Heat pumps can and should be the new AC

Written By Peter Allan

Heat pump installation done by Phyxter Home Services. Image by Phyxter.ai / Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

By Natasha Bulowski

Canada is known for its cold winters, but thanks to climate change, extreme heat is increasingly becoming a matter of life and death.

To cope, many Canadians turn to central air conditioners to cool their homes. A new report by multiple climate policy research groups says this is a missed opportunity to switch to heat pumps, which are more energy-efficient and can both heat and cool our homes.

Every week, 7,000 households install a central air conditioner when they could have put in a heat pump, according to a new report from the Canadian Climate Institute, Building Decarbonization Alliance, Efficiency Canada and the Greenhouse Institute.

“We could be saving money, people could have more comfortable homes and we could be cutting (greenhouse gas) emissions all at the same time if we were installing heat pumps instead of central air conditioners in Canada,” Alexander Gard-Murray, the report’s lead author, told Canada’s National Observer in a phone interview.

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Peter Allan
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