Wondering how to reduce your home heating and cooling bills? Consider your options. The lowest cost options over 15 years are electric cold climate Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHPs) even after including capital costs of installation. Calculate your savings from switching from fossil fuels at CleanAirAlliance.org/calculate2. And because the carbon taxes on all fossil fuels will increase from the current $65 tax per tonne of greenhouse gas emissions to $170 by 2030, your annual savings from switching to electric heat pumps will rise in the future.
Natural gas is as natural as oil and coal. They are all fossil fuels which add to global warming as they release greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide and methane. Emissions globally need to fall by about 7.6% a year between now and 2030 to meet the 1.5C target according to the UN Environment Program, yet last year they fell by only 2.9%.
With more climate-change catastrophes, there will be increased pressure to produce and use clean energy. The IEA (International Energy Agency) stresses NO NEW GAS (HEATING) SHOULD BE INSTALLED AFTER 2025. “Heat pumps are expected to be a better, low-carbon alternative to heating homes in the foreseeable future. The UK’s official climate advisers recommend that all gas (heating) should be banned by 2033 to end the UK’s further contribution to climate change”. That’s 10 years away. Enbridge says of its Hidden Valley gas pipeline “Fifty years of operation is used as an assumption, although the pipeline may be operational beyond fifty years”.
Enbridge has applied to the OEB (Ontario Energy Board) to construct the Hidden Valley Pipeline this summer. The OEB considers many factors including Enbridge’s ER (environmental plan) but nowhere does the plan look at the effect of the fossil gas on the climate.
While gas is advertised as a cheaper alternative to oil and propane, its price fluctuates by as much as 300% (between 2020 and 2023) and needs costly pipeline infrastructure. The Hidden Valley pipeline, to serve only 110 homes, costs $3.5million or $32,000 per home, and that average climbs if fewer homeowners hook up. This capital cost far exceeds installation costs of cold climate air-source heat pumps (Approximately $14,000 after $5,000 Government of Canada rebate). The pipeline will be paid for, Enbridge states, over 40 years by adding a surcharge of 23 cents a cubic metre to new Hidden Valley users, and by a $1.9 million subsidy from all of Enbridge’s Ontario fossil gas users.
Enbridge surveyed the 110 households in 2022. Of the 42% who responded, 37% knew nothing about heat pumps. If not committed to Enbridge Gas please look at CleanAirAlliance.org/heat-pumps-can-save-you-money to see what options might work best for you, whether you have an old or new, oil or gas furnace, or water radiators.
Besides lower cost and environmental impacts, Cold Climate ASHPs’ additional advantages (as compared with fossil systems) are:
- providing heat from minus 30C outside air. (Think of a fridge that can produce cold air and ice in a very hot room)
- providing air conditioning at the touch of a button.
- connection to existing forced air duct systems.
- often quieter than air conditioning units
- significant operating cost savings, because ASHPs have an energy efficiency of approximately 300% versus approximately 95% for modern gas furnaces
- increase the value of your home as gas is gradually phased out.
The federal government’s Canada Greener Homes programs offers grants of up to $5,000 and 10-year interest-free loans to help with capital costs of ASHPs. Operating cost savings 0f ASHPs compared with fossil gas will more than pay for the loan and electricity used.
Let’s go electric.
Lesley Hastie
Huntsville, resident
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Thank you for a great article, Leslie!
Interesting to hear from so many people who have installed heat pumps in the community. I am reminded of how important it is to find an installer who is familiar with cold climate heat pumps. They should do a heating load calculation for the home, recommend models that are designed to provide full heating in the local climate and advise on how to use the system to its best advantage. Just like everything else, if you don’t get quality advice, it is hard to choose a quality product.
I installed a cold climate heat pump in my home in 2020 and disconnected from the gas line that same year. A few things that I learned are a) it is more efficient to run the heat pump without setbacks and it turns out that my home is more comfortable as a result as well, and b) just as you have to make sure the gas air intake doesn’t get clogged with snow, so too do you have to keep snow away from the heat pump coils – choosing a good installation site is important.
Heat pumps saw a 13% increase in sales in 2021, and the US saw a 15% increase. In Scandinavian countries, the majority of homes are already heated with heat pumps. Heat pumps are gaining market share worldwide because they are a proven technology, they are the most efficient heating system available and they are the best solution for low carbon heating. Adding new gas connections makes no sense.
