Canada has some of the lowest industrial power prices among high-income economies, and 85% of the grid is non-emitting, with nuclear and hydro playing an important part of the mix. But as artificial intelligence and electrification drive up demand faster than expected, Canada’s edge for attracting big industry is at risk of eroding, the authors write. After a decade of flat growth, Bank of America Institute now forecasts 2.5% compound annual growth until 2035. Investment will flow to regions with the best grids, not just the most resources, but Canadian jurisdictions are systematically underplanning for industrial demand, they argue.

The report, titled Power Play: How to Supercharge Canada’s Clean Electricity Advantage, contends that for Carney’s economic strategy to work, the country must overcome an ethos of risk-avoidance at the planning level. Utilities and regulators are wary of overbuilding infrastructure and passing the bill to ratepayers. But the bigger risk now is underbuilding, the Climate Institute suggests, especially as faster-moving regions take advantage of low-cost renewable technologies to improve their offer for energy-hungry industries.

The new research presents side-by-side comparisons of Canada’s four largest electricity systems with other jurisdictions around the world. Alberta and Texas are treated together as “market-led systems,” while Ontario and the United Kingdom are compared as “coordinated market systems.” Four other jurisdictions – British Columbia, Quebec, Washington and Norway – are grouped as “hydro-led systems,” whose reservoir storage gives them an inherent advantage with clean, dispatchable power. Quebec’s tie-in with California’s well-functioning carbon market is an added bonus for investors.

Implementing growth

Increasing grid flexibility across all regions is one of the foremost recommendations of the report. That means more “firm” power from low-emissions sources like batteries, as well as more interties with neighbouring grids so that available clean energy is more likely to be shared and less likely to be wasted. The report also points to better long-term planning, more predictable procurement for renewables, modernized rate design, and stable climate policy as critical to sharpening Canada’s offer. It argues that funding interregional transmission lines should be a national policy imperative.

Increasing Indigenous ownership is another strategic priority, to uphold self-determination and bring in capital. “Indigenous ownership could further unlock $12 billion in generation and $5 billion in transmission equity,” the report states, citing the First Nations Major Projects Coalition.

The Climate Institute’s central argument about protecting Canada’s clean electricity advantage echoes a report published in February by SHARE, or the Shareholder Association for Research and Education. “Grid constraints, slow infrastructure build-out, and mounting policy and regulatory barriers are colliding with skyrocketing demand from electric vehicle manufacturing, battery materials, critical minerals, AI and data centres, and green industrial production,” the authors write. Increasing the flow of clean electricity “adds material asset value and enables market access” for industries like tech, AI and mining, SHARE’s Power at Risk report states.

Mark Mann is the managing editor at Corporate Knights.

The post Canada risks losing its edge on low-cost industrial power: report appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“This is our moment of opportunity to build the energy system of the 21st century, meet the world’s surging electricity demand sustainably, [and] use trade, investment and finance to supercharge a just energy transition,” Guterres said.

This forceful assertion of clean energy’s ascendance coincides with a new ruling by the International Court of Justice, which found that governments that fail to curb the production and consumption of fossil fuels could be in breach of international law. The court also determined that historical emitters like Canada have a greater responsibility to address the climate crisis.

Mark Carney’s Liberal government, confronted by an unpredictable yet persistent trade war with the United States, enacted its One Canadian Economy Act on June 26. The act introduces two pieces of legislation that seek to break down interprovincial trade barriers and accelerate approvals for major projects that would increase Canada’s economic independence from its southern neighbour.

While fossil fuel projects like pipelines have dominated the public conversation, both the urgency of the accelerating climate crisis and the clear trends toward renewable-energy dominance in global energy systems suggest that Canada’s best opportunities lie in electrification.

To discuss these opportunities and how Canada can build on its strengths, Ralph Torrie, director of research at Corporate Knights, and Frederick Morency, vice president of sustainability at Schneider Electric, held a live discussion on Thursday, July 24. Watch the full conversation here.

Canada’s advantages in electrification: experience and expertise

There’s no shortage of opportunities, the panellists agreed. “The transition to a sustainable energy system is generating a huge spectrum of opportunities all along supply chains,” Torrie said.

Canada is the world’s seventh-largest electricity producer, of which more than 85% comes from non-emitting sources. The country’s electrical industry specializes in grid technology, power electronics, cleantech and energy efficiency, as well as a history of leadership in artificial intelligence.

“We have built one of the biggest electrical infrastructures in the world,” Morency said. “Electricity is going to be the blood of our economy for decades to come.”

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Canada is one of the only countries in the world that claims a wide diversity of electricity systems, Torrie noted. Within Canada’s borders are different generating systems, different regulatory approaches and different market structures from one province to another.

Altogether, this variety provides a broad scope of experience and expertise. “We need to think strategically about how we can take the electricity industry in this country and turn that into an integrated, collaborative and coordinated effort to offer this experience and these services to the rest of the world,” Torrie suggested.

For example, Canada has lots of experience providing electricity to remote communities, and that’s still a big issue in parts of the world.

Another area of strength lies in smart buildings and smart infrastructure, Torrie said. “We have some of the biggest commercial building landlords in the world. One of the key components of this transition is that we’re going to see the emergence of some very smart buildings,” he said.

“The system that’s emerging is multi-directional for transferring information,” Torrie said. “That’s an area that’s growing like gangbusters, and Canadian companies own many buildings around the world.”

Next steps: grid interconnection and energy efficiency

In order to build on our strengths in electrification and assume leadership in the energy transition, “we need to lean into the expansion of our renewable electricity supply,” Torrie argued. “In Canada, that means wind.”

Canada is too far north for solar to do the heavy lifting, and there isn’t enough hydroelectricity available for development to meet our future demands. “You could do it with nuclear, but the cost goes so high,” Torrie said. “You’re left with the conclusion that we need a large supply of wind power.”

But to generate wind power at the scale we need to satisfy Canada’s renewable-energy requirements, we need a trans-Canada high-voltage DC transmission line, Torrie said. “It can save literally $150 to $200 billion in the cost of the transition if we’re interconnected as opposed to continuing with the provinces that are balkanized with their independent grids all trying to decarbonize independently.”

Another important area of growth, Morency suggested, is energy efficiency. While provincial premiers are starting to put energy efficiency at the centre of their investments and strategies, “we are behind other nations in the world when it comes to [these] measures,” Morency said. “This is our biggest opportunity.”

Electrification itself is an incredibly powerful efficiency measure, Torrie pointed out. Electric vehicles use a quarter of the energy per kilometre per travel that internal combustion engines do; heat pumps use a fifth of the energy of a gas furnace. “It’s our number-one efficiency option.”

Frederick Morency has been with Schneider Electric for more than 25 years and is the quarterback for Sustainability in Canada, guiding net-zero actions across the company’s operations and value chain and supporting customers’ sustainability journeys.

Ralph Torrie is an expert in the field of energy and environment with 30 years of entrepreneurial and consulting experience that includes hundreds of initiatives in research, business development and advocacy.

