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Next week, the new government of Canada will be revealed. And regardless of who wins the election, our nation is about to embark on a new chapter in the climate change discussion. The consumer carbon tax is gone. Because this single policy was so dominant in the climate change debate, its repeal allows considerable space for a refocusing on other solutions.

So where do we go from here?

I’ll share more specific policy recommendations after election day, but here are three priorities that need to form the core of a renewed case for climate change progress:

1. Make life more affordable

After living through the most significant inflationary period in decades, Canadians are now faced with another economic threat from the destructive and chaotic trade actions of the Trump administration. That fundamental fact will colour all policy actions in this country in the months and years ahead – and climate policy is no different.

The good news is that many of the solutions we need to grow our economy and cut emissions involve technologies and actions that can actually improve day-to-day affordability.

Case in point: heat pumps. Previous research done by the Canadian Climate Institute calculated the cost differences between heat pumps and gas heating combined with air conditioning. The policy context has changed since the time of the report, but when you add it all up, heat pumps continue to beat the gas option on price alone in most places across the country.

As Canadians switch from fossil fuels to better, more energy-efficient electric technologies, they will save money on energy costs over time: average household spending on energy is expected to decrease 12% by 2050.

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The same is true for renewables such as solar and wind, which now provide cheaper power than new fossil fuel plants and most existing fossil fuel facilities.

That is unequivocally good news for climate action. There is no path to a net-zero future without powering the majority of our economy with new clean electricity – upwards of two to three times more than is currently on the grid.

2. Build a more competitive economy

Despite Trump’s attempts to slow down decarbonization, other jurisdictions all over the world are accelerating the transition to clean energy. These jurisdictions are precisely the ones Canada needs most to diversify its economy away from an increasingly protectionist United States.

The European Union, for example, is forging ahead with action to stamp out emissions: it is expected to solidify its 2040 emissions target in the coming months that would see the trading bloc cut carbon pollution by 90%. The United Kingdom is planning to meet all of the country’s power demand with clean electricity by 2030 – that’s after closing its last coal-fired power plant last September.

India, the world’s third-largest emitter, is expected to launch a new carbon market in October of 2026. And in China, which already has the world’s largest carbon market, the government is expanding coverage to include steel, cement and aluminum. That will add about three billion tonnes of emissions to the program and will mean that more than 60% of China’s total emissions are covered by the carbon trading system.

Even within the United States, 24 states in the U.S. Climate Alliance that represent close to 60% of the national economy have served notice that they will cut emissions in half by 2030.

All this will have profound consequences for Canada’s economic competitiveness. Decarbonization is where the business opportunities are: according to the International Energy Agency, investments in clean energy were expected to reach $2 trillion in 2024, almost double the amount invested in fossil fuels. The agency sees global demand for fossil fuels peaking before 2030.

Canada needs good climate policies to compete in a world where more of our major trading partners, including the European Union and the United Kingdom, are putting carbon border tariffs in place. In fact, even the United States is considering similar measures.

Fortunately, industrial carbon pricing can reduce the cost of these tariffs and keep revenue within our borders to invest in emissions-reducing projects. That’s a policy win that is helping drive emissions down while keeping costs low for companies – about the cost of a Timbit per barrel of oil. Not only that, these systems have nearly zero impact on household costs.

Canadian climate policy will need to lean into these benefits to stay competitive in a rapidly changing international environment.

3. Protect Canadians from extreme weather disasters

At its core, climate change is an issue that threatens the security and livelihoods of communities across Canada. And this threat will only increase over time.

Last year was the costliest for insured climate damages by far, at more than $8.5 billion. That shattered the next-closest year on record, which was in 2016 when the Fort McMurray wildfires drove the severe-weather price tag to $6 billion. The 2024 tally includes the Jasper wildfire, flooding in Quebec and Ontario, and the multibillion-dollar hailstorm in Calgary.

These impacts are just part of the overall cost of climate change. Previous research from the Canadian Climate Institute estimated that by this year damages from climate change would shave off $25 billion from the Canadian economy relative to a stable-climate scenario.

These losses add up in a variety of ways, but to give one real-world example, during the record-setting forest fires of 2023, thick smoke engulfed cities in Ontario and beyond. In just one week, these smoke-filled skies added more than $1 billion in health costs to the province.

