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How dirty is your home?

Federal data for 2022 show the average household across Canada (15.3 million single detached, attached, apartment, mobile home) has 1,604 ft² of floorspace, with annual energy consumption of 26,401 kWh and annual carbon emission of 3,627 kg.

Metric is the official measure in Canada, but PJ have been converted to kWh to assist homeowners.

This site will show how your dwelling compares on consumption of energy & emission of carbon, so you can make the best decision on changes & upgrades that will save you money or save our environment. Results will vary based on many factors, including your location in Canada, age of your building, efficiency of devices, number of occupants, insulation levels, thermostat settings, carbon content of your grid electricity, etc. If you want more precision on 50 of these variables, data tables can be downloaded from NRCan's Office of Energy Efficiency.

If you cannot disaggregate each end use, combine all gas-fired applications on one line and all electric use on another. To convert natural gas to kWh (95% furnace efficiency): 1 m³ = 11 kWh.

average annual consumption of energy in kWh consumed for end-use applications:

	per household	per ft²	enter your kWh
space heating	15,882	9.9
water heating	4,820	3
space cooling	604	0.4
lights & appliances	5,094	1.3
TOTAL ENERGY	26,401	16.5

average annual emission of CO2 in kg emitted from end-use applications:

	per household	per ft²	enter your kg
space heating	2,346	1.5
water heating	748	0.5
space cooling	55	0
lights & appliances	185	0.3
TOTAL EMISSION	3,627	2.3

Thermal applications consume 81% of energy and emit 87% of carbon from the average house.

You can see how your house compares with the national average, and may indicate if changing your heating system is a good decision. The current transition is to heat pumps, which produce thermal energy from the air or the ground, and avoid combustion of fossil fuels or the need for pipelines.

The optimal solution is a ground source heat pump that would produce 21,307 kWh of dispatchable renewable energy to meet thermal demand, but would need 6,000 kWh of grid power to operate its electric components. This means the house would consume 11,000 kWh (6,000 to operate + 5,000 for lights & appliances) but would produce 21,000 kWh, and its ratio of 2:1 is classified as NetZeroPLUS.