Durham Greener Homes Loan: How Durham Homeowners Finance Solar at 2%

The Durham Greener Homes Loan lets eligible Durham Region homeowners borrow up to $125,000 at a 2 percent rate over a 15 year term for solar panels, battery storage and other energy upgrades. It is a Local Improvement Charge repaid through the property tax bill. As of August 2026 it is not available in Pickering.

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It is a Local Improvement Charge (LIC) loan. A Local Improvement Charge is a municipal financing tool that lets a property owner pay for an upgrade through a special charge added to the property tax bill.

Municipalities use this mechanism to fund local infrastructure such as sidewalks and sewers. Durham Region applies it to home energy retrofits instead, through the Durham Greener Homes program delivered with the Windfall Ecology Centre.

Two features separate it from a bank loan or dealer financing.

It is attached to the property, not to you. The Durham Greener Homes Loan program page states that the charge is attached to the property rather than the owner and transfers upon sale. If you sell before it is repaid, the balance follows the home to the next owner.

It is repaid through property taxes. There is no separate lender account to manage, and the program allows you to pay off the remaining balance in a lump sum at any point.

Source: Durham Greener Homes Loan program page, Region of Durham and Windfall Ecology Centre, checked August 2026. Terms are set by the program and can change.

You need to own a residential property in Durham Region at an address the program currently covers, complete both a pre retrofit and a post retrofit EnerGuide home energy evaluation, and accept the program conditions.

This is a Region led program, not eight separate town programs. Durham Region runs it under an enabling by-law made under the authority of the Municipal Act, 2001 and Ontario Regulations 322/12 and 586/06, which let a council undertake works on private residential property as local improvements and recover the cost through special charges on those lots. A further council step imposes the charge on each participating property once the works are approved.

This exclusion is easy to miss. The Durham Greener Homes program states plainly that the loan is currently not available for properties located in the City of Pickering. Pickering is one of Durham's eight municipalities, so a Pickering homeowner reading a general Durham guide can design an entire project around financing that is not available at their address. Confirm your own address with the program before you plan around it.

Three timing rules trip people up:

1. A pre retrofit EnerGuide evaluation only counts if it was completed on or after April 28, 2022.
2. A post retrofit EnerGuide evaluation only counts if it is completed after you enrol in the program.
3. Only projects approved in your application after enrolment are considered. Work you have already done does not qualify.

The program also requires mandatory participation in case studies and mandatory sharing of at least 24 months of energy and utility data from before and after the renovation. That is a real condition, not fine print you can opt out of.

Yes. Rooftop and ground mounted solar photovoltaic systems and battery storage devices are both listed by the program as energy efficiency upgrades, which is the category that must make up at least 80 percent of your project cost.

One detail is easy to get wrong. On the current program page, electric vehicle charging stations and electrical panel or wiring upgrades appear under other eligible upgrades, not under the energy efficiency list where solar and batteries sit. The same page also describes that remaining 20 percent in two different ways, once as weather resiliency measures for flooding, heat and wind, and once as a broader other eligible upgrades list that includes EV charging, electrical work, water efficiency and permit costs. If your project leans heavily on EV charging or a panel upgrade, ask your coach in writing how those costs are classified against the 80 percent rule before you sign anything. Misclassifying them is the kind of error that shrinks an approved loan amount late in the process.

For a solar focused project the 80 percent rule is rarely a constraint. Solar plus storage already satisfies it on its own.

Most Durham solar projects use a small fraction of the $125,000 ceiling. Our Ontario cost and payback guide puts a typical 8 kW Ontario system at roughly $19,400 to $28,000 before rebates, as of July 2026, and that figure is an estimate that varies with roof complexity, equipment and whether you add storage.

The $10,000, $50,000, $100,000 and $125,000 rows are the program's own published payment examples. The $25,000 and $40,000 rows are calculated on the same published 2 percent, 15 year terms and are shown because they sit closer to a real residential solar and battery project. Figures are estimates. Your approved amount and payment are set by the program.

The number that decides everything here is not the interest rate. It is the size of the system you actually need. Our guide to how many solar panels an Ontario home needs walks through the formula. Run that first.

Size your system before you borrow. Get a free estimate.

Estimates on this site are free. If you ask to be matched with installers, your details may be shared with vetted installers in our network, and we may earn from that match. Our installer vetting criteria are published so you can see the standard.

This is where Durham homeowners lose money by assuming things stack.

The loan is financing. It pays for the project. Ontario's Home Renovation Savings program is a rebate. It returns part of the cost. They are different instruments, so they can be pursued together, but each has its own rules.

The rule that changes your system design: according to the Home Renovation Savings solar and battery page, participants who receive an incentive for solar PV and battery storage projects are not eligible to participate in a net metering agreement with their local distribution company. Those incentives are for projects designed for load displacement only, meaning the electricity your panels generate is used exclusively to meet your own home's consumption. You choose one path or the other. Net metering itself is established by the Ministry of Energy and governed by Ontario Regulation 541/05, and according to the Ontario Energy Board, credits can only offset charges tied to the electricity you consumed, not delivery or other charges on the bill, and under section 8 (8) of that regulation they carry forward for up to 12 months before being reduced to zero. Both points matter when you are borrowing: an oversized net metered system builds credits that expire, and no system size removes the fixed charges on your bill. Our breakdown of the rebate path versus net metering walks through which one tends to win for which household.

