To the editor,
Re: City councillors recommend no natural gas in new homes, Aug. 9.
I was very pleased to see that six Nanaimo city councillors voted unanimously to recommend limiting natural gas as an energy source for new homes. The climate crisis is showing us its awful reality this summer, with record heat waves and forest fires all across the planet, and fossil fuels are its primary cause. Heat pumps are a great alternative, and they also provide cooling during a heat wave.
Fortis B.C., which supplies natural gas, opposes the move. When the City of Richmond looked into Fortis B.C.’s arguments, however, it found that in a report commissioned by Fortis B.C. and the B.C. government into the future of home heating, some findings had been removed. These included that electric heat pumps are six to eight times more efficient than heating with gas, that they achieve GHG reductions more effectively than renewable and low-carbon gases, and that the City of Vancouver’s plan to phase out natural gas should be extended across the province. These passages were supposedly “out of scope.” In other words, they didn’t want people to read them.
Fortis B.C. wants to slow the phase-out of natural gas so much that they are willing to doctor a government-financed report, so as to persuade councillors not to implement the zero carbon step code. I do hope that Nanaimo’s city councillors will stand by their decision to adopt the code when it comes back to council for the final vote.
Guy Dauncey, Ladysmith
READ ALSO: City of Nanaimo curious about its authority to limit new natural gas hookups
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