGuide label.

This section of your label includes your home’s EnerGuide rating, which is the energy consumption in gigajoules (GJ/year). The lower your consumption, the more energy efficient your home is. 1 gigajoule of energy is equivalent to 30 litres of gas in your car. Alternatively, 1 gigajoule of energy is also similar to 2 propane barbecue tanks!  

2.    Compare Your Home

a.    Below your home’s EnerGuide rating is a rating of a typical new home. This is a point of reference so you know how your home compares to that of a standard new build, built to today’s building codes.

3.    Where Your Home Uses The Most Energy

a.    This section of your EnerGuide label breaks down your home’s energy usage by source. It also exhibits your home’s energy use by heating, cooling, etc.

This section, along with your Recommended Upgrade Report, will help you decide which retrofits are best suited to your home to help you conserve energy and lower your energy bills. You can also see your impact on the environment; this section of the label indicates your home’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

It’s recommended that you have an energy audit completed on your home both before any renovations have begun, as well as after the upgrades have been completed. This way, you’ll be provided with an EnerGuide label before your renovations, as well as after you’ve completed the recommended upgrades. This way, you’ll be able to see the improvements you’ve made to the overall energy efficiency of your home.

A crucial component to the energy audit is the blower door test. A blower door test is a test that determines how airtight your home is. A fan is placed in the main door of your home, and when turned on, draws air from the inside of your home to the outside. The air is then forced back into your home through any cracks or leaks. After the blower door test is completed, your home is measured based on the number of air changes per hour (ACH), where a lower number equals a more airtight home. The number of air changes per hour means the number of times the air in your home is exchanged with unconditioned outdoor air every hour. 

An EnerGuide rating is also a great selling feature for any home. While it is not currently mandatory that homes on the market be rated, it’s a great tool to showcase that your home is energy efficient and affordable to prospective buyers.

How Do I Find My Home’s EnerGuide Rating?

By having an EnerGuide Test, or an EnerGuide home evaluation, completed on your home by a Registered Energy Advisor through a licensed Service Organization (such as Barrier Sciences Group), your home will be given an EnerGuide rating and an EnerGuide label. The Energy Advisor will also provide you with a list of recommended energy efficient upgrades you can complete on your home to help increase the EnerGuide rating, and overall energy efficiency of the home. There are also a number of rebates available for most of the recommended upgrades!

The current rebate program is called the Home Efficiency Rebate, and it offers up to $5,000 in home energy rebates for renovations such as increasing attic insulation, replacing an old furnace, or exchanging old windows for energy efficient models. The first qualification step in the Home Efficiency Rebate is to have an energy audit completed on your home. If you’d like to learn more about the Home Efficiency Rebate, contact Barrier Sciences Group today! 

The energy assessment is an integral step in creating a proper road map for increasing the energy efficiency of your home. With the information provided from the energy assessment, including your home’s EnerGuide label and rating, you can make energy efficient improvements to your home that will make your home more comfortable, and more affordable.

If you’d like to see what your home’s EnerGuide rating is, contact our BSG offices today. We provide a free over the phone consultation, and will have one of our many Licensed Energy Advisors contact you right away to schedule your home’s energy assessment. You could also be eligible for rebates, so contact us before you begin any of your renovations. You can either call the BSG office at 1-866-333-3920, fill out a contact form on the BSG website, or speak to the BSG office staff using the online chat feature on the website.