How hybrid heating could ease the growing pains of a low-carbon grid

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This week:

• How hybrid heating could ease the growing pains of a low-carbon grid
• The shift from climate denial to solutions denial
• Extreme weather squeezes electricity systems. These 5 strategies can help keep the power on

How hybrid heating could ease the growing pains of a low-carbon grid

We've previously written about how adding a heat pump to your gas furnace is one way to cut emissions while taking advantage of a heat pump's air conditioning abilities. (It also has the potential to save you money.)

But such hybrid heating systems — which use electricity when the heat pump is running and gas when the furnace is running — also have the potential to ease the transition that utilities face as countries decarbonize and electrify things like heating and cars that used to run on fossil fuels.

It's something provincial utility Hydro-Québec is counting on.

Most Quebecers already heat their homes electrically. As of 2021, 76 per cent of Quebec households used baseboard heaters, heat pumps or electric radiant heating, Statistics Canada reports. Because of that, electricity use peaks in Quebec on the coldest days of winter.

But 11 per cent of Quebec households used a forced air furnace, often gas.

To meet climate change commitments, the province is looking to decarbonize everything, from cars to industrial processes. But when it comes to home heating, it doesn't want gas furnace owners to go all-electric in order to avoid "putting a bigger pressure on the electric grid that is already very stressed," said Maxence Huard-Lefebvre, a spokesperson for Hydro-Québec.

Instead, the utility encourages gas furnace owners to sign onto a new Dual Energy program it's offering with gas utility Energir, which is administering the program for its gas customers. 

Under this program, owners of single-family homes and buildings with up to 19 units would get financial help covering up to 80 per cent of equipment and installation costs, along with some technical support (such as contractor recommendations) to buy a new heat pump system. They can then run the unit at a specially discounted electricity rate for most of the year — i.e. when the temperature is above -12 C or -15 C, depending on the region.

But these customers would keep a gas furnace and stay connected to gas. In most cases, the system would be designed to automatically switch to the furnace during cold snaps — a period of time that would also feature an electricity price nearly six times higher than usual. 

Hydro-Québec estimates the furnace would only run an average of 500 hours per year, resulting in a 70 per cent drop in emissions from households with gas furnaces, and it's hoping nearly all of them join the program.

Energir estimates the program would also save $683 annually on energy bills for an average two-storey single-family home.

Ontario and B.C. also offer incentives for hybrid heating, and Ontario specifically bills its Clean Home Heating Initiative as one designed to help homeowners save on their utility bills. 

Meanwhile, Hydro-Québec says the Dual Energy program could save the electricity system $1.5 billion by 2030 compared to completely electrifying buildings currently heated with gas. It says it would accomplish this by avoiding the construction of new power plants, bigger transmission lines and new distribution lines.

But Audrey Schulman, co-executive director of HEET, a U.S.-based non-profit group that helps gas companies transition to operating networked geothermal systems, thinks hybrid heating doesn't make economic sense in the long term, as gas networks require a lot of infrastructure. 

"Why would we maintain and operate that system to use it only for 10 days out of the year? In Quebec, it might be 20 days. Still a bad idea."

And in the long term, won't buildings have to get off gas altogether?

Huard-Lefebvre said in the future there may be more options, like renewable natural gas and clean electricity imports via links to the U.S. that are being proposed.

In the meantime, Huard-Lefebvre said Hydro-Québec is trying many different solutions to adapt to the energy transition, from hybrid heating to different kinds of pricing to manage electricity demand. 

"We think we will need an entire toolbox to be successful in this transition."

— Emily Chung

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The Big Picture: From climate change denial to solutions denial

Any environmentalist will tell you that climate change denial — among politicians, business leaders and ordinary folk — has been a formidable obstacle to timely and meaningful action on reducing emissions. But those who monitor the discourse have noticed a bit of a shift recently.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) used artificial intelligence to review transcripts of more than 12,000 videos on 96 YouTube channels over the past six years. The non-profit found that while old-fashioned climate denial still exists on the platform — such as videos by U.S. libertarian pundit John Stossel that question the very science of global warming — there's a new form of denial, which involves deriding the climate movement as "unreliable" and proposed solutions as problematic.

One of the main purveyors of this latter form of denial is Jordan Peterson, the controversial psychologist and author whose YouTube channel has more than 7.5 million followers. Peterson's channel mainly features him interviewing guests, but it is quite clear he thinks environmentalists are working against humanity. As the CCDH study points out, Peterson views climate action with disdain and is given to inflammatory claims like that decarbonizing transportation, industry and the electric grid will impoverish people and is thus "tantamount to genocide."

YouTube did not address the specific findings of the CCDH report, but told Reuters "debate or discussions of climate change topics, including around public policy or research, is allowed…. However, when content crosses the line to climate change denial, we stop showing ads on those videos."

Hot and bothered: Provocative ideas from around the web

• Earlier in the newsletter, we mentioned gas companies that are building geothermal networks. New York state now has plans for 13 such pilot projects, thanks to some new legislation. 

• Canada reports that its forestry industry absorbs more carbon than it releases. But a new study calculates just the opposite — that forestry is as big a net emitter as agriculture.

• Erecting new buildings and tearing down old ones consumes one-third of the world's resources and produces nearly one-third of all its waste, reports Grist. That's why many cities are now embracing "deconstruction," reuse and recycling of building materials.