Policymakers need to address these threats to our communities to ensure that Canadians across the country are better prepared for future climate disasters.

One of the oft-repeated themes of Earth Day is “Think globally and act locally.” In this next chapter of the Canadian climate change discussion, we need to keep this front of mind like never before. Donald Trump’s incoherent and economically illiterate ideas have plunged our country into a wholesale re-examination of our future. Good climate change policies are not a multilateral “nice to have”: they are a critical contribution to keeping life more affordable, making the Canadian economy more competitive, and keeping our communities safer.

Rick Smith is president of the Canadian Climate Institute, the co-author of two bestselling books on the effects of pollution on human health, and the executive producer of Plastic People, a 2024 documentary chronicling the damage done by microplastics in the human body.

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But the very thing that makes them such an amazing climate solution is also their biggest challenge. A common refrigerant called R-410A pumps through their innards so they can warm and cool homes and offices and anything else. But that refrigerant is also liquid irony, as it can escape as a greenhouse gas 2,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. (This is known as its “global warming potential,” or how much energy a ton of the gas absorbs over a given amount of time compared to the same amount of carbon dioxide.) Leaks can happen during the installation, operation and disposal of heat pumps.

But this year the industry is rolling out alternative refrigerant formulations like R-454B and R-32, which have around 75% less global warming potential. That’s in response to Environmental Protection Agency rules mandating that, starting this year, heat pump refrigerants have a global warming potential of no more than 700. Manufacturers are looking even farther ahead at the possibility of using propane, or even carbon dioxide, as the next generation of more atmospherically friendly refrigerants.

“The whole industry is going to be transitioning away from R-410A, so that’s good,” said Jeff Stewart, the refrigeration chief engineer for residential heating, ventilation and air conditioning at Trane Technologies, which makes heat pumps and gas furnaces. “We’re getting lower global warming potential. The problem is, it still has some, right? So there’s concern about ‘OK, is that low enough to really help the environment?’”

To be clear, heat pumps do not release greenhouse gases at anywhere near the scale of burning natural gas to heat homes, so their environmental impact is much smaller. “Even if we lost all the refrigerant, it still actually has a much smaller effect just having a heat pump and not burning gas,” said Matthew Knoll, co-founder and chief technology officer at California-based Quilt, which builds heat pump systems for homes. “I would actually want to make sure that doesn’t hamper the rapid adoption of heat pumps.”

But why does a heat pump need refrigerant? Well, to transfer heat. By changing the state of the liquid to a gas, then compressing it, the appliance absorbs heat from even very cold outdoor air and moves it indoors. Then in the summer, the process reverses to work like a traditional air conditioner.

The potential for refrigerant leaks is much smaller if the heat pump is properly manufactured, installed and maintained. When a manufacturer switches refrigerants, the basic operation of the heat pump stays the same. But some formulations operate at different pressures, meaning they’ll need slightly different sized components and perhaps stronger materials. “It’s all the same fundamental principles,” said Vince Romanin, CEO of San Francisco–based Gradient, which makes heat pumps that slip over window sills. “But it does take a re-engineering and a recertification of all of these components.”

While Trane has transitioned to R-454B, Gradient and other companies are adopting R-32, which has a global warming potential of 675 and brings it in line with the new regulations. Gradient says that with engineering improvements, like hermetic sealing that makes it harder for refrigerants to escape, and by properly recycling its appliances, it can reduce the climate footprint of heat pumps by 95%. “Our math shows R-32, plus good refrigerant management, those two things combined solve almost all of the refrigerant problem,” Romanin said. “Because of that data, Gradient believes the industry should stay on R-32 until we’re ready for natural refrigerants.”

Those include carbon dioxide, butane and propane. Carbon dioxide has a global warming potential of just 1, but it works at much higher pressures, which requires thicker tubes and compressors. It’s also less efficient in hot weather, meaning it’s not the best option for a heat pump in cooling mode in the summer.

Propane, on the other hand, excels in different conditions and operates at a lower pressure than the refrigerants it would replace. It also has a global warming potential of just 3. Propane is flammable, of course, but heat pumps can run it safely by separating sources of ignition, like electrical components, from the refrigerant compartments. “It is kind of perfect for heat pumps,” said Richard Gerbe, board member and technical advisor at Italy-based Aermec, another maker of heat pumps.