The post What are Canada’s best prospects in the energy transition? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

There was a lot to choose from – something that may not be immediately apparent in the aftermath of the U.S. election and news that 2024 will almost certainly be the hottest on record.   

But it’s true: Canada and the world made enormous strides addressing climate change and building a cleaner economy. Here are the top 10 stories from 2024:  

Electric vehicle sales in Canada continued to rise 

You may not know it from news coverage, but sales of electric vehicles in Canada are at their highest level ever. And they keep rising: market share for EVs in Canada has roughly tripled over the past three years, with the latest quarterly data showing sales at 16.5% nationally. In fact, gas vehicle sales in Canada peaked in 2017 and have been falling ever since.  

The question ahead is one of pace, with Quebec rapidly taking the North American crown for EV adoption. More than one in three vehicle sales in la belle province were electric last quarter –substantially higher than runner-up California.  

Globally, it was the same story: EVs rising  

The trend is even more pronounced globally, where EV sales are set for another record year. A big part of the story is China – the world’s largest auto-market – where the latest data show EVs taking more than half the market. That has contributed to a peak in oil consumption in the country last year, according to the latest official estimates. 

Taken together, the rise of EVs is expected to cut global oil demand by six million barrels per day by 2030, according to the International Energy Association (IEA). 

Peak fossil fuels by 2030

On a related note: the IEA projected that global demand for fossil fuels will peak before 2030, thanks largely to the rapid electrification of the economy. Other forecasts, including those from oil and gas companies, have come to a similar conclusion. Global declines in the demand for fossil fuels will have important implications for Canada and the long-term competitiveness of the oil and gas sector.  

Clean electricity continued to soar 

As fossil fuels decline, they’re quickly being replaced by an age of clean electricity. The IEA expects roughly $2 trillion in clean energy investments in 2024, nearly double the amount invested in fossil fuels. More than 40% of electricity worldwide was non-emitting in 2023, and more than 90% of the growth in net power capacity came from wind and solar. 

Provinces and territories made big moves on clean electricity 

In Canada, we saw big progress on clean electricity across the country, despite some more high-profile disputes. Ontario is ramping up electrification with a goal to become a clean energy superpower. Hydro-Québec is investing up to $185 billion over the next decade to expand clean energy and electrify the province. Quebec inked a deal with Newfoundland and Labrador last week that would see a massive amount of new clean electricity come online in future years. British Columbia is charging ahead with enough new wind projects to increase power supply by 8% – with more to come in future years. The federal government recently committed up to $1 billion in Indigenous-led wind power in New Brunswick, on top of other clean energy investments. And in Saskatchewan, the federal government is investing more than $265 million in clean electricity, including Indigenous-led renewable projects.  

The cost of clean energy continued to drop

The cost of clean energy continued to drop worldwide, especially in solar and battery technologies. In the first half of this year alone, for example, solar photovoltaic prices dropped 20%, according to the IEA. Solar module prices were cut in half over the past year. And grid-scale battery storage prices declined by nearly 10%.  

That can’t help but have positive impacts on affordability here at home. On that front, new research released this year showed that the transition to clean electricity can save people money: most households in Canada can expect to save up to $1,100 each year by switching to more efficient technologies such as EVs and heat pumps by mid-century. That echoes earlier research from the Canadian Climate Institute that found that the switch off fossil fuels can save people money on energy costs over time.  

Indigenous nations led on clean energy 

Indigenous Peoples continued to lead the way on climate and clean energy in 2024. The Oneida battery storage plant – the largest facility of its kind in the country and a 50/50 partnership with the Six Nations of the Grand River in Ontario – is set to power up next summer. Likewise, an energy storage project led by the Malahat First Nation on Vancouver Island will produce enough battery power for tens of thousands of homes and support hundreds of local jobs. Indigenous Peoples are partners or beneficiaries in nearly one-fifth of Canada’s electricity generation – and almost all of that is renewables.   

This year also brought important new policy research on an Indigenous electrification strategy, Indigenous participation in clean energy, and Indigenous housing and clean technologies.  

Canada has made progress cutting emissions 

The latest estimates from the Canadian Climate Institute show that Canada’s emissions saw a modest drop in 2023 and now sit around 8% below where they were in 2005. Climate policies are working – with industrial carbon pricing leading the pack. Canada’s emissions would be higher today without the actions taken to date by all levels of government since 2015. By 2030, existing climate policies are expected to prevent 226 megatons of emissions – the same amount as current emissions from Quebec and Ontario combined. But getting closer to Canada’s emission targets still requires more action. Governments can deliver even deeper emission cuts by following through and finalizing developing and announced policies.  

Big progress electrifying buildings 

This year also saw Quebec committing to 100% renewable energy to heat all buildings, except in the industrial sector, which will mean a big transition away from fossil fuels to highly efficient electric heat pumps. This type of planned transition in the building sector is necessary to protect consumers from higher costs and stranded assets. Likewise, Vancouver avoided a reversal of its nation-leading rules that effectively banned gas for heating most buildings.    

Oil and gas sector makes progress cutting methane 

Emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector remain a critical challenge for climate policy, making up more than 30% of national emissions. But one area that has seen progress is methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas. Cutting methane is a no-brainer and widely considered to be the cheapest and easiest way to slash emissions from the sector. This fall, British Columbia announced it had already cut methane emissions in half from the sector, exceeding its mandated 2025 target, and Alberta has done the same. The federal government has drafted regulations that would reduce oil and gas methane 75% by 2030. There are important caveats, with recent research finding higher estimates of methane than previously thought, but progress has generally been encouraging.    

Taken together, it’s been a year of surprisingly good news in the realm of climate and clean energy. That’s not to diminish the challenges ahead – but let’s not lose sight of the progress that’s been made. And let’s redouble our efforts in 2025. 

Rick Smith is president of the Canadian Climate Institute. 

The post 10 good-news stories on climate and clean energy in 2024 appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But a decarbonization plan now taking shape in Australia points the way for government financing to help electrify day-to-day energy use for every household, regardless of income, save $1 trillion over an 18-year span, and fight inflation into the bargain, inventor and author Saul Griffith told an Ask Me Anything session hosted by Canada’s Transition Accelerator.

“In multiple really big ways, electrification can truly be anti-inflationary,” since it holds energy costs steady for 20 years once clean energy devices have been installed, said Griffith, founder of Rewiring America and Rewiring Australia. While artificially low fossil fuel prices are slowing down the shift in places like Canada and the United States, “some countries have already crossed the threshold where you literally can’t spend money fast enough because it saves the country so much.”

Transition Accelerator Vice-President Moe Kabbara said his organization is doing similar analysis for Canada. “It really depends on your baseline fuel costs,” he told Griffin. But in provinces or regions where fossil energy is expensive, “it’s really a no-brainer to go from heating oil to electricity.”

But to get that transition done, Canada will have to pick up the pace. Based on annual sales as a percentage of all home energy devices sold, cumulative installed capacity, and the “S-curve” that would herald rapid adoption, Kabbara said Canadians looking for home energy systems would have to buy nothing but heat pumps and heat pump water heaters by 2035 to completely change out the equipment stock by mid-century.

