Tennyson Apartments in Edmonton is showing what’s possible when leadership, financing and persistence comes together. The Alberta building sector faces systemic hurdles to deep retrofits. Overcoming these barriers and prioritizing energy efficiency delivers clear benefits for owners and tenants — including cost savings, reduced pollution, and improved health and comfort. While scaling up deep retrofits remains difficult, as outlined in our recent research, standout projects are finding ways to work around these barriers — providing insight for policy makers, lenders and owners to address barriers and unlock Alberta’s retrofit market.
Leadership that drives change
Ferrovia Capital’s President, Federico Berloni, championed the retrofit of Tennyson Apartments from concept to completion. Having a C-suite advocate to promote the business case helped avoid delays and maintain momentum. Other projects looking to drive success should find their C-suite advocates to prevent hold-ups and limited ambition.
Navigating complexity
One systemic barrier we identified is the bottleneck at the pre-construction phase, when projects can stall due to overwhelming complexity, tight application timelines and duplicative energy audits. Tennyson experienced this firsthand while applying to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) MLI Select program.
Due to the short application window, the team commissioned a rapid, less comprehensive audit. Aware that this initial assessment would not adequately support the project's goals — specifically, achieving a 30% reduction in emissions and a 30% decrease in operational costs — they initiated a second, more detailed audit. Although this step seemed redundant, it provided the retrofit team with the clarity needed to exceed efficiency targets and ultimately overcome another of our identified systemic barriers to deep retrofits — limited delivery pathways. As a result, the project achieved deeper emissions reductions and energy efficiency improvements than initially expected.
The CMHC MLI Select program was a major enabler of these results. It unlocked the financing needed for the project and proved that deep retrofits can be viable under current conditions. The Tennyson experience suggests the program could be even more powerful if timelines allowed for more comprehensive audits or if incentives rewarded emission reductions beyond the minimum requirement.
Unlocking the business case
Retrofit projects are often held back by financing gaps and undervalued returns on investment. Berloni recognized the strong business case and leveraged both CMHC’s MLI Select program and third-party financing through Efficiency Capital. This approach:
- Improved short-term cash flow, enhancing the project's appeal to investors
- Avoided heavy upfront capital expenditures
- Amortized deferred maintenance over 20 years
- Delivered a high return on equity
These innovative third-party arrangements are becoming more common across North America, but are held back due to complexity and novelty. Tennyson Apartments success signals a promising shift in how commercial retrofits can be financed.
Advice to property owners
Reflecting on the project, Philipp Binder from the Asset Management Team recommends that others interested in retrofitting take the time to conduct a thorough audit. Incomplete or rushed audits will give you what you pay for. Over the course of more than 15 energy projects he’s worked on, he’s found that cheaper audits result in far less accurate cost estimations.
Above and beyond results
The project is estimated to achieve a 32% reduction in energy consumption, 44% savings on annual utility costs and a 33% cut in GHG emissions. Importantly, these emissions reduction results went beyond CMHC’s program requirements, meaning some benefits remain unreported but are nonetheless real.
Tennyson apartments demonstrates that deep retrofits can succeed in Alberta, despite systemic barriers. The project shows that with a committed leadership champion, flexible financing and perseverance, retrofits are not just technically feasible but also financially worthwhile.
We continue to research and document more successful retrofits in Alberta. Watch for the release of our full report on how projects are finding ways around systemic barriers – and what’s needed to remove them permanently so retrofits can scale.
The Pembina Institute acknowledges the generous support of the Alberta Ecotrust Foundation.