That’s why Europe is already switching to propane, and why the United States may soon follow, Gerbe said. A typical heat pump will run about 10 pounds of propane, less than what’s found in a barbecue tank. Gas furnaces and stoves, by contrast, are constantly fed with flammable natural gas that can leak, potentially leading to explosions or carbon monoxide poisoning. “If you’ve got a comfort level with a gas stove in your house,” Gerbe said, “this is significantly less of a source.”

This article originally appeared in Grist. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Grist is a non-profit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. 

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If provincial governments and regulators continue treating gas as the default option for heating new homes and commercial buildings, rather than shifting the lion’s share of that heating demand to an electrified system dominated by heat pumps, the transition off carbon will cost more than it needs to, the Institute warns. As households and businesses abandon the system for cheaper, more efficient electricity, the remaining ratepayers will be left with higher costs. And if those costs get so high that regulators decide they’re beyond ratepayers’ ability to pay, the burden will eventually shift to taxpayers.

“The critical thing is that we change our approach to expansion and that we think very seriously about how we’re going to deal with existing systems,” Senior Research Director Jason Dion told a media briefing Wednesday.

“We need to be thinking very carefully about whether [new gas infrastructure] is going to be used and useful over its lifetime,” he added, while dealing with the complexities of managing the existing gas network as demand for its product declines.

The report puts most of the onus on provincial governments, regulators, and utilities to deliver a viable path to net-zero heating in the buildings sector, which saw its emissions rise 8.8% between 2005 and 2022. Along with upstream oil and gas and agriculture, the sector is one of the few in Canada that have not managed to bring their emissions down.

The report pins much of that problem on the way buildings are heated, with more than half of the furnaces and boilers in Canadian homes and commercial buildings running on fossil fuels, mostly gas. While the sector can increase the energy efficiency of new construction and speed up energy retrofits in the existing building stock, decarbonizing and largely electrifying heat will require a focus on the wider energy system.

Without changing the regulations that govern that system, “gas utilities will likely continue to focus on expanding their networks because regulatory models limit their ability to diversify,” the CCI says.

“On a cost-optimal pathway to net zero, electricity will power most space heating in Canada,” the report declares. But “despite some recent progress, Canada’s buildings sector and its electricity and gas systems are not yet on that cost-optimal net zero path.” Getting there “will require a significant increase in the use of electricity for building heat, and a declining use of gas, starting right away,” but inertia in provincial systems means those changes are unlikely under current policies and regulations.

Gas Utilities Are Forced to Expand

A major part of the problem is a business model for gas utilities that compels them to continue expanding their networks, since their revenue comes mainly from the regulated returns they receive on installed infrastructure, not from the gas they pass through to households at cost. When those system expansion decisions are made, “what looks like a promising option for a utility’s bottom line may not always be in the best interest of ratepayers and the energy system overall, nor the most cost-effective path to net zero for the broader economy,” the institute said.

The report calls on provincial governments to legislate 2050 net-zero targets with interim milestones and give regulators, system operators, and utilities the tools to make decisions consistent with a net-zero future. Those tools include independent net-zero assessments that are updated regularly, and more granular energy roadmaps that “present the government’s vision for how the jurisdiction’s technology and energy mix, and the infrastructure it will require, should evolve in line with net-zero. In particular, roadmaps should specify the roles of the gas network and electricity grid through the transition and identify responsibilities for overall energy system coordination.”

Provinces should treat electricity, not gas, as the default option for new buildings and “immediately direct regulators to consider the risks of stranded gas assets when reviewing gas utility submissions, and weigh those risks against alternatives to replacing and extending gas pipelines,” the institute writes. Provincial governments can also shift obligation-to-serve provisions that require gas utilities to expand their networks and mandate that new buildings be fully electric unless a thermal energy network or some other net-zero alternative is available.

The report calls on gas utilities to disclose their network maps to support a managed transition to electricity and advises governments at all levels to “strengthen policies to support building electrification, peak management, and energy efficiency,” all while filtering policy design and program delivery through an equity lens.