Other countries face the same challenge, and “that’s humbling, because it’s really fast,” Griffith said. But past adoption curves for everything from flush toilets to televisions sets show that it isn’t impossible.

It’s Already Happening

“The good news is that it really is happening in most countries,” he said. “No matter where you are, the adoptions [of new technology] are increasing, the rate of increase is increasing,” and the overall trajectory matters more than some of the temporary downturns receiving attention in recent news reports.

One obstacle, Griffith added, is the $300 trillion in future profits the fossil fuel industry has at stake if a rapid decarbonization effort succeeds. “$300 trillion is a lot of motivation to play naughty in the media sphere with misinformation, and to try to slow this down with regulation,” he said. But “globally, these trends are going in the right direction.”

Griffith said Rewiring Australia has drafted a plan that builds on the widespread adoption and low cost of rooftop solar—at 3¢ to 4¢ per kilowatt-hour, it’s “almost 10 times cheaper” than the most expensive fossil alternative, putting the country at a tipping point for rapid adoption.

In multiple really big ways, electrification can truly be anti-inflationary.

 

– Saul Griffith, inventor and author

While the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act was one inspiration for the Australian policy, the White House plan relies on tax credits that aren’t useful to many of the households that need them most. So Rewiring Australia came up with a plan “where government becomes the financial backstop for every household, regardless of income,” to shift from fossil fuels to electricity.

The proposal “is being taken very seriously,” he told participants, not least because a $1-billion investment in cars, water heaters, space heating, and kitchen hobs (stovetops) would save the economy $1 trillion in energy costs through 2040.

With fossil fuels, “you buy a cheap machine up front, but then you pay for expensive fuels for a long time into the future, and [the prices of] those fuels are volatile” due to external events ranging from the COVID-19 pandemic to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The interesting thing about electrification is that you buy a slightly more expensive machine up front, but then you’re feeding it very cheap and very consistently-priced electricity in the future.”

Australians have already seen their household energy costs rise from $2,000 some years ago to $7,000 in 2023. But “if you electrify the vehicles, put up rooftop solar and a battery to cover about half of the electricity, which is easy, electrify heating and cooking, the ongoing energy cost is about $2,000 per year, and that cost is fixed for 20 years into the future.”

That’s what makes electrification anti-inflationary compared to volatile fossil fuel costs that “will continue to rise and rise,” he explained. “I don’t think the world’s economists get this, and as a physicist, I can’t guess why.”

‘Raise Your Daughter to Be An Electrician’

A participant asked Griffith what skills and expertise the energy transition will demand, and what he says to young people who see a scary future ahead.

“I understand the temptation for younger people to be a little bit negative. They’ve been handed a pretty tough basket,” he replied. “But we can now prescriptively say this is what we need to do. We need more engineers, because hardware is back. Everyone wants to go and write AI, but we need those old school skills like chemicals and metallurgy and electrical engineering and electronics,” so “there’s a huge amount of job security for anyone who wants to go into those areas.”

But trades training will be even more important. The professional engineering track is “a nice story for the high end of town,” Griffiths said. “But really, the heavy lifting in this transition is at the technician level. It’s the jobs that all countries ignored over the last four decades to their peril, good tradespeople jobs.”

Everyone wants to go and write AI, but we need those old school skills like chemicals and metallurgy and electrical engineering and electronics.

 

– Saul Griffith, inventor and author

A major problem right now, in Australia as well as Canada, is that installers who are familiar with gas appliances are selling against electrical upgrades when homeowners are in the market for new equipment. “We have to turn those people into the sales force, and that happens by really recognizing that that’s who’s going to get this done, that by far the majority of the jobs created will be in all of these skilled trade installations for all of this kit.”

In another parallel for a Canadian audience, he said Australia is still in the midst of a culture war where many contractors and tradespeople are skeptical about electrification and question whether it will create jobs. Rewiring Australia is trying to make the case by “increasing the cultural value of the actual work force that’s going to get this job done,” positioning skilled trades as the real heroes and “giving them the central role in this societal transition, rather than just being the person who shows up to install the thing.”

So for students and younger workers, “yes, if you’re about to graduate from a nice university, please go into engineering, or at least go into policy-making to make better policy,” Griffith said. “But even more important, raise your daughters to be electricians and contractors.”

This story first appeared on The Energy Mix. Read the original article here. 

The post To fight inflation, get a heat pump appeared first on Corporate Knights.

As more people become concerned by the heat waves, forest fires and flooding exacerbated by climate change, they’re switching their carbon-emitting home appliances for electric, emissions-free alternatives. The impact of millions of electric vehicles, heat pumps, induction stoves and heat pump water heaters can be measured not only in carbon emission reductions, but in significant savings too.

Corporate Knights partnered with the Toronto Star to analyze the co-benefits of these clean technologies, quantifying just how much households can save by adopting them, and what their impact will be on emissions.

If someone had told you in 2008 – the year after the first iPhone was released – that in the next 15 years, virtually everyone in Canada would have a smartphone, you might have rolled your eyes all the way to the internet café (as you slowly tapped out a text on your numbered keypad).

Nowadays, it’s hard to believe we ever lived without the internet in our pockets. But that’s how adoption curves work: new technology is adopted slowly at first, then all at once.

The digital technology that swept our lives into this millennium changed the way we communicate and shop, plan trips and watch shows. But it also came with a heavy cost to the planet. The greenhouse gases produced by online video streaming exceed 1% of global emissions. Bitcoin miners produce more carbon emissions than all of Serbia.

The next wave of technological upgrades to our lives, however, will emit zero carbon. It’s going to change how we get around, the way we heat and cool our homes, and what we use to cook and take showers. The electric vehicle, heat pump, induction stove and heat-pump water heater may not alter our behaviour so much as texting and email. But they will revolutionize society, allowing us to continue to do many daily activities – only faster, more efficiently and without producing any emissions.

And they are poised to go from curiosity to ubiquity more quickly than you think.

Their carbon-saving potential is enormous. According to an analysis by Corporate Knights’ research division and shared with the Toronto Star, these four technologies alone would cut the average Canadian household’s carbon footprint by 80%. If everyone made the switch, it would eliminate 92 megatonnes from Canada’s national emissions annually – more than the entire oil sands produces.

The financial benefit is even greater. If everyone in Canada swapped out their existing gas-powered car, furnace, stove and water heater for these green technologies, the collective yearly savings would be more than $65 billion, the analysis found. That’s $4,300 per household.

If everyone in Canada swapped out their existing gas-powered car, furnace, stove and water heater for these green technologies, the collective yearly savings would be more than $65 billion and 92 megatonnes of CO2 – more than the entire oil sands.

These ecological and economic incentives have created the conditions for rapid adoption, motivating governments that have emission-reduction targets to meet and individuals feeling the squeeze of fossil-fuel-driven inflation.

