Air-source heat pumps for commercial, institutional and residential buildings — sized against measured load, installed by licensed trades, and filed for every incentive the project is entitled to.
A heat pump moves heat rather than making it. In a commercial building that usually means replacing a rooftop unit that heats with gas and cools with electricity with a single machine that does both, at a coefficient of performance a combustion appliance cannot approach.
The engineering question is never whether it works. It is whether the building's electrical service, distribution and controls can carry it — and what it costs to find out at the wrong moment. We check capacity before design, not after the equipment is on site.
| System | Typical application | Ontario incentive |
|---|---|---|
| Rooftop heat pumps | Single-storey commercial, retail, light industrial | To $18,000 per unit |
| VRF and split systems | Offices, institutional, multi-tenant | Prescriptive or custom |
| Packaged terminal heat pumps | Hotels, long-term care, multi-residential suites | To $1,100 per unit |
| Advanced rooftop controls | Existing RTUs staying in place | To $5,780 |
| Demand-controlled ventilation | Variable-occupancy interior spaces | $27 per ton of cooling |
| Cold-climate residential | Houses, ducted, ductless or hybrid | See below |
Commercial heat pump projects in Ontario can draw on two separate pots at once, and most quotes count only one of them.
Save on Energy Retrofit Program. Prescriptive incentives up to $18,000 per air-source heat pump. Or the custom stream at $1,800/kW or $0.20/kWh, whichever is higher, to a ceiling of 50% of eligible project cost.
Clean Technology Investment Tax Credit. A further 30% refundable federal credit on qualifying commercial and industrial heat pump systems, for property available for use through 31 December 2033. Refundable — it is cash, not a deduction.
Note that lighting measures moved out of the Retrofit Program on 30 June 2026 and now run through the Instant Discounts Program. If a proposal still quotes Retrofit lighting incentives, it is out of date.
Where the electrical service cannot carry full electrification, or where the economics of a deep winter in Ontario do not support it, a hybrid system keeps the existing heating appliance as backup and runs the heat pump for the bulk of the hours. It captures most of the saving for a fraction of the electrical upgrade cost.
It is a less impressive sentence in a proposal and it is frequently the right answer. We will tell you when it is.
Cold-climate air-source systems for houses, ducted or ductless. The honest position on Ontario residential incentives is set out on the incentives page — including what ends on 30 November 2026 and what does not replace it.
Planned maintenance on what we install, and on equipment we did not. Work on gas-fired appliances is carried out by TSSA-registered technicians.
Cold-climate models hold useful capacity well below freezing, and commercial systems are selected against your actual design temperature rather than a marketing figure. Where the coldest hours cannot be covered economically, a hybrid arrangement covers them with the existing appliance.
Sometimes, and it is the single biggest cost surprise in heat pump projects. We check available capacity and distribution before design rather than after, so the number appears in the proposal instead of a change order.
On commercial projects, generally yes — they are separate programs administered by different bodies. The federal credit requires a taxable Canadian corporation. We confirm both positions before issuing a proposal.
Design and filing typically run two to four weeks in parallel with permitting. Installation depends on scope and equipment lead time, and lead time is usually the binding constraint, not labour.
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Send the building type, the approximate size and what prompted the project. You will get a scoped proposal with the incentive position set out line by line — not a number on a page.