MicroFIT Clause Ontario Real Estate: Solar, Turbines and Assignment Risk

Last updated 11 September 2026. Written by Jatin Dua, Broker of Record at RE/MAX Quantum Realty, 799 The Queensway, Etobicoke · For Ontario registrants · 10 min read

The failure mode: the panels stay, the revenue leaves

A buyer pays a premium for a rural property partly because it has a generation contract producing monthly income. The deal closes. Some months later the income stops, because the contract was never assigned into the buyer’s name and the administrator terminated it. The panels are still on the roof. They are now an asset that produces nothing, needs maintenance, and will eventually have to be taken down at somebody’s expense.

That is the whole risk in this category in one paragraph, and none of the clauses prevent it. GREEN-2 tells the buyer it is their job to obtain the assignment and warns them what happens if they do not. It is an acknowledgement, which means its function is to make sure nobody can later say they were not told. It is not a mechanism that gets the assignment done.

The OREA guidelines themselves flag that this subject is complicated enough that members should expect to draft for the particular situation. I would put it more bluntly: on a property with a generation contract, the contract is a material part of what your client is buying, and it is not a real estate document. Get it in front of the client’s lawyer early.

What is in this category

Five clauses, and they split cleanly into one condition, three acknowledgements and one warranty. Knowing which is which tells you what your client actually has.

GREEN-1 (Condition – MicroFIT Contract) is the only true condition in the set. The buyer reviews the contract documentation at the buyer’s expense, decides in their own discretion whether the terms suit them, and gives written notice of fulfilment by a deadline or the agreement ends and the deposit comes back. It also obliges the seller to hand over the documentation within a set number of days after acceptance.

GREEN-2 (Acknowledgement – MicroFIT Contract) records that the buyer has reviewed the documents, understands the assignment has to be obtained, and understands the consequence of not obtaining it. GREEN-3 (Decommissioning Renewable Energy Facility) records that taking the facility out of service is the owner’s cost and comes with legal and contractual requirements, including removing equipment and restoring the site. GREEN-4 (Renewable Energy Projects) records that the buyer accepts the property sits in an area where renewable generation is proposed or already running, which in practice means wind turbines and solar arrays that are not on the subject property.

GREEN-5 (Wind Turbines – Warranty) is the seller-side promise, qualified by the seller’s knowledge and belief, that no turbine is installed or proposed within a stated distance of the boundaries, and it is drafted to survive closing.

Those are the codes. Pull the wording from your own OREA member copy — this post explains what the clauses do, not what they say.

The two deadlines in GREEN-1, and why they fight each other

GREEN-1 has a review deadline for the buyer and a delivery deadline for the seller. I have seen agents fill in the first from habit and the second from the same habit, and end up with a five-business-day review condition and a seven-day delivery obligation.

Do the arithmetic in the other direction. Decide how long the buyer’s advisor actually needs with the documents, then work back to when the documents must arrive, then add margin for the seller not having them at hand — and sellers frequently do not, because the paperwork is years old and may sit with an installer rather than the owner.

Then check the notice mechanics. GREEN-1 is drafted so that the buyer must give written notice that the condition is fulfilled. Silence does not preserve the deal; silence ends it. And notice has to travel the way the agreement says notices travel. In High Tower Homes Corp. v. Stevens, 2014 ONCA 911, a waiver delivered by fax where the agreement required personal delivery was reported to be ineffective. The method the parties chose governs, no matter how obviously the other side received the message.

Assignment is the whole ballgame

The contract named in these clauses is a contract with a programme administrator, and the clause language reflects the Ontario Power Authority because that is who ran the programme when the wording was drafted. Who administers a given contract today, what the current transfer process requires, how long it takes and what it costs are all things to confirm on the file. Do not assume, and do not rely on what an agent told you about a different property two years ago.

What you can do as the drafting agent is make the transfer part of the transaction rather than an afterthought:

• Identify the counterparty and the process in writing. Who administers the contract, what form the transfer takes, and what the administrator requires from each side.
• Find out who has to sign. Transfers of this kind typically need something from the outgoing owner. A seller who has moved to another province and stopped answering emails is a problem you want to solve before closing, not after.
• Ask whether there is a deadline. If a transfer has to be initiated within a window, that window is a date on your calendar.
• Put the seller’s cooperation obligation in the agreement. An acknowledgement by the buyer does not oblige the seller to do anything. If your buyer needs the seller’s signature after closing, that obligation has to be drafted and it has to be one that survives completion.

That last point is where GREEN-2 gets misused. It is a buyer’s acknowledgement. Reading it as seller protection is correct; reading it as buyer protection is not.

GREEN-5 and the limits of a knowledge-qualified warranty

GREEN-5 gives a buyer something real: a promise about turbines near the property, drafted to survive closing so that it is not argued away as having merged into the transfer. But it is qualified by the seller’s knowledge and belief, and buyers hear a qualified warranty as a guarantee.

Two points I make to my agents. First, a representation of this kind should reflect only what the seller personally knows. If a listing agent has actual knowledge that contradicts it, they cannot allow the seller to give it anyway — that is the same principle RECO applies to the standing UFFI warranty in the standard form, and there is no reason it would work differently here.