There is an extreme urgency to move away from Green House Gases in time to avoid Tipping Points, when changes to our planet become irreversible. An example would be melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica that cause such a rise in ocean levels that all coastal cities and towns around the world would be wiped out… This is not fantasy.
Urgent action is needed now, and at a cost that will also allow for restoration after the increasing extreme-weather events that are causing fire, flood, landslides, hurricanes, drought…
So where are those small nuclear reactors that Mr Carbonario suggests are going to be part of our salvation? How long will we have to wait? When will technology such as carbon capture and storage take place on the gigantic scale and with the immediacy needed? These are idle dreams… We need action now by everyone, by all energy users.
In 2022 in the USA more heat pumps were sold than oil or gas furnaces.
Europeans installed solar panels and heat pumps at a record pace. Their politicians moved to ban gas and diesel cars. Just this week, Germany moved to ban gas or oil heating in any renovations or new buildings.
Battery installations doubled in European homes. Several countries saw a doubling of heat (pump) installations, as well. There are now over 20 million of the magic boxes installed in Europe. Thomas Nowak, head of the European Heat Pump Association, says: “Now people are asking, ‘Am I the last person with a gas boiler?’”
Europe added 50 terawatt hours of wind and solar power since the invasion, avoiding nine billion cubic metres of fossil gas imports and saving itself 12 billion euros in fossil energy costs.
Despite the uptick in coal burning, the surge in renewables meant that by the end of last year, wind and solar now produce more power than coal or gas in Europe.
Source: Zero Carbon
Having rethought the above issues after digesting the different points of view, I find myself refocused on what I think Leslie was really trying to do and that is stop the govt subsidy of $1.9 million of taxpayer money for the Enbridge Hidden Valley Natural Gas Pipe Line. I agree with her on that. Having lived out in the bush for over 40 years, I get my back up when someone lectures me on how to go green. She also lost me with rhetoric on the need for wind and solar farms. As far as Air Source Heat Pumps, go it’s still a new product with worms being worked out and it’s a no go for us with a home without ductwork and quite simply, we don’t like living in a forced air environment. But, if what Joanne says is true about Hidden Valley residents only saving $331 per year on natural gas versus propane, the subsidy is not warranted. We’re not talking low income housing here. And as far as coming up with a plan to assist those residence in other ways with the $1.9 million, forget that. We all pay a bit of a premium for living out of town. Put the money towards health care or affordable housing.
Thanks Lesley for this informative letter about new cold climate heat pumps. Enbridge Hidden Valley Natural Gas Expansion current application for Leave to Construct gives a bit of information comparing annual costs of using oil, propane, and electricity to natural gas: heating oil $5108/2452L, propane $2478/3484L, natural gas $2174/2200m3, and electricity $2225/19642kWh-oil users save 57%, propane users save 12%, and electricity users save 2%. Because a large proportion of Hidden Valley residents surveyed use propane and electricity, the weighted average of savings per residence from the $3.5 million project is $331 annually. Enbridge says Ontario taxpayers have provided them $1,899,859 under the Ontario Natural Gas Expansion Program for this project. As Lesley Hastie states this money could better provide sustainable savings to Hidden Valley residents’ with these public funds for improved insulation,new doors and windows and if they choose cold climate heat pumps. You can read the Enbridge application on the Ontario Energy Board site under Applications, file EB2022-0249.
The misinformation and sheer ignorance that is often on display by members of the Climate Catastrophe Cult is truly astonishing. They’re either completely uninformed of the science or deliberately misleading.
Mike Schreiner and people like him are totally out to lunch because they’re blinded by their ideology.
What Ms. Hastie outlined above is nothing more than feel-good, pat yourself on the back, window dressing nothingness that does zero to resolve a serious issue.
Being anti-nuclear is being pro-coal. Full stop.
Germany has spent billions upon billions of dollars attempting to transition away from fossil fuels and yet their energy mix is dirtier and more expensive than ever before. Why? Because they closed their nuclear plants.
