Vancouver Rolls Back Bylaw Restricting Gas Heat in New Buildings

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.”