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Vancouver Rolls Back Bylaw Restricting Gas Heat in New Buildings

July 31, 2024
Reading time: 3 minutes

Iota 9/Wikimedia Commons

Iota 9/Wikimedia Commons

Vancouver City Council and Mayor Ken Sim are facing intense criticism after voting Tuesday to rescind restrictions on gas heating in new homes that have been in effect since 2020.

The 6-5 vote on the bylaw amendment “restores the option for new home construction to use natural gas for heating and hot water,” the Vancouver Sun reports, even after Sustainability Manager Brad Badelt warned the decision “will move us back” on climate targets the city was already on track to miss.

In a release Wednesday, Stand.earth said Sim “zoomed in to a council meeting Tuesday night from his vacation to cast a tie-breaking vote to reverse one of the city’s flagship climate policies.” On social media, Councillor Pete Fry “said that such a significant rollback of the city’s climate policies shouldn’t have been introduced on the fly,” the Sun writes, with the mayor joining the meeting remotely to break the tie.

Councillor Lisa Dominato, a member of Sim’s ABC Party who chairs the Metro Vancouver climate action committee, said she’d learned through her work at the regional level that new homes are the easiest sector to electrify. “It really is the low hanging fruit,” she said.

“Building all-electric is one of the easiest and most affordable actions that we can take to protect communities from increasing climate disasters,” agreed Stand.earth Senior Campaigns Director Liz McDowell. The “surprise amendment” is “akin to voluntarily returning to lead paint or materials containing asbestos because they’re cheaper to source, or declining to install fire escapes on buildings in order to save developers money,” she added.

Badelt said the rollback “would set us back… potentially tens of thousands of tonnes” of carbon dioxide emissions.

ABC Councillor Brian Montague, who proposed the motion, said Vancouver will need a more diverse mix of energy sources in the event of electricity outages. “Montague said hydro power is dependent on the snowpack and the recent drought has reduced the snowpack, causing BC Hydro to import electricity last year,” the Sun writes. “However, Montague failed to mention that B.C. also exports more energy to Alberta and California than it imports.”

In an emailed statement to the Sun, Sim cast the rollback as an affordability measure, asserting that “allowing natural gas as an energy source offers a cost-effective option for heating and hot water, helping lower utility bills and contributing to overall housing affordability in Vancouver.” Gas lobbyist Bill Tieleman, the former communications director to then-B.C. premier Glen Clark who now heads the B.C. Coalition for Affordable Energy, praised a “wise decision” that he said would offer consumers and builders more choice and provide “affordable and dependable energy choices.”

Fry responded that oil would be cheaper than natural gas, but neither would help reduce emissions to fight climate change.

“The irony is that this decision not only takes us backwards in terms of meeting international climate goals, it undermines industry work and capacity to meet 2030 Clean B.C. and energy step code regulations,” he said. “It’s regressive on all counts, and does nothing to ease affordability for residents.”

Stand.earth’s McDowell agreed that a return to gas heat won’t cut costs for homeowners or occupants.

“Heat pumps are far more efficient to operate than gas furnaces, and four years of data from Vancouver shows that building all-electric doesn’t impact the sale price of a home for consumers,” she said. “At a moment where local communities across the province are taking action to make buildings safer and affordable for residents by requiring electric heating and cooling, Vancouver is now moving completely out of step with the rest of the region.”



in Buildings & Infrastructure, Canada, Cities & Communities, Energy Efficiency, Energy Politics, Heat & Power, Legal & Regulatory, Oil & Gas

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Comments 4

  1. Michael Barkley says:
    8 months ago

    I hear a lot about energy security of gas. When the grid is down you can still heat your home. As far as I know most gas appliances require electricity to function at least heating does and most gas fireplaces. Why is this never mentioned as a rebuttal to the disinformation and greenwashing?

    Reply
    • Bobby says:
      8 months ago

      This is what I came to post.
      There is no gas without electricity for most appliances. You can use batteries to power the igniter in newer gas fireplaces but for the most important appliances: water heaters, furnaces, boilers and gas stoves if there is no electricity the appliance will not function.

      Reply
  2. Stan says:
    7 months ago

    Anyone who purchases a fossil fuel powered equipment now (gas boiler, gas powered vehicle, etc.) is going to be stuck burning fossil fuels for the next 25 years (the life of the equipment). As the demand for these fuels decreases over the next decades, these fossil fuels will become more expensive (the fuels themselves with lower demand and the increasing carbon taxes).

    Also, Vancouver’s current building-bylaw, VBBL 2022, doesn’t outright ban the use of gas space and water heating. There’s an option to use whatever space and water heating system as long as the GHG intensity of the home is below a certain level. However, it may not be possible to get the GHGI level low enough depending on the home being built.

    Lastly, all new homes will likely having air conditioning. I believe that this becomes mandatory in new buildings in Vancouver in 2025. So if the home has an air conditioner, then it has a heat pump to provide heating (getting an air conditioner to heat in the winter only requires a minor modification). So how is then installing a gas boiler saving money? Basically, the home will have two heating systems.

    Reply
  3. David Zakus says:
    6 months ago

    How disgusting this in Vancouver. And how terrible of their Mayor Sim to take the city back. What an embarrassment and black mark for Vancouver in front of the rest of Canada. TERRIBLE

    Reply

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