TheStar.com April 29, 2009
TYLER HAMILTON ENERGY REPORTER
Delay needed to protect tenants from landlords while ground rules developed, Smitherman says. Hundreds of green jobs will dry up or flow out of the province if the government doesn't act fast to lift a ban on installation of smart meters in apartment buildings, industry proponents are warning.
But Energy and Infrastructure Minister George Smitherman said that, without proper ground rules, the ban is necessary to protect tenants from opportunistic landlords.
One company feeling the effect is Almonte, Ont.-based Triacta Power Technologies Inc., which manufactures building sub-meters and was on a hiring spree until sales into Ontario's apartment rental market came to an abrupt halt last month.
"We have certainly had to put our growth plans on hold," said Rob Brennan, president and chief executive officer of Triacta.
Brennan said the impact is spreading beyond manufacturing to installers and electricians. "For Triacta and our partners, it would be in the order of 100 jobs, and it's probably four or five times that when I look at the rest of the industry."
Electricity in most apartment buildings is centrally metered. The total cost is shared by all tenants and included as part of rent, meaning tenants who use less electricity end up subsidizing those who use more, such as those who operate home businesses.
Smart sub-meters allow a landlord to track electricity use by tenant and charge for power use on top of rent that has been reduced accordingly. Individual tenants pay for what they use and, according to the industry, can benefit from incentives offered through conservation programs if they can reduce their energy use.
"Roughly 60 per cent of tenants end up paying less in total than they were previously," said John Macdonald, president and CEO of the Consumers' Waterheater Income Fund, which supplies sub-meters to landlords through its subsidiary Stratacon.
Brennan calculated that about 50,000 rental units in Ontario have had sub-meters installed over the past two years, on the assumption that new regulations would be introduced to protect tenants.
Those rules were considered but never passed, meaning installations have never been technically legal under the province's Electricity Act, at least according to Brian Hewson, chief compliance officer for the Ontario Energy Board.
Hewson issued a compliance bulletin March 24, calling for an immediate cease of sub-meter installations in apartments, at the same time confirming that installation in condominiums is permitted.
Tenant advocates argue the temporary ban is justified because some landlords were having the sub-meters installed without tenant consent. Where there is consent, "often it appears that this consent has been obtained through high-pressure sales tactics and misleading or incomplete information," according to briefing notes to the government from the Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario.
The group said rules must be in place to ensure that landlords are reducing rents fairly and getting proper consent, and that they don't off-load the cost of running inefficient appliances onto low-income tenants.
Mike Chopowick, manager of policy with the Federation of Rental-housing Providers of Ontario, said there have been "concerning" complaints against landlords but that's no reason to shut down the entire market. Chopowick pointed out that 26 per cent of Ontario's rental housing has always had sub-metering, going back to the 1940s and 1950s, so halting deployment now makes no sense.
If the government is serious about province-wide energy conservation, then it needs to get smart sub-meters into apartments, otherwise tenants won't be able to do their part, he said.
"We've been pressing for a while now for the government to have some sort of workable rules or framework in place."
Recently, the industry put forward a voluntary code of conduct in hopes of having the ban lifted until formal regulations are in place.
Smitherman said the government is working "longer term" to get those ground rules in place, but said he won't sacrifice consumer protection by rushing.
"Absent of good rules that have been developed with the interest of tenants, the government will not be encouraging the willy-nilly implementation of sub-meters," the minister said.
Brennan said he doubts such an approach will help the government reach its goal of creating 50,000 green-collar jobs over the next three years. Triacta now has some decisions to make, he said. "We're at a crossroads regarding where we grow next and where we go next."
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I don't mind having my own meter because I can control how much electricity I use but if they have to retrofit maybe they can add solar roof panels or other solar things to keep the costs down.
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