Critics say fear of climate change will not prompt people to adopt new technology. They argue that we just love our gas stoves and gas-guzzling SUVs too much. But dozens of car dealers and HVAC professionals who spoke with the Star said EVs and heat pumps are popular not because they’re green – people are buying them for other reasons: convenience, comfort and cost savings. The end result is a win-win. People’s lives get better. They save money. And the faster these technologies are adopted, the fewer emissions Canada will produce.

Corporate Knights partnered with the Toronto Star to analyze the co-benefits of these clean technologies, quantifying just how much Canadians in each province can save by adopting them, and what their impact will be on emissions. The results vary widely across the country.

In Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia, where hydro dams provide cheap, carbon-free electricity, the benefit of ditching fossil fuels is the greatest. An average British Columbian household switching to these four technologies would save more than $4,800 per year and virtually eliminate their carbon footprint (83% average).

In provinces with carbon-intensive electricity, such as Alberta and Nova Scotia, switching off fossil fuels has a smaller impact – and can even make your emissions rise in some cases – but the financial benefits are not insignificant. An average Nova Scotian household adopting the four green technologies would save $5,200 per year and shrink their emissions by five tonnes (or 64%).

Switching now is also future-proofed. As the carbon tax rises, the cost savings grow – reaching an additional $790 per year on average* for every Canadian household in 2030. And as the electrical grids in these provinces decarbonize, the already low emissions will piggyback them right down to zero.

In the U.S., those figures will shift state-to-state as well. But in New York, households switching to these four technologies would save an average of US$2,133 per year while reducing their carbon footprints by 7.3 tonnes.

We’ve reached out to early adopters in Canada to find out about the benefits and challenges of these technologies and have created online calculators so you can figure out the estimated cost and emissions savings associated with each technology depending on where you live. While no one would say these four pieces of green technology are a panacea for solving climate change, they’re a big start. And they’re something individuals can do without waiting for the government to act (though the incentives and rebates help).

Each EV, water heater, heat pump and induction stove on its own may not make a big difference for the warming planet, but they will save a family hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars a year. And as North Americans switch away from burning fossil fuels and electrify their lives, the cumulative power of individual action is undeniable.

Savings from switching to an electric vehicles

David Hollingworth is an active skier, someone who heads up to Whistler from his home in North Vancouver for a day on the slopes whenever the powder is fresh. But unlike many of his neighbours, he straps his skis to the top of his EV – a Nissan Leaf – for the trip into the mountains and leaves his family’s gas-powered car – a Honda CRV – at home. “It’s just a no-brainer, the cost savings,” he says. While it costs more than $100 to gas up the CRV, Hollingaworth estimates that an overnight charge for the Leaf runs him only about $2.

In the eight years since he bought his EV, Hollingworth says, he’s grown more enamoured with it. The electric car serves his family’s day-to-day needs so well they’ve cancelled the insurance on their gas-powered car except for a few months in the winter when they go on longer ski trips.

“I don’t keep a log of the expenses for both vehicles, but it’s just obvious. I’m sure that we’ve saved thousands of dollars in fuel and maintenance [with the EV],” he says. “Even driving the CRV a lot less, it seems to cost us at least $1,000 in repairs every year. And the Nissan Leaf, it’s basically maintenance-free.” Fuel and maintenance savings are often cited as the top benefits by EV owners. In B.C. – which has the highest gasoline prices in the country and some of the lowest electricity prices – those savings are $2,450 per year on average, according to the Corporate Knights analysis.

The savings assume charging at home using average electricity prices. Of course, many EV owners minimize their costs by charging overnight when electricity is cheaper and searching out free charging, still widely available.

While EVs have a reputation for being expensive, this is changing quickly. Many of the early high-end models are now making way for entry-level EVs priced far lower than the average cost of a new car in Canada, which hit $58,478 at the end of last year.

A survey of Toronto car dealerships last year turned up four EV models with a listing price below $40,000 and nine more between $40,000 and $45,000. These prices don’t include the $5,000 federal EV purchase subsidy, which is topped up by certain provinces, ranging from $2,500 in Newfoundland and Labrador to $7,000 in Quebec. (Ontario cancelled its EV purchase rebate in 2018 when Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives came into power.)

In B.C. and Quebec, the purchase subsidies are coupled with a sales mandate, requiring dealerships to have EVs available for purchase. (The federal government announced a nationwide sales mandate last December.) This combination has fuelled the fastest uptake of EVs in the country. Last year, EVs made up 16% of all new car sales in B.C. and 12% in Quebec.

Ontario lags behind. Only 6.5% of new car sales in the province were EVs last year. Since automakers send their EVs to the provinces that have sales mandates, Ontarians have to wait for months or even years on Canada’s longest EV wait lists.

In addition to savings, EVs also boast souped-up climate impacts. Even in provinces with electricity generated from fossil fuels, EVs dramatically reduce emissions because they’re so efficient. In an EV, up to 91% of the energy in the battery goes directly to turning the wheels, while in a gas-powered car, 84% of the energy in the gas tank is lost to heat and friction.

So in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where most electricity is generated by burning coal and natural gas, an average family would reduce their carbon emissions by 1.2 tonnes by switching to an EV, the Corporate Knights analysis found.

In Quebec, Manitoba and B.C., where most electricity comes from hydro dams, an EV would reduce a family’s carbon emissions by far more: 3.1 tonnes per year.

Nationwide, if everyone switched to an EV, it would reduce Canada’s carbon emissions by 57.8 megatonnes, or about 8.6% of all emissions. This assumes we maintain our current electrical generation sources. But if the federal government succeeds in getting our electrical grids to net-zero by 2035, EV adoption would reduce emissions by 67 megatonnes, or 10%.

On each trip up to Whistler in his Leaf, Hollingworth has to make a 20-minute stop in Squamish for a quick charge. He uses the opportunity to stretch and admire the mountains, taking pleasure, he says, in knowing he’s doing his part to protect them from climate change. “There is some type of endorphin or dopamine that happens when you know you just saved a bunch of carbon emissions.”

He says he thinks everyone will soon be driving EVs, not only to reduce emissions, but because they’re so much cheaper and more convenient to operate. “We’re in a transition period now. People will roll their eyes in the future when they look at how we lived today.”

Savings from switching to an electric heat pump

Shortly after Brian Gifford retired and moved back to Halifax, he knew he had to do something about the oil furnace in his basement, which was costing him $2,500 to run each winter. Not knowing that he had any choice but to continue to use oil, he added insulation to his basement, walls and attic – and saw his heating bills go down to $1,700.

Five years later, he was told his firebox had a crack and the furnace would have to be replaced, so he looked at switching to natural gas – newly available in the Maritimes – or buying an electric heat pump. “Both environmentally and financially, heat pumps made a whole lot more sense,” he says. Installed in 2015, the heat pump has reduced his annual heating bill to $700 – about a quarter of what it used to be. “The heat pump is a huge, huge benefit, especially in places like the Maritimes, where heating costs are relatively high because we use oil,” he says. “We’re saving a lot of money. We’re really happy with that.”

For decades, heat pumps weren’t powerful enough to heat through Canadian winters. But a new generation of cold-climate heat pumps now available have been shown to work in the deep cold of Whitehorse. They also do double duty, running in reverse to provide air conditioning in the summer.