‘This Is How We Deliver’

“This is how we deliver on our climate goals in a space that involves regulated utilities,” says Dion. “Because leaving the existing policy architecture as it stands is not a neutral choice.”

Guiding that transition meant producing a report that was “more than just a modelling exercise,” he added.

“We’ve done a lot of careful policy analysis around the current incentives for utilities, how regulators’ mandates interact and intersect with climate goals, and what is the policy space that governments have laid out. And we’ve heard a lot of feedback from regulators, in particular, that [welcomed] our diagnosis of what is amiss in the way we regulate utilities, and how central it is to the energy transition.”

In particular, Dion says the institute has been receiving a thumbs-up from regulators for identifying energy roadmaps “as the missing piece, and a vital part of the way forward.” He says the Canada Electricity Advisory Council reached a similar conclusion in its report earlier this week, which included a detailed annex on best practices for energy roadmaps.

With regulators operating under mandates that predate any consideration of the climate crisis, “what we have heard is a certain amount of appreciation that we are training our sights on this complex target,” Dion says. “It’s not a simple one. It takes time and resources to answer concretely and credibly.”

Transformative Change At Scale

The report frames a challenge as wide as the country’s existing gas and electricity systems. Alongside “building-by-building changes, the clean energy transition will require transformative change at the scale of provincial energy systems,” it states. “Governments, utilities, and regulators are just starting to contend with the impact this transition will have on the vast network of gas pipelines buried beneath large parts of the country, as well as the impact on Canada’s electricity infrastructure.”

That’s why the report looked beyond individual buildings to the whole energy system, “including the cost of building and maintaining electricity and gas infrastructure and how a transition in building heat could affect other sectors,” said CCI Mitigation Research Director Sachi Gibson. The wider focus was needed “because the sector is currently stuck,” she explained.

“Greenhouse gas emissions from buildings are still rising. Change is happening, with better financing and greater uptake of heat pumps, but it’s not happening fast enough.”

Yet buildings are crucial to the energy transition, Gibson said. Every household and business is looking for reliable, affordable energy, and “the decisions we make today about investments in electricity and gas systems will be something we live with and pay for for decades.”

Heat Pumps Rule

The projections and recommendations in the report are directed primarily at the provinces, partly because that’s where jurisdiction over utilities lies, “but also because there’s so much geographic variation,” said Kate Harland, the Climate Institute’s mitigation research lead, with the pace and degree of electrification varying by region and building type.

Between 2020 and 2050, the CCI projects the proportion of Canadian homes heated with electricity rising from 34 to 85%, with the remainder covered by electric systems with gas backup. Heat pumps rise from 7 to 73% of purely electric heating, while inefficient baseboard heating falls from 27 to 12%. Electric heat in commercial and institutional spaces rises from 11 to 48%, with hybrid systems supplying 50%.

The proportion of homes heated with electricity varies from 63 and 70% in Alberta and Saskatchewan to 99% in New Brunswick, 97% in Prince Edward Island, 94% in Quebec, 93% in Manitoba, and 92% in Nova Scotia, with baseboard heating all but eliminated in PEI and Nova Scotia.

Across all regions, “heat pumps and electric resistance heating are the cost-optimal technologies for the system in the vast majority of homes by 2050,” the report states. “Widespread electrification of heat on a cost-optimal pathway occurs in part because heat pumps are so much more energy efficient than gas furnaces. When considering the broader economic impacts of the energy system, the alternative of using hydrogen or biomethane in buildings leaves less of those low-emission fuels available for other uses where they are highly needed, such as in heavy industry.”

Higher Peak Electricity Demand

The report says electricity systems will have to grow 2.6- to 2.9-fold on average to hit a net-zero target by 2050 — not only due to building decarbonization, but because so many other sectors of the economy will be shifting to electricity at the same time, while more intermittent renewables come onto the system.

The modelling behind the report shows peak power demand in buildings holding steady or declining in provinces that already heat primarily with electricity, but rising in regions that use a lot of gas. With demand growing in other sectors, as well, peak demand across the economy increases everywhere.

Within the buildings sector, however, “total energy demand decreases dramatically,” the report projects. “On a cost-optimal pathway to net zero, from 2020 to 2050, the total square footage of buildings increases as the population and economy grows. But due to significant improvements in energy efficiency over time, total energy demand from the buildings sector declines on a cost-optimal path to net zero.”

