Council urged to accelerate adoption of heat pumps
A city committee is urging council to partner with EPCOR to accelerate the adoption of ground-source heat pumps.
The Energy Transition Climate Resilience Committee, the board that advises Edmonton city council on transitioning toward renewable energy, recently wrote an open letter proposing that the city partner with EPCOR to fund and deploy heat pumps in new residential construction and retrofits of existing homes.
"This is the single most important upgrade we can make available for new homes and retrofits to reduce emissions from Edmonton's buildings," the letter said.
While a natural gas furnace burns gas to heat air and then forces that heated air through vents, a ground-source heat pump uses the earth as a source of thermal energy to heat a home, Dave Turnbull, president of Enerspec Energy Consulting, told Taproot.
"It's an air conditioner that goes forwards and backwards," Turnbull said. "There's always heat (in the ground and air), and what (a heat pump) does is it just transports heat from one place to another through a medium, which is the refrigerant that's in the units."
Financing programs like the committee has proposed exist in British Columbia with BC Hydro and Ontario with Hydro One. The committee has proposed that EPCOR would pay the upfront cost of installing a heat pump and the homeowner would repay that over a term of about 25 years through a monthly utility fee that is less than the typical cost of heating a home with natural gas.
Mattamy Homes, an Ontario-based homebuilder that has several developments in the Edmonton region, has used the Ontario program to achieve an 80% reduction in emissions and about 65% reduction in energy use across multiple developments in that province, the committee's letter said. Mattamy has achieved net-zero design on entire developments with a cost premium of less than $20,000, and the premium is paid by the utility, keeping the upgrade out of the price of the house, the letter said.
Buildings are responsible for more than one-third of greenhouse gas emissions in Edmonton. For the city to reach its emissions reduction goals, all new buildings will have to be net-zero by 2030 and all existing buildings will have to be retrofitted by 2050, the committee's letter said. "Our current progress shows we are not moving fast enough, especially considering that every new home that isn't built to be net-zero is adding to the long list of homes Edmontonians will need to retrofit and renovate," the letter said.
Coun. Michael Janz told Taproot he plans to introduce a motion at a future council meeting to direct administration to work with EPCOR to develop the program.
Some doubt the efficacy of ground-source heat pumps in cold climates like Edmonton. The first three weeks of February were colder than average. How did heat pumps fare? Taproot caught up with a homeowner who has used a heat pump for a few winters to find out.
