Want to Fight Climate Change? Fix Housing | The Walrus
Want to Fight Climate Change? Fix Housing | The Walrus
Treating the two calamities as separate issues misses a huge opportunity to address both
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I live in an apartment where the only natural gas items are my furnace and hot water heater. But even if I wanted to convert (which I can't since I rent), it wouldn't make one lick of difference because I live in Saskatchewan where our power grid is still 80% fossil fuel powered. So using electricity is no "greener" than using the natural gas myself. Plus using natural gas is far far cheaper than electricity (even with the price on carbon for doing so).
This issue is a lot more complex than just "more houses that are all electric with no natural gas" when you take into consideration the power grids they are attached to.
Your thinking on the dirty grid might be false. If you use a heat pump you typically get more heat energy than the energy you input. A heat pump can multiply the energy you put in by a factor of 2-5. Say you burn 1 unit of gas to heat your apartment. You could let your utility burn that liter and give you 50% of its energy in electricity (assuming half is lost). Then you power a hear pump which operates at COP of 2x. You get the same amount of heat as before. Now if the heat pump operates at a higher COP, you end up saving on burned gas. It's only worse if it operates at lower than COP or 2 under these conditions. Depending on the efficiency of the power generator and transmission, those numbers would balance differently. I don't think they'd be worse though. 50% is a really low number.
The reason this doesn't break the preservation of energy principle is that heat pumps move heat instead of converting electricity into heat energy. There's always heat in the air if the temperature is above absolute 0.
COP goes straight to shit at -15, which happens quite often on the prairies. Which might not be a problem on the annual expense, but if you can't keep your house from freezing up, it doesn't matter how much or little it costs. You'll spend way more $ and carbon fixing it afterwards.
Anyone installing a heat pump in cold climates will often have a backup heat source. If you don't have access to natural gas, heat pumps can save considerable amounts of energy compared to only resistive heat.
True, but fixing climate change is going to require everything to change and there's no way it's happening all at once. Some will change before others and there isn't necessarily anything wrong with that.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. But this article makes their idea sound like a magic bullet. But there is no magic bullet in this fight unfortunately.
You're right, using electric heat (yes, even with a heat pump) does emit more GHGs than heating with natural gas in SK. The balance point is when Saskpower can get around 3-400 tCO2e/GWh (with heat pump and backup resistive heat), which is their goal for 2030, and the trend is promising.
The issue is that fuel source is discussed much more than demand reduction. The first step of any design focusing on energy efficiency or GHG reduction is reducing the demand for heating (and cooling). Only after that does it make sense to improve heating efficiency. In other words, you can throw a heater in a bunnyhug and go out at -30, but it would make much more sense to just wear an appropriate jacket.
Another consideration is that you can actually make carbon neutral power. Natural gas can never be that way.
Of course, you don't have many options for improvement in your apartment, but at least we're seeing improvements to the building code so new buildings will be slightly less than garbage.
I think the fact that so many of us are renters is a bigger factor than everything else you said (which are also all good points but not the same nationwide). Regardless of whether a heat pump would make sense or not, I think most people would make some sort of changes or improvements to increase efficiency/lower costs if they had the ability to. Meanwhile landlords don't have any incentive, if not a disincentive to upgrade anything especially if the renters are paying utilities.
Another related issue are EVs. How many people would be happy to switch but are held back by a lack of a parking spot to charge? I don't know of many basement suites with off street parking (let alone a landlord willing to do electrical work) or apartments with more than 1 charger for dozens of units, if that.
Maybe not greener "for now", but these houses will still be functioning in the future when Sask is forced to move from fossil fuel power generation to some other renewable/low-carbon mix. SaskPower is already planning their net-zero migration, but it will be expensive.
The fewer new methane gas hookups, the easier it will be for us to wean off the gas down the road.