Much like the EV, the heat pump electrifies something that’s traditionally powered with fossil fuels. And like an EV, switching to a heat pump to heat your home saves money and reduces emissions – even on a dirty grid, like Nova Scotia’s – because the technology is so much more efficient.

While the newest natural gas furnaces operate at 98% efficiency, heat pumps are 220 to 320% efficient in Canadian conditions. This means that in a furnace, one unit of energy in natural gas produces 0.98 units of heat in your home. But with a heat pump, one unit of energy in electricity produces 2.2 to 3.2 units of heat. This works because heat pumps use ambient heat in the air and concentrate it, gaining a multiplier effect on the energy used to power the process.

As a result, heat pumps promise cost savings not only for people who switch from natural gas and oil furnaces, but for those switching from electric baseboards, because they will use far less electricity to produce the same amount of heat.

The Corporate Knights research division calculated that for a typical single-family detached house in Nova Scotia, switching from an oil furnace to a heat pump would save $1,750 in annual heating costs. They would save even more switching from baseboard heating: $2,773 per year.

The price to install a heat pump can vary from around $4,500 for a hybrid (one that works with your existing furnace) to upwards of $20,000 for a top-of-the-line centrally ducted model. Federal government rebates of up to $5,000 and zero-interest loans of $40,000, both offered through Ottawa’s Greener Homes Initiative, can significantly reduce how much you pay out of pocket at the outset. It can even eliminate the cost: if you’re switching from oil to a heat pump, there’s a special federal program that will cover up to $10,000.

Provincial rebates stack on top of the federal ones, offering an additional $5,000 in Ontario and Nova Scotia and up to $20,000 in Quebec, reducing upfront costs even further.

Since the federal subsidies were introduced in 2021, heat pump adoption has shot up, surpassing sales of natural gas furnaces in Canada for the first time, according to wholesale shipment information tracked by the Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Institute of Canada.

Because of their efficiency, heat pumps use far less energy to heat than furnaces, but just how big their impact is on carbon emissions is mostly determined by how the electricity is generated. In Nova Scotia, where the majority of electricity comes from coal and oil, switching from an oil furnace to a heat pump will reduce a typical household’s emissions by 1.2 tonnes. In provinces with lots of carbon-free renewable electricity, the greenhouse gas reductions are even greater. In Ontario, for example, a household making the switch to a heat pump would reduce their emissions by 4.2 tonnes and save $489 a year at today’s gas prices – savings that will nearly double by 2030 as the carbon price increases.

Canada-wide, if everyone switched to heat pumps, it would produce annual savings of $13.5 billion and emission reductions of 26.3 megatonnes, equal to 4% of Canada’s total GHG emissions, according to the Corporate Knights analysis.

For a peek at the future, look no further than Sweden, where heat pumps have almost entirely replaced oil for residential heat. Since 1990, heat pumps have been responsible for reducing carbon emissions from heating by 95%, according to Martin Forsén, the president of the European Heat Pump Association, who gave a recent presentation in Toronto. The adoption of heat pumps has gone so well in his Scandinavian country that he sees their global dominance as an inevitability. “I don’t think it’s a question of if. It’s just a question of when,” he says.

That’s a sentiment Gifford shares. Heating by burning fossil fuels in your basement will soon be a thing of the past. “It’s a necessary change and I’m looking forward to it,” he says. “It can’t happen soon enough.”

Savings from switching to an electric water heater and induction stove

Anya Barkan’s water heater was 15 years old and “a piece of garbage” when she called her rental company and asked for it to be replaced. After some back and forth that left her frustrated, she decided to break free from the rental contract she had inherited when she bought her home and get a heat-pump water heater. “It just made sense. We wanted to stop that monthly fee and get something that is much more energy-efficient and also not reliant on natural gas,” she says.

Breaking the contract proved much harder than getting the heat-pump water heater. But ever since, Barkan says, she has been happy – and not only because she no longer pays the monthly rental fee. “It’s like shooting two birds with one stone. It’s not just one thing or the other. You can make your house more efficient and lower your bills. But also, it’s better for the environment in terms of fighting climate change.”

Water heaters don’t have a huge impact on gas bills on their own. But like gas stoves, they are often one of the few links to the natural gas system in a home. If swapping these two gas appliances for electric means being able to cut your gas line, it supercharges the savings because it eliminates the fixed monthly charge for natural gas, which comes to $325 a year in Ontario.

The Corporate Knights research found that swapping out the gas water heater for one that operates with a heat pump would save an Ontario family $124 per year. Similarly for an induction stove: the annual savings in Ontario for switching from a gas stove are only $5, but if switching allows you to cut your gas line, those combined savings jump to $454 a year.

But it’s not just economics. There are other reasons people are looking to get rid of their gas stoves. Worries about air quality in the home surfaced earlier this year after an official with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said the agency was considering banning new gas stoves amid research that links them to childhood asthma.

While the ensuing uproar prompted the head of the agency to walk back talk of a ban, the health hazards are real. Health Canada’s residential indoor air-quality guidelines estimate that 25% of houses with gas stoves exceed the exposure limit for nitrogen dioxide, one of the toxic compounds released when a gas stove is turned on and “for brief periods of time after cooking,” even with “moderate ventilation.”

Meanwhile, some professional chefs recommend switching to induction stoves for performance reasons alone, saying they’re faster to heat up, more responsive, not as hot to work over and easier to clean.

Soon, people moving into new houses and apartments could have no choice but to go without gas appliances. Dozens of cities across the United States, recently joined by Vancouver, have banned natural gas hookups in new developments. New York State just passed a similar ban statewide, and Toronto and Montreal city councils are considering similar measures.

Even though they burn little gas, the climate impact of eliminating these gas-burning appliances isn’t negligible. Switching from a gas stove to induction will reduce an average Ontario household’s indoor emissions of greenhouse gas by 370 kilograms. Swapping a gas water heater for a heat pump version saves 640 kilos.

If everyone in Canada made these changes, the collective impact would reduce emissions by 7.6 megatonnes, more than 1% of all emissions in the country. It’s what analysts refer to as the light-bulb effect. When incandescent light bulbs were replaced by LEDs, the difference in electricity consumption was tiny for a lamp or light fixture. But multiplied across households, apartment buildings, university campuses and sport stadiums, the cumulative impact was enormous.

That’s where we’re at right now with climate change. The solutions are all readily available. The wind turbines and solar panels that will provide clean electricity are being adopted much faster than anyone predicted. Now it’s time to electrify and use that clean electricity to eliminate carbon emissions.

“It’s not just your individual action that will change the world,” says Barkan. “We need to go at it together.”

Full calculator

Calculate the cumulative impact of swapping out all four technologies below.

*To learn more about how averages were calculated, see our notes on assumptions and emission factors.