Still, “mitigating peak demand to keep electricity affordable and reliable will likely emerge as the central challenge facing electric utilities in this transition,” the institute writes. “In the buildings sector, retrofits of existing buildings, the rising energy efficiency of new buildings, and the switch from electric baseboards to much more efficient heat pumps can all contribute to reducing the scale of the necessary electricity system buildout,” with hybrid gas-electric systems meeting peak demand in the cold of winter. Options like heat and energy storage, thermal energy networks, and demand-side management “will also likely play an important role.”

This article was first published by The Energy Mix. Read the original story here. 

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The move was one of the latest victories for the gas industry and its supporters, who observers say have been emboldened by a 2023 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that rolled back the country’s first municipal gas ban, in Berkeley. Since the northern California city introduced its ban on gas hookups in new buildings in 2019, 25 states have adopted prohibitions on municipalities approving their own gas bans, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights.

The appeals court decision has had somewhat of a chilling effect in some cities and states, worried they may also face legal challenges. Soon after the decision, Palo Alto, which introduced its own gas ban in 2022, said it would no longer enforce it. Others followed suit, including Berkeley.

Earlier this year, the court refused to hear Berkeley’s appeal of the decision. At the time, the Biden administration said it could “cast a cloud of uncertainty over any health or safety law that may indirectly affect someone’s ability to use a product for which the federal government has issued an energy conservation standard.”

New York State is also facing a lawsuit by gas and construction industry groups for its restrictions on gas infrastructure in most new buildings.

But not everything is going the gas lobby’s way. Gas bans have continued to spread and evolve in other parts of the country. On the east coast, several Maryland counties are introducing changes to building codes to ensure that heating in new buildings is all-electric. And late last year, local lawmakers in Burlington, Vermont, approved new requirements that developers use low-carbon or renewable sources of energy to heat their buildings or pay a one-time carbon fee for their expected life-cycle emissions.

Climate advocates are now regrouping, considering other types of action that they hope will curb the use of natural gas in buildings, which along with the construction sector accounts for 37% of global greenhouse gases, according to the United Nations. One of the main components in most natural gas is methane – a potent, heat-trapping greenhouse gas. “Learning from Berkeley’s ill-fated experience, cities across California and the U.S. west have already introduced different rules focused on energy performance,” Alastair Iles, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told The Guardian. “Cities can also set air pollution emission standards to favor electric appliances.”

Local leaders in California, who feel handcuffed by the appeals court decision, are trying to put pressure on Governor Gavin Newsom to implement state-wide electric building standards.

The idea is also spreading internationally. Last month, the European Parliament voted to approve new requirements that all new buildings be zero-emission starting in 2030.

In Canada, some cities in British Columbia, Victoria among them, have adopted a stringent provincial building code that will limit the greenhouse gas emissions of new buildings, effectively phasing out most fossil-fuel use. Come October, a ban will come into effect in Montreal on gas-powered heating systems, stoves and water heaters in most new buildings.

No municipalities in Ontario have implemented similar gas bans, but the province’s energy regulator gave Ottawa climate activists a win last year when it rejected Enbridge’s application to build a new gas pipeline in the city to replace an aging one. The regulator determined that repairing and retrofitting the existing pipeline would be sufficient at a time when the city is trying to wean itself off fossil fuels. Enbridge is looking to reopen its application, claiming it now has evidence to show that the old pipeline needs to be replaced.

When it comes to gas bans in the United States, it can sometimes feel like climate advocates take a step forward only to get shoved back three steps by the gas industry and its supporters. But local and state leaders in some of the most populous states in the country are finding creative ways to get around the roadblocks.

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The letters were both due for release Tuesday at 9 AM local time.

Cancelling the program “would set us back years in achieving our [greenhouse gas] emissions reduction goals, and denies the majority of Canadian homeowners the supports they need to create energy-efficient and climate-ready homes,” Green Communities Canada tells Wilkinson. “The forests are burning, and nearly all houses in the country need to be retrofitted. Now is not the time to slow down.”

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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. 

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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

The post GREEN house effect: Calculate the savings from electrifying your home appeared first on Corporate Knights.

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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