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Even greater comfort plus amazing energy and greenhouse gas emissions savings with a cold climate heat pump
Our household is on a mission to cut our home’s carbon footprint to as low as possible.
The goal is a net zero energy home: a home in which annual renewable energy from rooftop solar panels can offset our total annual energy use for all operations in the home. And since solar energy is emissions-free, this will also decimate our home’s carbon footprint.
In Part 1, I outlined the home energy efficiency upgrades that we undertook to reduce our annual total energy demand.
In this post, I will describe how the simple act of replacing our furnace with a heat pump cut both our annual energy demand and our carbon footprint while also making our home more comfortable.
Heat pumps are truly fantastic. Just as its name suggests, a heat pump moves heat: into a home in winter and out in summer. Refrigerators and air conditioners are one-way heat pumps, so the technology is well established.
Modern cold climate heat pumps can reliably provide all of a Southern Ontario home’s heating and cooling needs. They are efficient too. A cold climate heat pump can use two to three times less energy over the heating season than a high efficiency furnace in our climate.
There were a few challenges to installing our heat pump. Because the industry is accustomed to replacing like with like and seems reluctant to deviate from this practice, finding a suitable installer took some extra work.
Cold climate heat pumps are still more expensive than conventional alternatives so without subsidies and until prices come down from economies of scale, they are likely to only be accessible to climate conscious households with a bit of extra disposable income.
The system we chose was $14,000 installed, but since we were effectively adding air conditioning to the home at the same time, it was equivalent to replacing both a furnace (about $5,000) and installing an air conditioner (about $5,000).
In addition, we upgraded our electrical panel from 100 to 200 amp service to support our chosen electric heat pump. Since the upgrade allowed us to also install a more powerful charger for our electric vehicle, it was money well spent.
Having improved the energy efficiency of our home first, our heating costs were pretty low to start with but between the significantly increased efficiency of our heat pump relative to a furnace (about 250% vs 92%) and the $266 annual gas connection fee that we no longer have to pay, we figure that we are slightly ahead for operational heating costs.
We did this work before the federal government implemented its Greener Homes Grant program. Up to $5,000 is now available to homeowners who replace their existing fossil fuel-based system with a cold climate heat pump. That is a great deal!
For me, the extra upfront expense was worth it. Not only is my home’s carbon footprint much, much lower, but I am also more comfortable in winter. Heat pumps are most efficient when temperatures are kept constant, which means that surfaces do not cool down during the night-time setbacks that are recommended for furnaces. Those warmer surfaces mean that less heat radiates from our warmer bodies to nearby surfaces because those surfaces are already warmer — the difference is noticeable and appreciated.
Of course now that we have air conditioning, our home is more comfortable in the summer months too. As summers get hotter due to climate change, air conditioning is increasingly becoming necessary even in our climate.
As a bonus, carbon monoxide is no longer a concern because we do not burn fossil fuels in our home for any purpose.
At this stage of our mission, our home is far more energy efficient and does not rely directly on fossil fuels. Yet our electricity supply is set to use more natural gas as Ontario’s nuclear power plants are recommissioned and decommissioned. Going net zero energy and low carbon will require one more step.
Part 3 will describe the process of adding solar panels and early data on how well its energy output matches our energy use. Stay tuned!
Heather McDiarmid is the founder of McDiarmid Climate Consulting, which offers research and analysis to help communities, organizations and everyday people chart a course toward a healthier, more equitable and low-carbon future.