Marco Chown Oved, climate reporter, Toronto Star

Ralph Torrie, research director, Corporate Knights

Cameron Tulk, lead digital designer, Toronto Star

McKenna Deighton, digital designer, Toronto Star

Jack Dylan, creative director, Corporate Knights magazine

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Reducing greenhouse gas emissions can help mitigate these impacts and their costs. The Canadian Climate Institute has explored in detail Canada’s options for getting to net-zero emissions. There’s little debate that the big switch from fossil fuels to clean electricity will be a cornerstone of Canada’s net-zero future and a competitive necessity for the economy.

But our latest analysis turns up another important benefit: this switch will see most Canadian households spending less on energy compared to today.

Notably, our most recent calculations find that, on average, energy costs for Canadians will decline around 12% by 2050 (Canada’s target year for reaching net-zero) – even with the investments needed for household equipment, such as heat pumps, and electricity grid expansion. And that’s before factoring in the policies already in place to make the transition more affordable for households (things like rebates for electric vehicles, home retrofits or carbon pricing). While this finding may be a surprise for some, recent polling shows that two out of three Canadians already believe it.

Consider how much you spend each year refuelling your vehicle. An average Canadian driving around 15,000 kilometres will pay about $2,000 a year for gas (ignoring price spikes seen in 2022) but could refuel an electric vehicle for $350 a year for the same mileage. Electric motors are more than twice as efficient as combustion engines at converting energy to motion. Even if average electricity rates increase as we build out power grids to meet growing demand, the total cost of owning and operating an electric vehicle still offers net savings.

Consumers are catching on – roughly one in 10 cars sold in Canada last year was electric. While EVs still come with a price premium up-front, the costs of their batteries have fallen by more than 90% since 2010. As their market share increases, economies of scale and experience will further drive down their costs. Some expect them to reach price parity within five years without subsidies.

Similarly, heat pumps (which can be used to heat and cool homes and are typically three times more efficient than baseboard heating or gas furnaces) offer payback for consumers. But help with the equipment cost will remain important for access, even as costs fall. Financing, including low-interest loans, can help households afford the up-front cost and shorten the payback period (supports are already available but can be overly complex).

Affordability isn’t just about average costs; it’s also about stability. Fossil fuel prices are much more volatile. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to record-high spikes in gasoline and natural gas prices, and these spikes pose challenges for household cash flows. Switching to electric vehicles and heating can buffer Canadians from having to make sudden and difficult budget choices because of global events.

The data backs this up: multiple U.S. studies show prices for electricity are more stable and predictable relative to gasoline and natural gas for domestic consumption, even preceding the Ukraine crisis. And according to the International Energy Agency, a net-zero pathway not only lowers energy bills, but also protects households from global energy price shocks, reducing energy costs by 40% during such times relative to the status quo.

Of course, a widespread switch to electricity still presents challenges. Low-income households and renters may not be able to unlock the benefits of electrifying. While renters often pay energy bills, landlords choose heating systems. Low-income households are likely to be some of the last to switch from fossil fuels, and the costs of maintaining fossil energy systems risk falling disproportionately on them. Careful policy-making can and should ensure that all Canadians are able to enjoy the benefits electrification can offer. For example, technology rebates should be higher for low-income households, and avoid their having to bear costs up-front. Regulations and incentives can ensure that tenants get to benefit.

Done right, the energy transition won’t just be good for the climate or the economy – it’ll also be good for our bank accounts.

Rick Smith is the president of the Canadian Climate Institute. Kate Harland is a senior research associate at the Canadian Climate Institute.

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1. Tell the whole truth about the climate crisis

Most people are living in what I call climate limbo-land. They know climate change is pretty serious, but since almost no government is treating it as the crisis it is, they assume it’s all right to keep on flying, driving a gas-guzzling SUV, eating beef and complaining about the price of oil. If people knew the half of it, they’d be full of climate anxiety and demanding rapid urgent action, just as the young climate strikers are.

The Canadian government, for its part, is generally saying the right things, but its communications around the climate crisis need to have even more urgency. Through their actions, governments should be ringing alarm bells about the reality of the situation.

Alarm bell #1: We’re heading for a world that will be at least 2°C to 3°C warmer by century’s end. The last time it was that warm, three million years ago, sea levels were 16 metres higher.

Alarm bell #2: These climate events – more destructive floods, stronger hurricanes, longer droughts, quick-spreading wildfires and more prolonged heatwaves – will all get worse. And they will cost us. In Canada, losses caused by the climate crisis are projected to cost $2.8 trillion a year by the end of the century under a 2°C warming scenario, according to Queen’s University’s Institute for Sustainable Finance.

Alarm bell #3: By 2050 there could be 1.2 billion climate refugees seeking a safe place to live. So please – tell people the truth!

2. Electrify everything

All our energy except geothermal and tidal comes from the sun, that amazing ball of fire a million times larger than our tiny Earth. For more than a million years, we have used its energy by burning wood grown by sunlight. For 300 years, we have burned fossilized wood, plants and marine organisms that grew from the sun’s energy, in the form of coal, oil and gas.

Today, we know how to use the sun’s energy directly through solar, wind (the sun’s heat creates pressure differentials, which generate wind) and other renewables. Solar and wind are already the cheapest forms of new energy, and renewable technologies will only improve and get cheaper. Battery technologies are improving every year, as engineers develop new ways to store energy that don’t require lithium and other rare minerals. No more air pollution, no more related illnesses, no more tanker disasters, and no more wars over oil. Why hang on to the past? It makes no sense.

3. Stop burning fossil fuels

Around 75% of the climate crisis is being caused by our continued use of fossil fuels. Every time we burn coal, gas or oil, we pour fuel on the crisis, making the future worse. No one is saying “Stop burning all fossil fuels today,” but the climate scientists who understand the alarm bells are saying we do need to stop investing in new oil and gas infrastructure and exploration. The only reason for fossil fuel expansion is to continue to squeeze out more profits for investors, at the expense of our children’s and our grandchildren’s lives.

Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, from fracked natural gas is not better than coal, as its promoters claim, since the process of fracking releases methane, which traps 84 times more heat than carbon dioxide over 20 years, making its climate impact as bad as coal.

Governments should sign the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, as the European Parliament recently did. There are a thousand ways for civilization to flourish without burning fossil fuels. Thank you, fossil fuels. You served us well, but your time is over.

4. Spend what it takes on climate change solutions

When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, nobody in the U.K. asked whether they could afford to fight the war. They did whatever it took. They borrowed, increasing the national debt to 200% of GDP. (Canada’s debt today is just 45% of GDP.) They issued Victory Bonds. They invested massively to save their very future.

Investments in solar, wind and other renewables will pay for themselves through utility bills. Retrofitting buildings to replace gas with heat pumps and better insulation will require grants and tax breaks. Investments in transit, bike lanes, walkable communities and tree planting will improve our quality of life. Investments in research and development will produce better batteries, new ways to make concrete and steel, and new circular economy materials.

The world’s nations spend US$2 billion a day on direct fossil fuel subsidies, while the oil industry has made $3 billion a day in profits every day for the last 50 years. Imagine what we could achieve if governments were to invest those subsidies in climate solutions, and levy an oil industry windfall profits tax.

