Energy giant Enbridge’s emissions-conscious entity, Sustain, has stopped offering clean energy options to commercial developers, leading several industry sources to question the company’s commitment to helping its customers move away from fossil fuels.
In 2022, the Calgary-based energy company, primarily known in Ontario for the delivery of natural gas through its subsidiary Enbridge Gas, created a separate entity called Enbridge Sustain. It was established to offer “dependable and convenient energy solutions to help homeowners, developers and commercial customers in Ontario reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and energy costs,” according to a company press release at the time. These products included geothermal heating systems, solar panels, hybrid heating and electric vehicle chargers for high-rise condominiums and large commercial construction projects.
Those offerings have been scrubbed from the Sustain website, which now focuses solely on providing heating and cooling solutions to residential homeowners.
Sean Mason, the founder of the energy-efficient building company SEAN, told The Narwhal that Sustain has said it will honour its existing contracts, including for a project his company is working on in Barrie, Ont., a 73-unit townhome and condo community with geothermal heating and cooling systems. But going forward, SEAN will have to look for other low-emissions suppliers.
It “was a good partnership with sean.ca and I’m sad it’s gone [to be honest],” Mason said in an email.
Along with Mason, The Narwhal spoke to eight other sources across industries and organizations, including one other that, like Mason, works directly with Sustain. All of them shared their names and connection to the energy industry with The Narwhal but requested public confidentiality, citing fear of professional retribution. The confidential sources told The Narwhal some developers who have contracts with Sustain have not had their queries to the company answered for several weeks.
They also said that since October 2024, nearly two dozen employees responsible for bringing clean energy solutions to developers have been laid off or reassigned to the parent company. The changes have significantly reduced the Sustain team from approximately 40 employees to under 20, sources said. Some of those let go had been with the parent company for decades or were seasoned experts in clean energy solutions, according to sources as well as public profiles.
Upon its launch, Enbridge Sustain offered several clean energy options for Ontario developers, including geothermal, hybrid heating, solar panels and electric vehicle chargers. Video: Enbridge Sustain
In an emailed statement, Kendra Black, spokesperson for Enbridge Gas, confirmed that Sustain will honour existing contracts but did not confirm any layoffs. She called the changes “a recalibration to ensure our efforts are directed where they can have the greatest impact.”
“Enbridge Sustain remains a platform in Enbridge’s decarbonization efforts and Ontario’s energy future,” Black wrote. “We have made a strategic decision to streamline operations and focus on areas with stronger, more immediate demand. While we are pausing some commercial offerings, this is not an exit from low-carbon initiatives.”
Black did not answer questions about how many employees Sustain has today, why the restructuring was needed or how this restructuring will change Sustain’s impact on emissions and clean energy adoption. She also didn’t specify where Enbridge, and Sustain, sees “stronger, more immediate demand.”
The onset of the climate emergency — and the need to move away from fossil fuels — has posed an existential threat to Enbridge. Public urgency around finding lower-emissions solutions has grown, while improved battery technology and the decreasing costs of energy from wind and sun threaten to replace methane-heavy natural gas and other fossil fuels that create greenhouse gas emissions and exacerbate global heating. In recent years, Enbridge has argued in public hearings at the Ontario Energy Board, in letters to politicians and in public advertisements that its business remains vital because it is facilitating the energy transition by offering cleaner sources of energy, including hydrogen fuel.
Enbridge Sustain was an innovative venture into the energy transition, which several sources said had the potential for a huge impact on the way construction is done in Ontario — where buildings account for 24 per cent of the province’s greenhouse gas emissions. In a December 2022 interview, a senior Sustain executive told industry publication Sustainable Biz Canada Enbridge considers itself “an energy company, rather than just a gas utility that delivers one form of energy to customers,” that is “trying to figure out what role … can we play with customers to navigate and figure out energy transition?”
Ontario construction slowdown a likely cause of changes to Enbridge Sustain, sources say
Public information about Sustain is sparse because, unlike its parent company, it was created as an unregulated business that is strictly separate from natural gas operations. That means it doesn’t have to publicly report its financial health. The company has received $200 million in federal financing through the Canada Infrastructure Bank for retrofits across colleges, universities, multi-residential buildings and hospitals. Enbridge Gas is also the main provider of home energy retrofit funding in Ontario, supported by both the provincial and federal governments; both Enbridge Gas and Sustain offer home energy retrofits.
Sustain does not appear in Enbridge’s annual shareholder circular or financial outlook over the last three years. The company did tout Sustain in two corporate sustainability reports, which are published publicly every year. In 2022, it included a short line on a timeline detailing the company’s “emissions leadership.” The one released this May includes what appear to be early signs of change in the commercial offerings by Sustain: while solar, hybrid heating and electric vehicle charging are mentioned, references to geothermal have disappeared.
Sources told The Narwhal the changes started last October. They say geothermal and hybrid heating were the first to be cut from commercial sales, followed by electric vehicle chargers. Sources suggested several possible reasons for these decisions. Market conditions have changed drastically since Sustain was set up three years ago, with construction across Ontario significantly slowing down, which sources said limited developer interest in clean energy investments. Plus, the federal industrial carbon price further complicated things, simultaneously creating incentives for adopting clean technology while also increasing the cost of construction for large developers in the short-term.
Collectively, sources said that both Enbridge and the construction industry have withstood economic changes before, and they believe a strong commitment would make the commercial arm of Sustain viable, though perhaps on a longer timeline than Enbridge had planned.
“They had opportunity to rule that market given their relationship with developers [but the] market turned against them,” Mason’s email said.
The decision to wind down Sustain for new builds comes after a battle last year with the Ontario Energy Board, which Enbridge won. Last year, the board ordered Enbridge to stop charging homeowners for new natural gas hookups — its choices were to foot the bill itself or charge developers. At the time, the board noted that natural gas and its infrastructure would likely cost residents more in the long run than clean energy solutions like heat pumps, which Sustain offers. The Ontario government overruled the board in that case, meaning Enbridge is still able to pass down its new infrastructure costs.
