Tim Managh, director of the Sea to Sky Corridor's Align Climate Solutions, says that his company — which has a team of six — has been "inundated" with homeowner requests for quotes for heat pumps.
“You have got all these advertisements occurring from BC Hydro and the province … I think a lot of people are generally just kind of interested as to what the heat pump is and how it can benefit them,” he said, adding that people call asking about how heat pumps could reduce their heating bills, about the federal and provincial rebates available and about how heat pumps work.
“‘How do I go from having a furnace to having a heating system that's really good for the environment? Plus, you're telling me it gives me cooling as our summers are getting hotter and hotter?’,” Managh said, summarizing the questions his company fields.
BC Hydro says it has had 79 heat pump rebate applications from Squamish residents this year.
Provincially, there are approximately 200,000 heat pumps installed in BC Hydro residential customer homes, according to the Crown corp. This is equivalent to about 10% of homes.
What the heck does a heat pump do?
Managh explained that heat pumps transfer heat from one place to the other.
"It acts just like your refrigerator. But the beauty of heat pumps is that they can operate in reverse. So in cooling, just like a refrigerator, [it can] absorb heat from inside the home and transport that heat via small diameter refrigerant lines to a heat exchanger outside—which is essentially your outdoor unit—and reject that heat outside," he said. "In heating, [it] absorbs heat from outdoor air … it's absorbed into the refrigerant and moved inside, and heat is rejected inside via a number of different mediums."
(See the video at the bottom of this story for more on how they work.)
He added that there are many different forms of indoor heat pump units.
"So, you can have an air source heat pump, operating outside, and that can serve ductless indoor units, or if you have existing ductwork, it can serve ducted systems," he added. The government rebate programs incentivize folks to get off of combustion-source fuels, so off of natural gas, oil, or propane, he noted.
According to BC Hydro, the rebates for homes currently heated by electricity are up to $7,000, while the rebates for homes currently heated by natural gas, oil or propane are up to $11,000.
Heat pumps more efficient
Even in the coldest environment, heat pumps are more efficient than gas heating or electric baseboards, a new study has found.
The study, published earlier this month in the journal Joule, examined the efficiency of air-source heat pumps in sub-zero scenarios down to minus 10 degrees Celsius or “mild cold climates” similar to the populated coastal regions of British Columbia.
The research was led by Canadian Duncan Gibb, a senior advisor at the Brussels-based Regulatory Assistance Project, and carried out with researchers from Oxford University, the University of Exeter, and Ulster University. Together, they pulled 2,760 measurements showing heat pump performance data in Switzerland, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, China and Canada.
“Heat pumps are key to decarbonizing Canadian buildings,” said Gibb in a statement.
“This research features data from Canada and shows that heat pumps can perform more than twice as efficiently as an electric heater or gas furnace—even on the coldest day of the year.”
Measuring heat pump efficiency
For common household applications, heat pumps in above-zero climates usually have a year-round coefficient of performance (COP) rating of three to four, meaning three to four times as many heat units are created for every energy unit used. By comparison, gas and oil furnaces usually have a COP of less than one.
That gap—and the potential to reduce carbon emissions—has led some to call for a rapid electrification of thousands of gas-heated B.C. homes, two-thirds of which will need their gas-heating equipment replaced by 2030.
But many have raised questions over how heat pumps might handle B.C.'s and Canada's colder climates. B.C.'s biggest gas utility, FortisBC, has called for the inclusion of gas heating into the province's long-term energy mix.
Others have levelled claims of misinformation after a Glacier Media investigation showed a government-industry report gauging the potential future role for renewable gas in B.C. was edited to remove sections stating electric heat pumps have an advantage over burning gas.
What is clear: the overall performance of an air-source heat pump depends on the temperature difference inside and outside a house. The colder it gets outside, the more that efficiency will go down.
Does that mean that fossil fuel combustion is the more efficient choice to heat most B.C. homes?
According to Gibbs and his team, the answer is no. They found that when outside temperatures were between five and minus 10 degrees Celsius, COP for all systems sat at a mean of 2.74. That means that during the coldest stretches of winter in Metro Vancouver, heat pumps were up to nearly four times more efficient than heating with gas.
In Squamish, the coolest month is January, with an average daily high temperature of 4.4 C and an average low of - 0.9 C, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data,
The research team found heat pumps were “sufficient to meet heating loads at much higher efficiency than fossil heating and electric resistance heat alternatives.”
Heat pumps in extreme cold climates
In colder climates—those where winter temperatures regularly drop below minus 10 C and approach minus 30 C—heat pump efficiency fell but still held advantages over other forms of heating, found the researchers.
