Environment Committee: Home Heating and Cooling Survey

The West Vancouver Environment Committee wants your input on home heating and cooling

The District of West Vancouver’s Environment Committee invites you to participate in a survey to help us better understand how you heat and cool your home and the challenges and benefits of transitioning to more energy efficient heating and cooling systems such as a heat pump.

Your participation in this survey provides valuable information that will help us understand what residents need in order to reduce barriers that may prevent shifting to an electric heat pump system for your home.

This is in support of achieving the District’s goal to reach zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and assist the community in transitioning from gas to electric energy sources for their homes. The District and the Committee appreciate your valuable insights in helping to achieve this goal.

Thank you for taking the survey

The survey closed on Monday, June 10, 2024.

About heat pump systems

A heat pump is a heating and cooling system that helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions and makes your home more energy efficient. It uses electricity not to create heat, but to move it from one place to another.

In the winter, a heat pump captures heat from the outside air and transfers it indoors. Heat pumps can extract heat from air as low as -30°C. In the summer, it operates in reverse and transfers heat from inside your home to the outdoors to keep your living space cool.

Heat pump facts:

• highly efficient heating and cooling in one system
• reliable and efficient heating in West Vancouver climate
• generates significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions
• improves air quality in your home and community
• offers consistent cooling capacity in extreme heat
• Provincial rebates, municipal rebate top-ups, and Federal zero-interest financing can help offset the cost of installment
• North Shore Jump on a Heat Pump program offers free one-on-one support from an expert to navigate the heat pump installation process
  
• can be integrated into smart home thermostats
• can operate effectively for 15 – 20 years

For more information, visit the North Shore Jump on a New Heat Pump webpage.

Background

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) updated their emissions reduction targets in 2018 based on the understanding that climate change is happening more rapidly than previously calculated. The new targets include an emissions reduction of 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 and 100% reduction (or net zero) by 2050 to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 deg Celsius, a threshold considered critical to limit the effects of climate change.

Through the CleanBC Roadmap to 2030, the Province has also updated their strategy and action plan to move toward net zero emissions by 2050. The District of West Vancouver adopted the IPCC emission reduction targets as Council policy in 2018.

Since Council recognized that climate change constitutes an emergency for West Vancouver in 2019, the District has made steady progress to implement policies and regulations to reduce GHG emissions both corporately and in the community, including support to residents to move from gas to electric energy systems, a more efficient, healthy, and sustainable way to heat and cool their homes.

To achieve our community emission reductions goals, regular tracking and measuring is required. The District established a baseline emissions inventory in 2010 and completed a second inventory in 2021 to continue to track emissions over time. The information from this survey will help to monitor and track progress in reducing emissions specifically from buildings in West Vancouver, which contribute a significant portion of greenhouse gases in the community.