Barriers to widespread deployment of deep energy retrofits (DERs) include:

• Limited data. 1. Few DER projects have been completed in Canada to date, so there is little benchmarking and performance data. Tools must therefore function without historical references. 2. Data on existing buildings is sparse and often incomplete, so tools must work despite information gaps
• Costly feasibility studies. In the past, buildings have been selected to undergo feasibility assessments based on intuition and unstated assumptions, leading to costly studies that often concluded that a DER project was not viable.
• A challenging value proposition. Building a value case for investing in DERs is challenging, especially in Quebec, where electricity is low-cost and low-carbon, and requires that benefits beyond energy savings (“non-energy benefits'') be accounted for.

Tools are needed to allow decision-makers in the pre-development phase to quickly and cheaply conduct an initial coarse assessment of the feasibility, costs and benefits of DERs for a set of buildings. Candidate buildings judged to have a higher feasibility and sufficiently high benefits relative to barriers and costs can then be prioritized to undergo detailed FEED (Front-End Engineering Design) evaluations.

The toolkit will help stakeholders assess the potential of buildings for early adoption DERs using a structured, data-driven methodology. It includes algorithms to fill critical data gaps in a strategic and transparent way when needed. Data and input parameters can be easily updated as context and data availability evolve.

The tools are being developed by a multidisciplinary team of designers, engineers, software developers and researchers,in collaboration with community housing providers, NGOs, builders and AEC industry professionals. We test and refine the tool using real data from regional social housing stocks to ensure the tool reflects realities on the ground.