This is the first time in human history that we’re attempting to move away from denser forms of energy and towards forms of energy that are orders of magnitude less dense. It takes a huge amount of land to build wind and solar farms. A handful of enriched uranium can power a metropolis for days and do so from a small site.
Small modular reactors are the way of the future. Not wind turbines that annihilate bird populations (and potentially whales too). And certainly not solar farms.
Nuclear power is critical in providing, cheap, safe and 100% carbon free BASELOAD POWER (i.e. power that is always on and available).
Renewables are intermittent (i.e. they’re unreliable). You cant run an industrial, modern economy on unreliable power.
The climate catastrophists never ever talk about the unbelievable amount of mining that’s required to fulfill their electric fantasies. I recently spoke with a pro-wind individual who had no idea that coal is required to make steel. Yet, she wants more steel wind turbines to scar the landscape (you can only imagine the look on her face when she learned the difference between thermal and metallurgical coal).
An electric car requires 3-5X the amount of copper of an ICE-powered car. Not to mention the huge amounts of lithium, cobalt, manganese, graphite, zinc, nickle and rare earths. The Schreiner’s of the world pretend these metals grow on trees and don’t require an unbelievable amount of energy/emissions to mine and refine.
Global energy demands continues to rise significantly. Billions of people are moving out of poverty. These people cannot rely on intermittent sources of power, neither can we.
Solar is a good idea. I have a 10kw micro fit system. I doubt it provides enough juice to heat homes. A lot of folks don’t even bother to clear the snow off their panels because the gain is about one fifth in January compared to July. ( I clear mine ) Clearly, if we’re talking heat, alternatives are needed. For 40 years I’ve done that with a renewable resource. Firewood cut from dying trees. Some would find that unenvironmental.
In answer to the query about there being enough electricity to power Ontario’s future needs without fossil fuels, as Mike Schreiner said at the public meeting in Huntsville on February 7th, the answer is:
• Use energy more efficiently, firstly by avoiding wasting energy e.g. insulate better to save wasting heat and retrofit homes using the federal grants and thus create more jobs locally; and secondly consume electricity according to Time of Use to smooth out peak use,
• Add new electricity generation. The lowest cost is solar, then wind, and long-term, water.
• Nuclear and gas are highest cost. Use Darlington and Bruce to provide 50% of the electricity and then bring in the cleanest, least costly i.e. solar, wind, battery storage.
Instead of spending $3.5million to bring fossil gas to 110 homes let’s ask our Ontario Government to give subsidies to Ontario homeowners to produce their own solar energy, so users can produce power for their own electric heat and water pumps, induction stoves and electric ovens in spring, summer and fall.
We also had a Mitsubishi Zuba Central system installed, utilizing our existing duct work, in September 2022. This is a cold-climate system. It generally works well even in minus 20 degree weather. However in temps below that, it struggles somewhat to maintain comfortable temperatures, despite also running our efficient wood-burning fireplace insert continuously. We needed to replace our existing oil fired furnace, so looking only at the cost of “upgrading” to the heat pump, I estimate that we will have a payback period of approximately 5-6 years (cost of hydro vs previous cost of hydro + oil). So overall, we are pleased.
Larry Gayowsky’s comment about vacationing in winter, and turning the heat down enlightened me. We were turning the heat down while away in mid-late December’s cold spell, and also turning it down more at night in the hopes of conserving electricity. However the amount of ice build-up below the outdoor unit from condensate which subsequently froze, was extraordinary and a significant problem to address. My installer and even Mitsubishi were not helpful in helping me understand or deal with the problem, brushing it off as minor (which it was not). Since then, we’ve maintained a more constant temperature and the ice build-up below the unit has decreased. I suspect Larry’s comments about the compressor freezing, then requiring defrost (hence more condensate and ice build-up) may have been the culprit. Thank you for the explanation Larry.
I replaced my 25 year old forced-air electric furnace and A/C unit with a Cold Climate Air Source Heat Pump four years ago. It required a significant investment, even with the large government subsidy. We did not have access to gas or propane at the time, leaving electricity as our only source of energy. After four years of operation my experience is mixed.
The positives:
– During summer it is an incredible air conditioner. Very efficient and quiet. My summertime consumption has dropped
– During spring and fall it meets my heating needs efficiently without emergency heat.
