The baseline behind your MLI Select score is about to move
Brief · 3 min
On September 30, 2026, CMHC retires the older energy-code baseline behind MLI Select. The program doesn't change. The point tiers don't change. What changes is the baseline your building is measured against, which decides how hard it is to earn the energy points that unlock the best financing terms.
On a $20-million multifamily loan, the gap between adjacent point tiers runs to about $135,000 in premium alone. The energy points that often make the difference are getting harder to earn. Most developers won't price it in until the pro forma is already built.
MLI Select scores every project on three things: affordability, accessibility, and energy. Hit 50, 70, or 100 points and the financing opens up — higher leverage, amortization stretched as far as 50 years, and a premium discount of 10, 20, or 30 percent. Energy is one of the three levers, and for most market-rate developers it's the most reachable one. So when the energy points get harder to earn, the cheapest path to your score gets more expensive — and the discount at the top of that range is what the $135,000 is made of.
Energy points are scored on a comparison. The modeller builds a version of your project that just meets code, then models your actual design against it, and the points come from how much less energy yours uses. Beat that code-built version by 25 percent and you're partway up the scale; the further below it you design, the more points you earn. What you're really being measured on is the distance between your building and the baseline it's compared to.
That baseline is set by the energy code. CMHC has been letting projects measure against the 2015 and 2017 codes, but after September 30, 2026, the reference becomes the 2020 code. Because the 2020 baseline is built to a higher standard, the building it describes already uses less energy, so the gap between it and your design gets smaller — and a smaller gap means fewer points for the exact same building. The increase is modest, around five percent by most analyses, but the way you're measured shifted more than the bar did.
None of this changes what the points are worth. A hundred points still unlocks the same leverage, the same fifty-year amortization, the same thirty percent discount. What changes is how you get there. Energy points used to be a reliable way to build toward your score, but now each one asks more of the building to clear the same threshold. A developer leaning on energy to reach 70 or 100 might find it cheaper to pick up points on affordability or accessibility instead, or to commit to the energy upgrades deliberately rather than assuming the design clears the bar on its own. The right mix depends on the building — its type, its market, what the design can absorb without breaking the pro forma.
Here's where the number comes from. Take a $20-million loan on a new rental building, base premium 6.75 percent.
At 100 points — 30% discount → 4.725% premium → $945,000
At 70 points — 20% discount → 5.40% premium → $1,080,000
Difference: $135,000 in premium alone
That's one tier, before counting the leverage and longer amortization that also move with your score. Stretch the amortization out and the gap widens. Land a tier lower than you planned because the energy points came up short, and that's the cost — paid upfront, on a building that was supposed to qualify.
For any project on the board now, the new baseline already applies. The cost of misreading it shows up once, upfront, in the premium. The cheapest time to run the points is before the pro forma does.