Two years after Winnipeg began implementing its net-zero focused Community Energy Investment Roadmap, a citizen-led committee is pushing the city to study exactly how to implement one of the Roadmap’s core pillars: phasing out natural gas use in all buildings, existing and new.
A motion to request that City of Winnipeg staff report back in six months on “tools and mechanisms available to phase out the use of natural gas in existing buildings and buildings planned for greenfield and infill development,” is due to be ruled on by the city’s Waste, Water, and Environment Committee on Nov. 22.
Adopted by the city’s Climate Action and Resilience Committee, a citizens’ advisory body, on Oct. 28, the motion provides chronology and context for Winnipeg’s developing interest in a gas phaseout:
• In March 2022, council asked staff to report back on policies in Vancouver and New York banning new buildings from using natural gas after 2030.
• In July 2022, it directed staff to implement the Community Energy Investment Roadmap for reducing energy consumption, improving efficiency, and switching to low-carbon energy sources.
• This September, the Manitoba government released its Manitoba Affordable Energy Plan, which pledges to “move away from non-renewable heating sources such as natural gas.”
The document now before the Waste, Water and Environment Committee also cites efforts by other Canadian municipalities to reduce fossil-fuel heating in buildings through bylaw development, emissions standards, and equipment incentives.
The committee also affirmed the climate imperative of phasing out natural gas use in Winnipeg.
“Greenhouse gas emissions from buildings—including homes, businesses, institutions, and industrial buildings—make up 44% of the total emissions from Winnipeg in 2020; the majority (93%) of which result from the use of natural gas for space heating and other industrial purposes,” writes the Climate Action and Resilience Committee, citing the Roadmap.
The committee does not mention the considerably lower energy bill that would attend switching out fossil fuels for clean electricity. Under its net-zero scenario, annual household energy costs for Winnipeggers “fall by 45% to $3,600 by 2050,” compared to $6,000 under a business-as-usual scenario, the Roadmap says.
Achieving those cost savings, while cutting emissions rapidly enough to achieve Winnipeg’s climate goals, will require that all buildings in the city—new and existing, residential, commercial, industrial, and institutional—are using electric heat pumps for space heating and cooling by 2050, the document adds.
Time to Walk the Talk
“We have ambitious targets about cutting down our building-heating use of natural gas, but we don’t seem to be doing anything yet,” Councillor Brian Mayes told the Winnipeg Free Press.
“This (motion) is a good way of forcing a debate about what it is we actually want to do and can do in this term of council,” said Mayes, who chairs the Climate Action and Resilience Committee.
Winnipegger Kaitlyn Duthie, who this summer purchased her first home, built in the early 20th century, is a strong supporter of the motion.
“We just got our first gas bill and I was surprised at how expensive it was, even with a newer energy-efficient furnace!” Duthie told The Energy Mix.
“As an environmentally conscious person who is also trying to save money where I can, I really want to see more supports for homeowners like ourselves—and anyone building new homes—to transition away from heat sources that are both expensive and bad for the planet,” she added.
“As we think about having children in the near future, it is so important to me that we do everything in our power to avoid the worst-case scenario in terms of climate change and protect the next generations.”
Getting from Here to There
The Roadmap’s directive to “reduce, improve, and switch” is deliberate in its order, with top priority on reducing energy consumption and maximizing building energy efficiency.
Switching to low-carbon electricity sources without tackling demand would require “substantial transformation of the electricity grid and distribution network,” the Roadmap states.
By contrast, following the “reduce-improve-switch paradigm” would mean that “the total consumption of grid electricity remains unchanged between now and 2050.”
The path to reducing consumption and maximizing efficiency is hardly hurdle-free, however. One significant stumbling block is that provincial laws currently forbid Winnipeg from enforcing its 2020 Building Code above the lowest tier adopted by the province.
“There is much discussion currently with the new provincial government to accelerate the adoption of higher tiers,” Curt Hull, project director for Climate Change Connection, told The Mix. “I have not heard of any efforts to allow municipalities to enforce higher tiers.
“Of course, they can enforce higher tiers for buildings they own or finance, but have no jurisdiction over other construction,” Hull added.
The high upfront costs of deep retrofits are another hurdle. The motion asks city staff to study possible grant programs.
Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) programs, which supply low-interest loans to cover the upfront costs of energy efficiency upgrades like heat pumps, solar panels, and insulation—with repayment installments showing up as small surcharges on property tax bills to allow longer paybacks—might be one option to pursue, Hull said. While the approach is well known elsewhere, getting PACE to work in Winnipeg would “also require provincial enabling legislation,” he added.
Combining Heat Pumps with District Heating
While the Climate Action and Resilience Committee does not ask city staff to explore replacements for natural gas, the Roadmap points in that direction, citing the efficiency advantages of ground-source heat pumps over gas furnaces. Where a “high efficiency natural gas furnace generates 0.97 units of heat for every unit of natural gas consumed,” a cold-weather heat pump “generates two to four units of heat for each unit of electricity consumed,” says the Roadmap.
Maintaining the necessary “thermal balance over time” will require connecting buildings together in district systems, Hull said, adding that “each building in the system should have achieved at least a minimum energy efficiency standard before being modelled into the system.”
Hull is co-author of an ongoing series of reports called Manitoba’s Road to Resilience. The third in the series, published last year, recommends the province establish a geothermal public utility that would map, plan, model, finance, own, and manage such systems, just as Manitoba Hydro now oversees the province’s hydro resources.
So far, the City of Markham is the only jurisdiction in Canada with a similar district energy utility in place.
Sewer Upgrades First?
Councillor Evan Duncan, chair of the Waste, Water, and Environment Committee which will be ruling on the natural gas phaseout motion, has reservations about pursuing the plan at this time, citing Winnipeg’s continuing effort to complete a multi-billion-dollar sewage treatment plant upgrade.
“The (sewage treatment) project was already the most expensive infrastructure project in Winnipeg’s history,” CBC News wrote in a June update. The city’s latest accounting raised the total cost estimate for the upgrade to $3 billion—more than $600 million higher than the previous total of $2.38 billion.
“I want water, waste, and the environment to be laser-focused (on the sewage upgrades) and not be pulled in every direction,” Duncan told the Winnipeg Free Press. He said he sees phasing out natural gas as a good idea, but noted that Winnipeg has limited funds available.
The Roadmap says full implementation of its decarbonization plan—at a total cost of $23 billion between 2022 and 2050—would accrue “savings of $53.7 billion from avoided carbon costs, energy expense savings, and avoided maintenance costs between 2028 and 2050.”
Factoring in an anticipated $4.9 billion in revenue “results in a $35.6 billion benefit to the community, a climate dividend that averages $1.2 billion per year,” it states.
The Climate Action and Resilience Committee adds that, as of 2021, Winnipeg had nine years of natural gas usage left at then-current rates to stay within a 1.5℃-compliant carbon budget.
“Do we really mean it [the Roadmap] or not?” Mayes asked. “Or was it all just a plan that we’re not going to do anything about? I think that’s the question we have to answer.”
