New maps estimate energy efficiency for thousands of homes in Edmonton and Calgary
CBC
A Vancouver company has used artificial intelligence and machine learning to generate thousands of energy efficiency ratings for single-family homes in Edmonton and Calgary, with the goal of better informing homeowners and prospective homebuyers of inefficient dwellings.
The software company Lightspark published the interactive maps of ratings to its website on Friday. The site's beta version, which will run for 3-6 months as a pilot project, has been years in the making.
Homes estimated to be very efficient appear green on the maps while inefficient ones are red.
Lightspark uses EnerGuide labels, light detection and ranging, property tax rates and census data to estimate energy efficiency. Homeowners can register their properties and enter more information to improve the scores' accuracy.
James Riley, the company's CEO and founder, compared the ratings to vehicle history reports in an interview with CBC News on Wednesday.
"It's really about transparency," he said.
Mike Mellross, program director of the Alberta Ecotrust Foundation, an environmental charity, said both the City of Calgary and the City of Edmonton have indicated there are more than 18,000 dwellings that need to be retrofitted annually by 2050 in order to achieve carbon reduction targets. He said some retrofits are happening, but they're not being done fast enough.
Mellross said the Lightspark maps are a market-based "nudge" tool, designed to help homebuyers and homeowners make better decisions.
"Energy performance of a home really hasn't been included in the decision-making process because there is a slight market failure there in that there's an asymmetry in the information that a buyer and a seller knows," he said.
The Alberta Ecotrust Foundation contributed funding to the project, as did the Alberta Real Estate Foundation and Scotiabank.
Clicking on a home on the map brings up three scores: one for energy consumption, one for carbon emissions and one that combines the two and takes into account other houses in the city.
Some areas on Edmonton's map, like the streets just east of Terwillegar Park, are full of red ratings while others, like the newer western neighbourhoods of Secord and Rosenthal, appear mostly green.
The ratings for Magrath Mansion, a century-old home now owned by Concordia University of Edmonton, are listed as "very poor."
CBC News asked two home builders who specialize in net-zero homes to test out the tool. Both questioned the accuracy of its ratings.
