Correspondence: Heat Pump Rebates and Promotional Budget - Cathie Blanchard

From: Cathie Blanchard
Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 2021 11:21 AM
To: Info Address info@viewroyal.ca
Subject: COW July 13 In support of #9.2.4(a)1 and 2 re: Heat pump Rebates and Promotional Budget

Dear Committee Members,

Councilor Matson and Councilor Lemon have presented items for discussion about a municipal top-up for homeowner heat pump retrofits and a promotional campaign, which is not contingent upon council approval of the top-up rebate. The View Royal Climate Coalition believes the top-up rebate would be the most effective quick win strategy the Town of View Royal can initiate right now for GHG emission reductions. It adds one more enticement for homeowners thinking about replacing their fossil fuel burning heating system with an economically operated heating and cooling heat pump. The rebates require no ongoing town administration as CleanBC lists the rebate on their municipality rebate site and automatically applies it when a CleanBC rebate is processed. With climate heating up, you would be encouraging your township to go green for heating while keeping their cool. In June 2021, a top up of $3,000 per home was put forward by PREAC and assigned to Lindsay for review, and we would still like that on the table, but we anticipate that would be a 2022 budget year consideration. For fall of 2021, to kickstart the CleanVR campaign, we ask you to be in favour of making the recommendation for $300 rebates for 20 homes.

We also support Councillor Lemon’s item for discussion about an early fall promotional campaign encouraging homeowners to explore switching from fossil fuel burning heating systems to electric heat pumps. After reviewing the rebate websites, we believe the first step for any homeowner is to participate in an info meeting hosted by town of View Royal, facilitated by CleanBC, similar to the presentation already arranged for the town council on July 20. The second step is for homeowners to contact a CleanBC energy coach. We think it is imperative that the homeowners of our township have something in their hands to bring awareness of heat pump rebates available to them, so they can make home retrofits that reduce GHG emissions and provide affordable comfort for their families.

Attached is suggested wording, borrowed from Saanich with their permission, for your consideration. This explains the incentives of retrofitting now and how they can get more information and shows View Royal's commitment to climate action. Of course, all notices would require vetting and formatting by town staff. We agree that the promotion would be a short info-blast through all available media, culminating in a townhall type meeting as early in the fall as possible.

To reach the target audience, if item C.2.f of the Strategic Plan “Collect location inventory of oil/natural gas/propane residential users (2021 In-house)” could be evaluated, the size of the mailout could be limited. However, if that is not possible, we are hopeful that an educated guess of postal codes could be made to determine appropriate neighborhoods to receive the rack card, possibly with the info in the tables in the attached email.

Thank you for your consideration and we hope you can recommend these items to move forward for council decision.

Sincerely,

Cathie Blanchard
290 Island Highway #101
Member of
View Royal Climate Coalition

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RE: Contact Us - Submission

From: Matt Greeno mgreeno@crd.bc.ca
Sent: Tue 6/8/2021 4:18 PM
To: Cathie Blanchard
Cc: JChow@viewroyal.ca JChow@viewroyal.ca

Hi again Cathie! Sorry for the delay. I have cc’ed Jeff Chow here from the town of View Royal for information sake.

Oil provider do not require an inspection to fuel up a tank, though that would be great if that was the case.

We have some analysis that we could share with you. Postal code for natural gas permits that we could roll up (to protect privacy) and some number of oil heating systems by neighbourhood.

We received some data on single family dwellings sales in 2020 and the heating system reported in those home is as follows:

In most homes sold, multiple heating systems are reported, hence why the numbers add up to more than 100%. Many of the gas system might be fireplaces, or the baseboard many be only be supplementary for some spaces. If the neighborhoods names don’t make sense, please check out the map here: https://www.vreb.org/buying-selling/about-victoria-bc/the-vreb-core-region/view-royal#gsc.tab=0

I have also extrapolated based on the View Royal Census dwelling numbers. This suggests that there are not that many oil systems left in view royal.

I also have a bunch of permit data for the region which show that the number of homes installing gas appliances has been pretty stable over the last 10ish years. The total number of unique addresses that had gas installs were 542 over this time period:

Hope this helps.

Let me know if you have any questions,

Matt Greeno
Community Energy Specialist
Capital Regional District
T: 250.360.3142 E: mgreeno@crd.bc.ca

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From: Cathie Blanchard
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2021 7:15 PM
To: Matt Greeno mgreeno@crd.bc.ca
Subject: Re: Contact Us - Submission

Thanks Matt. I am asking on behalf of the View Royal Climate Coalition, and someone suggested I ask CRD, as I have been told that the town of View Royal does not have these records, I suppose thinking the CRD maintained a record of permits for installations way back when.

I am most interested in households currently receiving oil delivery and natural gas service, as we would like to suggest to the town of View Royal that they do a direct mail, targeting those owners, delivering information about incentives to switch from fossil fuels to electric. If you can provide any assistance along this vein, I would really appreciate it. Of course, as you say, it would be fantastic to know where the buried ones were, if that pops up in our searches. It just seems to me that an oil service provider would not fill a tank that had not had a recent inspection...could be wrong ☺

And, for natural gas, wiki says:

• 2002: BC Gas became the dominant distributor of natural gas in British Columbia by purchasing Centra Gas BC Inc, and Centra Gas Whistler Inc. adding 75,000 natural gas customers on the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island, and 2,000 piped propane customers in Whistler.
• 2003: BC Gas Inc. became Terasen Inc.
• 2005: Terasen Inc. was acquired by Kinder Morgan
• May 17, 2007: Fortis Inc. acquired Terasen Gas from Kinder Morgan
• 2011: the Terasen group of companies — Terasen Gas Inc., Terasen Gas (Vancouver Island) Inc., Terasen Gas (Whistler) Inc. — become FortisBC Energy Inc.

Wouldn't service connections require a permit? Seems recent enough that there ought to be records.

Anything you can come up with, even pointing me in another direction will help...thanks for your time.

Cathie

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