• The U.S. is offering far more generous EV tax credits for pickup trucks and SUVs than regular cars. Here's why CleanTechnica's chief editor thinks that's a waste.

Extreme weather squeezes electricity systems. These 5 strategies can help keep the power on

Amid temperatures near –40 C in most of Alberta last weekend, residents received an emergency alert asking them to reduce power use or risk rolling blackouts. 

Climate change is making extreme weather events more frequent around the world. Extreme cold or heat drives up demand for power for heating and cooling, which can cause power shortages and increase the risk of emergency measures like rotating blackouts or unplanned outages.

Here are five strategies that could reduce the risk of shortages during extreme weather events — many of which Alberta successfully deployed.

1. Diversify power generation and system components.

According to the Alberta Electric System Operator, one of Alberta's natural gas generators was down for maintenance, in addition to some unplanned outages due to weather. Meanwhile, there was next to no wind blowing, so wind farms weren't generating power, and solar plants weren't operating after dark.

Jason Wang, a senior analyst for the electricity program at the Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based clean energy think-tank, said there's a lesson here — and it's not about the reliability of power produced by gas versus from renewable sources.

"What it points out is a diversity of assets is important to the grid," said Wang. 

This diversity of assets includes more than just generation, he said, but things like storage and interconnections that allow power to be transferred into Alberta from other provinces or the U.S. 

More diverse power generation helped with Alberta's recovery. A grid alert on Monday — the fourth in four days — ended after more wind and solar power helped ease the strain on the system. 

2. Add storage.

Alberta doesn't have much energy storage, and most came online only recently, but Wang noted that it made a difference over the weekend. "It basically bought us a couple of hours of time." 

As of November 2023, Alberta had 210 megawatts (MW) of storage, putting it a little bit behind Ontario, which has 228 megawatts, but ahead of most other provinces.

Wang said there are many ways to store power, from batteries to pumped hydro in some parts of the country.

Wang added that the AESO and the provincial government have recognized the importance of storage, and a government bill to enable more energy storage was passed in May 2022, but hasn't yet been proclaimed or implemented.

"What's really important going forward is for every jurisdiction to incorporate storage," he said.

3. Make power imports easier.

While most provinces can easily import power in emergency situations, Alberta's grid is "uniquely islanded," Wang said, with only three connections to B.C., one to Saskatchewan and one to Montana, all of them with relatively low capacities.

When Alberta's alert was issued, B.C. was unable to provide power, as it had its own extreme cold snap, according to Marie-France Samaroden, vice-president of grid reliability operations with AESO.

Alberta did receive 150 megawatts of power from Saskatchewan, an unusually large amount from that province, AESO said.

Xiaodong Liang, the Canada Research Chair in Technology Solutions for Energy Security in Remote, Northern and Indigenous Communities at the University of Saskatchewan, said this sort of interconnection "significantly improves resiliency."

Wang thinks Alberta should work with its neighbours to expand its grid connections or interties. However, he said there hasn't been any public initiative to start the process. 

4. Make the grid smarter.

Alberta's emergency alert asking people to conserve power worked, said Leif Sollid, communications manager for AESO. 

"The response was phenomenal," he told CBC News on Sunday. "Within seconds, we saw power demand on the system drop by 100 MW." That was followed by a second 100 MW drop. "And that got us through what we call the hump."

Asking electricity users to cut usage — or even feed extra power into the grid — is called demand response.

That's something that some provinces, such as Ontario, already have through time-of-use pricing — charging higher rates in the early evening, when everyone is cooking and running their dishwasher, than at night, when everyone is asleep. 

While the Alberta case involved people manually switching off appliances and other uses of electricity, it illustrates the potential for smart systems that automatically send a signal to things like EV chargers, thermostats and washing machines to let them know when the power supply is high or low.

Wang said implementing demand response in Alberta would require co-ordination between groups like government agencies and consumer organizations, but could save money for everyone.

5. Plan for the energy transition.

Wang and Liang said better long-term planning could have helped avoid the situation over the weekend.

Wang noted the addition of both regular and backup generation has been "basically stalled" in the last couple of years in Alberta, although the province's gas capacity is projected to grow significantly over the next two years.

According to Electricity Canada, the industry association for power utilities, climate adaptation plans for industries are not yet mandated, but most electricity companies have been proactive in monitoring and planning for climate change and extreme weather. In 2021, the group released a guide to adaptation planning for electricity companies in Canada, developed with funding from Natural Resources Canada.

A Canadian Climate Institute report last year on building resilient grids for a net-zero future found that while regulator and utility mandates prioritize short-term reliability, "they do not necessarily create incentives for prioritizing long-term resilience and adaptation."

Wang said the growing electrification of things like vehicles and buildings and the addition of renewables and storage also need to be taken into account.

"The energy transition is bringing a paradigm shift in how the electricity and energy system works, and every province is in a different stage of realizing this and incorporating it into their plans," he said.

This and all the strategies that come with it will not only improve the resiliency and reliability of the grid, Wang said. 

"Most of these will be able to save households on their electricity bills, which I think is the most exciting part."

— Emily Chung

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Editor: Andre Mayer | Logo design: Sködt McNalty