The study examined the results from specially engineered cold-climate heat pumps. In Finland, cold-climate air-source heat pumps from Mitsubishi and Toshiba were found to have COPs above 2 even at minus 20 C.
At minus 30 C, the Mitsubishi model maintained COPs between 1.5 and 2 and the Toshiba performed slightly lower. Similar results were found in Minnesota in heat pump-only tests below minus 12 C.
The researchers noted heat pump penetration in cold-climate countries like Norway had already reached 60 per 100 households. Along with Sweden, Finland and Estonia, the country saw record per capita sales in Europe in 2022.
At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Alaska, a cold-climate air-source heat pump found that at minus 25 C, the COP sat at 2.0—more than double the efficiency of heating with gas. When temperatures dropped to minus 35 C, COP fell to 1.8, still “relatively high,” noted the authors.
In some tests, back-up heating, through traditional electric resistance or combustion, was only deployed when outside temperatures dropped below minus 10 degrees Celsius.
“From a heat provision standpoint, this suggests that concerns over the need for backup heating during mild cold-climate conditions may be unfounded and the role for hybrid systems may be limited,” said the authors.
They suggested more research be carried out to understand how hybrid systems could be deployed to get the most value out of them in the coldest climates.
Canadians want more energy efficient homes
The look into heat pump efficiency comes amid the release of two polls showing a majority of Canadians want more energy-efficient living but remain unsure about what the technology can do and how much it will cost.
One Abacus Data poll, released Aug. 23 on commission from Stand.earth, found only 44% of Canadians know what heat pumps are and what they do. Of the 2,000 Canadians surveyed, 56% remained interested in or already owned a heat pump.
Two weeks later, Abacus released another poll, showing broad interest in living in an energy-efficient home. The survey found only 7% of Canadians looking to buy a home in the coming years said energy efficiency was not a priority.
In British Columbia, 61% of respondents emphasized the significance of acquiring an energy-efficient home—behind Atlantic Canada (77%) and Saskatchewan/Manitoba (72%).
Two-thirds of those who said they wanted to buy an energy-efficient home said saving money was their driving factor. Another 38% said they were looking to minimize their environmental impact.
When considering a future home, 57% chose an energy-efficient heat pump as an upgrade, though more than half said they were worried about higher upfront costs of energy-efficient technologies.
“The findings indicate that while potential homebuyers express high interest in products like high-efficiency HVAC systems, high levels of insulation, or energy-efficient heat pumps, they lean more towards considering readily-available, lower-cost items like LED lighting and smart thermostats when it comes to making actual purchases,” concluded the pollsters.
Moreover, heat pumps could save Canadians billions of dollars a year in monthly electricity bills, according to an August report from the Building Decarbonization Alliance.
The group found Canadians could save $10.4 billion in energy bills—roughly $349 per affected household by 2030—if they installed heat pumps instead of air conditioners.
The report found such a move would produce $12.6 billion in net benefits and cut the amount of carbon emissions produced by buildings in Canada by more than 22%.
Rebates
Managh, of Align Climate Solutions, said that homeowners need to be aware of how the provincial and federal rebates work and what is eligible, so as not to be disappointed.
"If you're switching over to heat pumps, and you have electric baseboards currently, you're not going to get as high of a rebate," he said, as an example.
He also noted that homeowners shouldn't expect heat pumps to be a "silver bullet" that will save them a huge ton of money.
"[With] current technology, we're able to reduce folks' [bills] over wintertime when compared to propane, or oil. And certainly, if you've got a big electric furnace as well, we can cut down your operating costs," he said. "But natural gas furnaces still, I would say, are kind of on par. … And in Whistler, with the current hydro costs in this region, you're not really saving all of that much money, switching to heat pumps [in that case].”
He even said in the coldest weeks in winter in Whislter, the hydro bill may actually be higher compared to a natural gas bill.
(In In Whistler, the coolest month is January, with an average daily high temperature of 0.2 C and an average low of -4.9 C, according to NOAA.)
“So people have to be very, very, very mindful of that. It's not a silver bullet, but it's a step in the right direction."
He said he thinks the next "big explosion" of popularity for heat pumps in the next 10 years will be air-to-water heat pumps.
"A lot of people have in-floor heating in their homes, especially in the luxurious or high-end home, you have in-floor heat that's supplied by boilers," he said. "So as people become more aware of heat pumps and air-to-water heat pump technology gets better, there's going to be a huge shift to air-[to water] heat pumps, especially if the rebates continue because folks are going to be able to offset the cost of air-water heat pump and really get themselves off of fossil fuels altogether."
Please note that this story was modified after it was first published in order to include information from BC Hydro.
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