A bill to modernize Canada’s Energy Efficiency Act cleared second reading in the Senate earlier this month, paving the way for Canadians to gain greater access to energy efficiency technologies.
The original Act was passed in 1992 and came into force in 1995—what the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Duncan Wilson (PSG-British Columbia), described as “a bygone era” when CDs were only just becoming mainstream and the first text message was sent.
The legislation “served us well and saved Canadians a lot of money by insisting that appliances and equipment use less energy,” Wilson told the Senate in December. But now it’s time to move forward.
His Bill S-4, which follows from an annex of the 2025 federal budget, aims to do just that: update the Energy Efficiency Act (EEA), remove bureaucratic red tape, and provide “regulatory sandboxes” to test out new options.
The EEA of the 90s was “visionary for its time,” Wilson said. It set the federal foundation for strong energy efficiency regulations and helped Canadian families save C$110 billion from 1995 to 2024 (in 2023 dollars). It also avoided more than 770 megatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
“This would be the equivalent of taking all passenger vehicles in Canada off the road for a staggering 12 years,” he said.
But technological development has outpaced the regulation’s evolution, which in turn undermined the EEA’s effectiveness and slowed the uptake of new technologies. Wilson cited heat pump clothes dryers as an example. For a period, these highly efficient appliances could not meet existing regulations and therefore could not be imported for sale in Canada.
“If a regulatory sandbox had been available then, this appliance manufacturer could have applied to participate, and a new testing protocol could have been developed quickly.”
Proponents like Wilson say the amendments in Bill S-4 will help it keep up with emerging technologies like smart thermostats and artificial intelligence-equipped industrial systems that were not conceived decades ago. iPolitics writes that the bill would expand how energy efficiency and durability standards are defined, and streamline appliance approvals by giving the Minister of Natural Resources more flexibility to update standards and grant temporary exemptions for new products.
“Without the advancements this bill represents, we will allow our regulatory frameworks to lag,” Wilson said. “Challenges with online sales, outdated standards, and slow regulatory response would erode progress and leave Canadians and their wallets exposed.”
Updating the EEA will also be critical to Canada’s climate targets for its role in reducing building emissions, which in 2022 had risen 4.5% from 2005 levels, even while national emissions overall were falling, Efficiency Canada said in a 2024 report.
The report recommended expanding the EEA’s definitions and categories to include more appliance types and new innovations, setting requirements for features like demand flexibility and system efficiency, and providing support aimed at “levelling the playing field” between different fuel sources.
Report author Sarah Riddell, an Efficiency Canada policy research associate, told iPolitics minimum energy performance standards are an “unsung hero” in climate policy.
“If every country implemented the minimum energy performance standards for appliances and equipment,” she said, “it would achieve a fifth of the energy reductions by 2030.”