Councillors in Canada’s coldest city are split on whether to phase out fossil fuels to heat buildings

[sunshine@lemmy.ca]

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[finderscult@lemmy.ml]

Well the good news is that if they wait long enough they won’t need to phase it out, they simply won’t have a need for it.

[incandemon@lemmy.ca]

So, this is something of a tough one for more than a few reasons. First is that gas heating can actually be more efficient than resistive electric heating depending on the power source. Generating electricity is between 30 and 60% efficient if we’re being generous. Modern gas furnaces can be upt to 99% efficient at extracting heat energy. So of your using gas to generate electricity to heat homes your actually better off just burning the gas for heat. Heat pumps can adjust this equation during moderate temps, being more than 100% efficient at moving heat, but during cold snaps we will still ned auxiliary heat.

Second is that the electric grid currently isn’t anywhere near capable of moving enough energy to take over for gas heating. We would need to roughly triple the electric grid capacity to be able to take up the current winter heating demand.

Personally I think district heating (and cooling) is the best way forward.