5. Stop eating meat

It’s one of those realities we need to accept. The livestock industry, which produces meat and dairy, causes as much climate pollution as the entire world’s transportation. It comes from a combination of rainforests being destroyed to raise cattle, fertilizers and manure producing nitrous oxide, and cattle constantly burping methane. A kilogram of beef generates 63 times more climate pollution than a kilogram of wheat. Pork generates eight times more; chicken six times more.

The belief that if cattle are grass-fed, that “grazing is amazing,” as burger chain A&W claims, is simply not true: the cattle keep burping methane and releasing nitrous oxide through their manure.

Instead of beef and dairy, there’s a whole world of vegetarian and vegan cuisine to explore, full of taste and flavour.

6. Leave no one behind

When French president Emmanuel Macron introduced a new fuel tax in 2018, it was quickly derailed by angry people wearing yellow vests who felt they had been unfairly targeted. Canada’s carbon tax, by contrast, is returned to most Canadians in their taxes as credits or rebates. But we need to go further. We need a truly just transition in which any worker whose job disappears as a result of the reduction of fossil fuels will be assured financial support and training to find a new job (of which there will be plenty). Indigenous people all across Canada must be included in the many opportunities that open up.

7. Restore climate stability

Is all this enough? Alas no, for the climate crisis is caused not by our current emissions, but by our accumulated emissions over 200 years. Before the Industrial Revolution, the carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere was 280 parts per million (ppm). In May 2022 it reached 420 ppm, a level not seen for four million years, and it increases by two ppm every year as we continue to burn fossil fuels, destroy forests and eat beef.

To restore climate stability and cease our canter to catastrophe, we need to suck the surplus carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere. We can do this by protecting Earth’s forests; restoring farmland soils and wetlands; planting a trillion trees; using the world’s oceans to grow carbon-storing seaweeds, seagrasses and mangroves; making synthetic limestone; and through other means, all of which the Foundation for Climate Restoration is pursuing.

The pursuit of “net-zero” is a delusional folly: it uses nature’s solutions such as these to justify continued climate pollution. We need to do both: to cease pouring fuel on the fire and to bring all that excess carbon back down to earth, where it will no longer trap heat.

So please, leave limbo-land. Come into action-land. We need all hands on deck.

Guy Dauncey is the author of Journey to the Future: A Better World Is Possible.

The post Seven ways to end the climate crisis appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Victoria, B.C., is set to become one of the first Canadian municipalities to ban the use of fossil fuels for water and space heating in new developments. Last week, the city announced that it will require all new buildings be “zero carbon” by July 2025, five years ahead of provincial standards. “Buildings account for nearly half of all greenhouse gas pollution generated in the city,” Mayor Lisa Helps said in a press release. “Each new building will last more than 50 years so raising the bar now is critical to meeting our long-term climate goals, and to preparing the taxpayers of the future to have less climate-related costs down the road.” Victoria will join the municipalities of Saanich and Central Saanich in adopting these changes ahead of the provincial schedule.

Autonomy buys 23,000 EVs

One of the big snags the electric vehicle market is experiencing is a lack of supply. It can take months for someone who buys an EV to receive it, and the high price of the vehicles is still out of reach for many (even with subsidies). An American company called Autonomy wants to give more consumers the chance to drive electric through a monthly subscription service. The company, which is already the biggest EV subscription service in the U.S., just announced it plans to buy 23,000 EVs from 17 different car manufacturers, including GM, Ford and Volkswagen. It previously only offered vehicles made by Tesla. The company’s order will see its fleet grow from 3,250 to more than 22,000 by the fourth quarter of 2023. Altogether, the order will be worth US$1.2 billion.

Let there be light

Last week, Iberdrola SA turned on a massive solar plant that can power more than 334,000 homes. Bloomberg reports that the Spanish utility company will slowly ramp up production at the plant over the next few weeks until its 1.5 million solar panels are fully operational. The sun-swept country, which gets around 3,000 hours of sunshine a year, is aiming to get 75% of its electricity from renewable power by 2030.

Electrify the mail

While many European countries have postal services that deliver the mail with the help of thousands of electric vehicles (in France, La Poste has 40,000 EVs), the U.S. Postal Service currently has a paltry two dozen electric trucks. That’s about to change now that Congress has passed the Inflation Reduction Act. The bill includes $3 billion to buy zero-emissions vehicles and charging stations for the USPS. In the spring, several environmental groups launched a lawsuit challenging the USPS’s decision that only 10% of its trucks would be electric. Then in July, in response to the backlash, the USPS announced it would electrify 40% of its fleet. Surely the funding boost will allow it to electrify an even greater chunk (if not all) of its trucks.

Charging stations with a side of Swedish meatballs

Last year, IKEA made headlines for selling renewable energy to customers in Sweden. Now the furniture giant is installing more than 200 high-power charging stations for EVs at 25 stores across the U.S. in partnership with a Volkswagen subsidiary called Electrify America. The charging stations will be installed by the end of 2023. Electrify America has installed 3,500 charging stations across the U.S. since 2018 and plans to install 10,000 total in the U.S. and Canada by 2026.

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The new coalition government in Germany has resolved to put 15 million electric vehicles (EVs) on roads by 2030 – a considerable increase from the 540,000 purely electric cars on the road today – and to install one million more charging stations. It is using pandemic recovery funds to encourage the transition. In 2020, the government announced a €5-billion pandemic stimulus package to help the automotive industry transition to EVs. It consists of €1 billion for rebates on EV purchases, €1 billion for the replacement of older trucks, €1 billion to support technology investments by suppliers and €2 billion to help them adapt their production.

2. Penalize what you don’t want

Germany hasn’t been a leader in phasing out combustion vehicles by a particular date, relying instead on incremental measures. In January 2021, the government raised the motor vehicle tax (or Kraftfahrzeugsteuer) – an annual tax paid by vehicle owners and calculated on the basis of their vehicles’ engine size and emissions value. Owners of EVs will be exempt from this tax for 10 years, saving them an average of €194 per year. Owners of large (non-electric) SUVs will now be paying upward of €700 annually. Meanwhile, municipalities across Germany are limiting high-emission vehicles’ access to some urban zones and charging them more for parking.

3. Invest in especially hard-hit regions

As governments work to wean their countries off fossil fuels, they’ll need to make sure that marginalized communities and workers aren’t left behind. In 2020, the German government passed a “structural revitalization law,” allocating €40 billion to the country’s coal-producing regions, of which Lusatia is one. These funds, managed between federal and local governments, are being invested in transportation infrastructure, education and training, and employment-generating projects. In the last two years, the government has opened offices of two federal agencies in Lusatia – the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control and the German Pension Office – to create jobs.

4. Engage with those regions

According to Thomas Froehlich, a political scientist based at King’s College, London, public consultation is key to public acceptance. Froehlich, who has been comparing the transitions of the coal regions of Appalachia (U.S.) and Lusatia (Germany), says that given the severe impact of coal mining on local communities – villages were frequently demolished and relocated to make way for new pits – the German coal industry has a tradition of engaging with the public to gain acceptance. Froehlich feels this culture of consultation is facilitating the current transition and contrasts it with a less collective, more “winner takes all” approach in the U.S.

