Canadian provinces must rein in their expanding gas systems or risk incurring staggering costs from stranded assets and failure to meet net zero targets, the Canadian Climate Institute (CCI) warns in a new report.
If provincial governments and regulators continue treating gas as the default option for heating new homes and commercial buildings, rather than shifting the lion’s share of that heating demand to an electrified system dominated by heat pumps, the transition off carbon will cost more than it needs to, the Institute warns. As households and businesses abandon the system for cheaper, more efficient electricity, the remaining ratepayers will be left with higher costs. And if those costs get so high that regulators decide they’re beyond ratepayers’ ability to pay, the burden will eventually shift to taxpayers.
“The critical thing is that we change our approach to expansion and that we think very seriously about how we’re going to deal with existing systems,” Senior Research Director Jason Dion told a media briefing Wednesday.
“We need to be thinking very carefully about whether [new gas infrastructure] is going to be used and useful over its lifetime,” he added, while dealing with the complexities of managing the existing gas network as demand for its product declines.
Read more about this first-of-its-kind analysis from the Canadian Climate Institute.
