Incentives for commercial refrigeration and HVAC upgrades

What is open and what is paused

Rebate pages age badly, and commercial programs move faster than residential ones. Every line in this table was read off the program's own page. If you are reading this much later, treat it as a list of the right places to look rather than a list of current answers.

BC Hydro business incentives

This is the live money for most sites on the Island, because most of them are BC Hydro electricity customers. The program pays on efficiency upgrades and is aimed primarily at sites using less than 500 MWh a year, which covers a restaurant, a pub, a small grocer, a shellfish operation and plenty of strata plant rooms.

Refrigeration add-ons are in scope. The catch is that incentives are paid against specific models in BC Hydro's e.Catalog, so "a new condensing unit" is not a qualifying answer and a model number is. That is worth knowing before the equipment is ordered rather than after.

The bonus is the part with a clock on it: 30% on top, for projects submitted between June 3, 2025 and February 11, 2027 and completed by March 14, 2028, read off BC Hydro's Business Energy Saving Incentives page.

1. 01 Check the equipment before you order it Incentives are paid against BC Hydro's e.Catalog, so the model matters more than the category. Refrigeration add-ons are in scope; the specific unit still has to be on the list.
2. 02 Register the project in CEM Hub Applications go through BC Hydro's CEM Hub, and pre-approval comes before the work. A project that is already installed has usually spent its own incentive.
3. 03 Generate a PIN for your contractor The customer generates a PIN inside the application and gives it to a contractor who is a member of BC Hydro's Alliance of Energy Professionals. Ask any contractor quoting the work whether they are a member, because the application needs one.
4. 04 Do the work, then claim One-for-one replacements and add-ons are what the program is built for. Keep the invoice detail: the claim is checked against what was actually installed.

FortisBC dual-fuel rooftop units

If the building is a FortisBC natural gas customer, there is separate money for dual-fuel rooftop units: a heat pump paired with the gas unit, so the electric side carries the mild weather and the gas side carries the cold snap. On this coast that is most of the year on the electric side.

The unit itself is commercial HVAC work, and the gas side is done by whoever holds the ticket for it. Worth settling before the order goes in rather than after.

Those are program ceilings, not a number for your building. What a specific rooftop unit earns depends on the unit, the site and the invoice.

FortisBC foodservice equipment rebates

Commercial kitchens that are FortisBC customers have their own route, and it works differently: the rebates are instant and they come off through participating suppliers rather than arriving later as a cheque. There is nothing to submit afterwards, which also means there is nothing to recover if you buy from a supplier outside the program.

So the question to ask before ordering cooking equipment is not "is there a rebate", it is "is this model on the list, and are you a participating supplier". Ask it in that order.

What does not apply here

Two things get quoted at Island businesses that should not be.

FortisBC's refrigeration equipment rebates are for FortisBC electricity customers and for the municipal utilities of Grand Forks, Penticton, Summerland and Nelson. Most of this Island is billed for electricity by BC Hydro, so those rebates do not reach it, whatever a supplier's brochure says.

And the three CleanBC commercial programs, Custom, Custom-Lite and Commercial Express, each carried the same notice when we last read them: paused, and not accepting new applications at this time. Paused is not closed, and they may reopen. It does mean nobody can promise you that money this month.

How we can help

Send us the equipment list: make, model, rough age, and what each unit is doing now. We will tell you what we see against the programs that are open, and where the model number is going to decide it.

On the BC Hydro side, the application is yours. You register the project in CEM Hub and generate the PIN, and the PIN has to go to a contractor who is an Alliance of Energy Professionals member, so ask whoever is quoting the work whether they are one.

The work itself is the part we are here for, whether that is installing the replacement, keeping the existing system going, or putting it on a maintenance round so the next failure turns up on a log sheet instead of a Saturday.

Questions we get about incentives

Sources: BC Hydro, Business Energy Saving Incentives; BetterBuildingsBC, energy saving incentives for businesses; FortisBC, dual-fuel rooftop unit rebates; FortisBC, foodservice equipment rebates; FortisBC, refrigeration equipment rebates; CleanBC Custom; CleanBC Custom-Lite; CleanBC Commercial Express.