5. Encourage, train and compensate

It’s one thing for federal governments to sign off on massive recovery packages; it’s another to ensure that those funds are accessible to individuals and municipalities. Furthermore, investors in transitional regions are looking for a trained local workforce. Germany’s dual education system, which pairs post-secondary institutions with the private sector, is helpful in this respect. Companies like Rock Tech Lithium are tapping into – and helping train – local youth. Lastly, those who have little chance of re-entering the workforce must not be left in the dust. The German government is providing people aged 58 and over who have lost jobs in the coal industry with up to five years of compensation (equivalent to their previous earnings) to bridge them into their pensions.

Naomi Buck is a Toronto-based writer.

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Against a backdrop of horrific climate disasters, a number of developments in 2021 offered some cause for optimism, from the International Energy Agency’s call to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 to new commitments from global banks and institutional investment funds to decarbonize their holdings. A growing number of cities, including New York, are enacting rules that ban gas hook-ups for new buildings. Meanwhile, in a case that could have long-term implications for energy-inefficient design in the era of climate change, a group of San Francisco condo owners sued a developer for US$10 million because the west- and south-facing units in their all-glass curtain-wall tower overheated so severely. 

Here are five trends to watch for in the world of sustainable design in 2022:

1) Revved up stationary batteries, EV charging and microgrids

As the electric vehicle (EV) market grows, so does pressure on existing electrical grids, which in turn forces systems planners and utilities to be more proactive about distributed energy. In Canada’s most populous province, the Ontario Energy Board in 2021 began developing a new process for regulating this evolution. This entails a massive deployment of local renewable sources so the proliferation of EVs doesn’t merely trigger more investment in large gas-fired generating stations. 

The EV charging sector is abuzz with start-up, investment and commercialization activity, stoked by multibillion-dollar government incentives announced last year for charging infrastructure. As well, new planning rules, such as the 2022 version of the Toronto Green Standard, will soon require developers to ensure that all parking spaces in new condo and office towers are fitted out with EV chargers. “I only hope that [governments] will also consider the new infrastructure that is needed to make that path successful,” says Deborah Byrne, chief operating officer for Kearns Mancini Architects, a Toronto firm that develops highly energy-efficient projects. 

Another area poised for growth is the microgrid service industry and the energy storage market for stationary batteries like Tesla’s Powerwall, which is a device that can be installed in homes or offices to store back-up power. For college campuses, larger industrial sites or fleet depots, microgrid developers are installing on-site stationary batteries and rooftop solar panels to allow property owners to load-shift, meaning they are less exposed to peak period rates while still being able to operate charging stations for EVs. Eventually, though the technology remains nascent, microgrid software platforms will be able to draw power from parked EVs whose batteries are equipped with “vehicle-to-grid” inverters. 

2) Goodbye natural gas furnaces

Public awareness about the need to transition away from natural gas to electricity for space heat, hot water and cooking is on the rise. In B.C. and Quebec, clean energy policies are giving financial incentives to homeowners who fuel-switch. And last year’s federal budget included billions in no-interest loans and grants for home energy retrofits, including subsidies for equipment such as air source heat pumps. 

Policy-makers remain hesitant to stoke this transition, partly because of the lobbying heft of the natural gas industry, but also because they haven’t figured out how to provide enough clean electricity to satisfy additional loads from space and water heating. 

3) Getting to the bottom of embodied carbon

In the latest iteration of Toronto’s Green Standard, the city’s developers can voluntarily begin assessing their projects’ embodied carbon (i.e., the carbon used to make materials like steel or drywall), with the understanding that the next version of this step code will make disclosures mandatory. Similar rules came into effect in B.C. in 2021. 

Knowing your project’s embodied carbon requires developers and architects to make life-cycle assessments of building materials, with the ultimate goal of reducing waste and promoting the use of less carbon-intensive components (such as wood-fibre insulation instead of foam) as well as substitutes, such as concrete produced with steel slag instead of limestone-based cement. 

Yet the trade-off between reducing so-called operational carbon emissions produced by building operations (e.g., heating and cooling) and embodied carbon remains a fraught subject. For example, passive house design, a green building standard with a heavy emphasis on insulation, has been criticized because it doesn’t pay enough attention to life-cycle analysis.

“Our more progressive projects have switched from embodied carbon boosterism to actually counting embodied carbon in a detailed way,” says Monte Paulsen, a passive house specialist at RDH Building Science, in Vancouver. “This is leading to some surprising findings, as many architects and boosters discover that all-glass buildings with wood inside perform worse [than] code requirements. Let’s hope that as we begin actually counting embodied carbon, we can make decisions based on data rather than belief.”

4) Fresher air for all

For decades, we’ve put up with crummy indoor air quality, thanks to off-gassing from synthetic carpets and other textiles, hermetically sealed windows and sub-standard or poorly maintained ventilation systems. Airless meeting rooms that produced drowsiness and headaches were a terrible but unavoidable feature of work or school life.

So in the world of building design, the run-up to last fall’s return to class may be remembered as a moment when architects, property managers and public sector agencies found religion around air quality and ventilation, the neglected poor cousins of the sustainable design world. The importance of proper ventilation has been underscored by accumulating evidence that airborne aerosols are a primary vector of COVD-19 infection. 

From a sustainability perspective, improved ventilation can be tied to energy-efficiency devices, such as heat-recovery systems attached to fans and exhaust vents. In buildings designed to minimize energy leakage with features such as triple pane windows and ultra-air-tight vapour barriers, proper ventilation becomes that much more important as a means of preventing mould from excess indoor humidity. The result, however, are buildings with excellent indoor air quality, helping us all breathe easier in the coming years. 

5) Smarter land-use planning

For many environmentalists, it is an article of faith that land-use planning rules that promote intensification and transit do the heavy lifting of carbon reduction. While policies that enact or safeguard green belts and density targets along transit corridors are not new, a growing number of cities have responded to the housing affordability crisis of recent years with policies designed to end what one Toronto business lobby group has dubbed “exclusionary zoning.” 

These policies include automatic permissions for basement apartments, laneway suites (where possible) and backyard “accessory dwelling units” (a.k.a. garden suites) in neighbourhoods dominated by single family homes. Toronto City Council recently voted to update highly restrictive residential zoning rules by also permitting so-called multiplexes in low-rise neighbourhoods. 

While such measures don’t, in and of themselves, deliver affordability, they do begin to address the depopulation of aging residential neighbourhoods where housing prices are no longer in reach for the vast majority of the population. 

“There are lots of forces resisting this [trend], but it is happening much more than many would have hoped even two years ago,” observes Shoshanna Saxe, an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto and a sustainable infrastructure expert. “This is more important for sustainability than almost anything else we could do at this point, and will certainly have a much bigger impact than any novel low-carbon material.” 

The post Five future-friendly ways sustainable design can help the planet in 2022 appeared first on Corporate Knights.