– During winter, my house stays warm and electricity consumption has been reduced.
The surprises:
– While winter consumption is down, the decrease was not as large as stated in the marketing materials. Therefore, payback will be difficult to achieve.
– We discovered a use case where the heat pump actually increased consumption. If you vacation during winter and lower the temperature while you are away, using the heat pump increased our consumption. The manufacturer confirmed that lowering the ambient temperature causes the compressor to freeze regularly, requiring a defrost cycle before resuming heating. The constant cycle of freeze/defrost increased our electricity consumption. We were forced to turn off the heat pump and run entirely on emergency heat while in vacation mode
– Heat pumps are complex and require regular maintenance. We have already seen several units in our neighborhood fail prematurely, many requiring expensive repairs and/or replacements. While some parts have been covered under the warranty, other have not and the labour to perform the warranty service can be significant.
– The units are very large and cannot always be easily hidden.
My Verdict
If electricity is your only source of energy, then you should consider a cold climate heat pump assuming you can afford the additional acquisition costs and knowing the payback period will be much longer than advertised.
Maintenance is an issue and can quickly eat up any savings you may be enjoying through reduced electricity consumption.
Longevity will be key. The furnace I replaced lasted 25 years with no repair bills. It will be interesting to see how long this heat pump lasts and what my maintenance costs will be over time.
I would still attempt to secure gas as a secondary energy source rather than only having electricity. This would give me choice to use the more cost-effective method in the future, whichever that turns out to be.
We have had an air source heat pump (Mitsubishi Zuba Central) connected to our previous duct work for over 3 years. It has maintained the house at a constant, comfortable temperature even when it is -30C outdoors. The technology of Heat Pumps 20 years ago made them a three season system and should not be compared to the current technology of the systems available today. Cold climate air sourced heat pumps are not only a readily available way to personally contribute to reducing emissions from our homes and buildings but they also are far cheaper to operate saving thousands of dollars per household over the lifetime of their use. As Lesley Hastie points out, with the current Federal government grants and interest free loans, this a great time to switch. We have no regrets.
As Lesley Hastie’s well researched letter confirms, cold climate air-source heat pumps are designed to work to much lower outside air temperatures than earlier models. The new cold climate installations are tested technology. One unit of energy spent, three units into heat for your house. Much better energy economics. Far better for the planet.
A couple points
I have both a relatively new Air source heat pump with twin heads and also the original baseboard heaters.
In the 35 years of using baseboard heaters, not ONE has ever failed.
My first air source heat pump quit in December 2014 and the local company tried to fix it.
Most of the controls for current model heat pumps are outside and working on it in -15C weather was a non-starter – Can you wait until, spring. The answer was yes as I had backup baseboards which I had to use in paralell with the heat pump unit. They could NOT fix it in the spring in spite of replacing some expensive circuit boards and I had to pay to replace both the inside and outside units. If a heat pump is your only source and it breaks and they are a complicated piece of equipment, then you are really stuck.
Second, where do you think the electricity to run heat pumps will come from?
No more water power left to tap.
Nuclear now runs essentially flat out and no more Nuclear for at least 10 years.
Solar does not run at night when heat is most needed
Wind is not consistent and most people want consistent electricity.
Thus the back up for generating electricity is presently gas fired combustion turbines.
So, if I had my choice and I do, I would certainly heat my house with natural gas.
allan
While I agree on the benefits of Air Source Heat Pumps, if air conditioning is the prime benefit, there’s nothing greener than opening your windows at night and closing them in the morning.
For heat, there’s nothing greener than designing your house with maximum south facing windows, with roof eaves that block summer sun.
My home was built in 2002 with an Air Source Heat Pump as it’s primary heat source, and I can tell you from experience that the unit was virtually useless when the outside temperature dipped below -6 C. We have a back-up propane furnace that heated the home when the heat pump couldn’t deliver heat when it was really cold. It is true, it was a great air conditioner in the summer. Maybe the technology has improved since then, I don’t know, but we ended up switching it off in the fall when the temperature dropped and turning it back on in the spring when outside temperatures rose. I’m all for switching away from fossil fuel but unless these units can deliver when it gets really cold it wasn’t really a viable solution for us to heat our home in the winter months. I sincerely hope that newer units are up to the job!