Correspondence: Global overheating and heat pumps

From: margaret and Ian Brown
Sent: July 12, 2021 9:23 AM
To: Mayor And Council Email mayorandcouncil@viewroyal.ca
Subject: Global overheating and heat pumps

Mayor and Council
Town of View Royal

Dear Mayor and Councillors,

Since you will hear a presentation, at the July 20 Council meeting, from a provincial advisor to home renovators, I am taking this opportunity to make three requests related to her presentation.

You now know how serious global overheating is after the Lytton fire and, I presume, are motivated to take some action and some expenditure to reduce the overheating. The children who now use the playgrounds you spent several hundred thousand dollars on in recent years will, 20 years from now, thank you far more for spending money now to prevent further climate heating.

So I first propose you support a campaign to persuade citizens to convert their oil or gas heating systems to heat pumps. The View Royal Climate Coalition is preparing a one page flyer to be mailed to all single family homes in the Town advertising the provincial and federal grants for this conversion and to inform residents how heat pumps can help them survive future heat waves and filter out the smoke from our forest fires. We are asking you to pay for the printing and distribution of this flyer. We are also asking you to include the flyer in the Town newsletter and on the Town website.

Secondly, like several municipalities in the CRD, I ask that you offer a $350 rebate to any resident who replaces an oil or gas furnace with a heat pump.

Thirdly, it would be very valuable that Council ask Councillors who attend the UBCM meeting in September to support the motion by Courtenay for the Help Cities Lead resolution to greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from buildings.

Ian D. Brown
328 Stewart Ave.