Second, knowledge-qualified warranties speak as of a moment in time, and the moment may not be the one your buyer assumes. In Coppendale v. Mills, 2025 ONSC 5192, buyers who had waived their inspection condition found basement moisture before closing and refused to complete. A warranty given to the best of the seller’s knowledge was found to speak to knowledge at signing rather than at closing. The buyers forfeited a $20,000 deposit and were ordered to pay $206,703.56 in damages. That case is about a different subject matter, but the drafting lesson transfers directly: a buyer who is relying on a knowledge warranty to protect them against something discovered later may be relying on less than they think.

The practical answer on a turbine question is the same as on most rural questions. If it matters, verify it independently — municipal planning records, the approval process for the project, and the client’s lawyer — rather than relying solely on a warranty that turns on what the seller happened to know.

Decommissioning, insurance and the costs nobody prices

GREEN-3 exists because renewable equipment has an end of life and somebody pays for it. Dismantling, removing, and restoring the site are the owner’s costs, and the owner at that point is whoever holds title. A buyer who is paying a premium for the system should understand they are also buying its eventual removal.

Insurance is the other cost that surprises people. In my experience, renewable installations are treated as an underwriting question rather than a neutral feature, and a buyer can find that a policy is refused, surcharged, or written with limitations on the equipment. That is industry practice as I have seen it on files, not a regulatory rule. The practical response is the same one I use on any property with an underwriting wrinkle: get the buyer’s insurer to confirm in writing, during the condition period, that they will write the risk and on what terms.

A third question belongs to the lawyer. Some installations are owned outright, some are leased, some are financed, and a leased or financed system may carry registrations or third-party rights that have nothing to do with the real estate. Whether there is anything registered against the equipment, who owns what, and how any of it comes off on closing are title and security questions. Flag them; do not answer them. The same discipline applies to rental equipment generally — see chattels and fixtures clauses in Ontario.

The turbine next door

GREEN-4 is a buyer’s acknowledgement about the surrounding area rather than the property itself, and it is the clause a listing agent in a windy part of the province should have on their radar.

Where a buyer’s objection is about how a neighbouring installation makes them feel rather than about a physical condition of the property, you are in the territory of RECO’s guidance on stigmas — attributes that may produce a psychological or emotional response, which are entirely subjective and vary from buyer to buyer. The practical guidance is worth following: a buyer’s agent should identify a client’s concerns early and may need protective clauses drafted, and a seller’s agent should get written instructions from the seller about what they want disclosed and how.

Keep that separate from the seller disclosure duties that arise from case law rather than from the regulations. Patent defects need not be disclosed and caveat emptor applies, but actively concealing one removes that protection, and latent defects that render a property unfit for habitation or dangerous must be disclosed. Where a seller’s agent knows of such a fact they must disclose it to every interested buyer, use best efforts to obtain an acknowledgement from each, and give each a copy. A neighbouring wind project is not usually that kind of fact. Do not let the categories blur in your head.

Which clause does what

How I would run a file with a generation contract on it

1. At the listing stage, ask the seller for the contract documentation before the property goes live. If the income is part of the pitch, the paperwork has to exist.
2. Confirm in writing who administers the contract, what the transfer process is, what it costs and how long it takes. Put the answer in the file.
3. Set the seller’s delivery deadline and the buyer’s review deadline so that the review period starts after the documents arrive, with margin.
4. Send the documentation to the buyer’s lawyer and to whoever advises them on the numbers. You are not the person who assesses whether the contract terms are satisfactory.
5. Draft the seller’s cooperation obligation for the transfer, with survival wording, and have the lawyer settle it.
6. Have the buyer’s insurer confirm coverage in writing before the conditions come off.
7. Ask, in writing, whether any of the equipment is leased, financed or subject to a third-party interest, and refer the answer to the lawyer.
8. Where the concern is a neighbouring project rather than on-site equipment, get written instructions from your seller client, or identify the buyer’s concerns early and have protective wording drafted.

Questions agents actually ask

Related reading

• Lawyer’s Approval Conditions in Ontario: The Most Misused Condition in the Agreement
• Mortgagee’s Consent Clauses: Easements, Re-zoning and Severance on a Mortgaged Property
• Self-Represented Parties and Mere Postings: The Remuneration Clause Under TRESA
• The UFFI Warranty in Ontario: A 1980 Ban That Still Creates Liability in 2026
• Status Certificate Conditions in Ontario: Why Ten Days Is Not Enough
• Every clause and condition guide in one place

This is professional commentary from a Broker of Record on drafting practice where renewable energy equipment or generation contracts form part of a transaction. It is not legal, insurance or tax advice. Contract transfer requirements, equipment ownership and decommissioning obligations should be reviewed by the client’s lawyer. This is general professional commentary from a Broker of Record on drafting practice. It is not legal advice, it is not a substitute for your own brokerage’s policies, and it does not create any professional relationship. Clause codes refer to OREA’s Guidelines for Residential and Commercial Clauses, an OREA member resource — the clause wording itself is OREA’s and is not reproduced here. Always work from your brokerage’s approved forms, and send your client to a lawyer for anything turning on interpretation, enforceability or remedy. Legislation, regulator guidance and case law all change; verify anything you are relying on.