Current rebate amounts under that program are $1,000 per kW for solar to a maximum of $5,000, and $300 per kWh for battery storage to a maximum of $5,000, each capped at 50 percent of total costs, as of August 2026. The program also requires battery storage to be paired with a new solar PV system and sized appropriately for it, and designed primarily to store solar output rather than grid electricity.

Two other program facts worth stating clearly:

Ontario's rebate program publishes no end date on its solar and battery page, and program terms allow amounts and availability to change. Treat the figures above as current at the date on this article, not as a window you can count on.

The federal Canada Greener Homes Loan is closed. According to Natural Resources Canada, funding is fully committed and new loan applications cannot be approved. Homeowners with an existing approval keep their funding. Any guide still presenting the federal loan as an option for new applicants is out of date.

Whitby residents have an extra rebate, but it is not a solar rebate. The Whitby Deep Retrofit Rebate pays $2,500 to $5,000 for achieving at least a 50 percent reduction in modelled energy use between the pre and post retrofit EnerGuide evaluations, with a minimum project cost of $30,000 before taxes. Whether a given project reaches that threshold depends on the modelled results, which your energy advisor and coach determine, not on the installer's sales sheet. The program lists a separate Weather Ready rebate for Whitby residents of up to another $5,000.

Which utility serves your address?

Durham is served by more than one electricity distributor, and your distributor governs connection and net metering, not the loan. Elexicon Energy lists Ajax, Brock, Clarington, Pickering, Scugog, Uxbridge and Whitby in its service territory. Oshawa Power serves Oshawa. Hydro One serves parts of rural Durham, and coverage can split inside a single township: the Township of Uxbridge tells new residents that both Hydro One and Elexicon serve different parts of Uxbridge. Check the distributor named on your hydro bill rather than assuming from your address. See our Elexicon Energy solar guide for how the connection side works.

The program sets the sequence. In summary:

1. Book a free consultation with a Durham Greener Homes Coach.
2. Complete the Eligibility Verification Form your coach provides and upload it to your portal.
3. If eligibility checks out, your coach sends a funding request form.
4. Complete a pre retrofit EnerGuide evaluation if you have not already.
5. Upload the application form with your EnerGuide documents and contractor quotes.
6. Sign the Property Owner Agreement once approved.
7. Access up to 50 percent of the eligible funds, subject to the disbursement schedule you are given, and complete the work, keeping every invoice.
8. Complete a post retrofit EnerGuide evaluation and submit a Project Completion Report.
9. Receive the remaining funds if all conditions are met.

Note the order. Your contractor quotes are needed before approval, so you need a designed system and a real price well before any money moves.

Get the disbursement schedule in writing. The program page states homeowners are eligible for an initial disbursement of up to 50 percent of eligible funds, and lists that step in the qualification sequence. The same page's terms and conditions also state that loans are only disbursed upon completion of the project, the post retrofit EnerGuide evaluation and a project completion report. Those two statements read differently. Ask your coach to confirm your specific disbursement schedule in writing before you sign a contract with any installer, because your deposit and progress payment obligations depend on it.

Approvals are never guaranteed. Eligibility, EnerGuide outcomes, municipal permits and utility connection approval are all decided by other parties. No install date is firm until those land.

It is debt registered against your home. Convenient on sale, but still a 15 year obligation. Confirm the monthly figure fits your budget at the loan amount you will actually draw.

Two programs cannot fund the same measure twice. Financing and rebates can coexist. Two payments for the same panel cannot.

It fits well if you want solar without a large cash outlay, you value a low rate over a long term, and you are comfortable with the EnerGuide and data sharing conditions.

It is a weaker fit in three cases. If you plan to pay cash, you simply skip the interest and the paperwork. If your project is small, a short personal loan may clear faster with less process. And if your home has heavy shade, a roof near the end of its life, or low electricity use, cheap financing does not fix weak underlying economics. A 2 percent loan on a project that does not pay back is still a project that does not pay back. Check the payback math before the financing question matters at all.

Our estimate methodology explains the assumptions behind every number our calculator produces, including production, rates and pricing.

See your system size, cost range and estimated payback.

Editorial note: Program terms, rebate amounts and eligibility rules are set by the Region of Durham, Windfall Ecology Centre and the administrators of the Home Renovation Savings program. Figures on this page are current at the date shown and can change on the programs' own schedules. Confirm current terms with each program before signing anything.

1. Region of Durham and Windfall Ecology Centre, Durham Greener Homes Loan program page.
2. Durham Greener Homes, Whitby Deep Retrofit Rebate.
3. Region of Durham, news release on the Durham Greener Homes Loan and Weather Ready Home Assessment.
4. Save on Energy and Enbridge Gas, Home Renovation Savings solar and battery storage page.
5. Ontario Energy Board, Net metering.
6. Natural Resources Canada, Closed: Canada Greener Homes Loan.
7. Elexicon Energy, About Elexicon (service territory).
8. Oshawa Power (Oshawa PUC Networks), electricity distributor for Oshawa.
9. Township of Uxbridge, Utilities (Hydro One and Elexicon both serve parts of Uxbridge).
10. Region of Durham council records, Durham Greener Homes Retrofit Financing Program report and draft enabling by-law.