The future is green for buildings

By Leah Den Hartogh

“Let’s get ready to rumble,” said Martin Luymes, vice president of government relations at the Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Institute of Canada (HRAI), to kickstart the inaugural Heat Pump Symposium at The International Centre, Mississauga, Ont. He goes on to share his amazement of hosting such an event as just 10 years ago something like this would have been inconceivable.

On April 4, the sold-out crowd heard from industry leaders in the heat pump industry in seminars, keynote presentations, and panel discussions. A waitlist even had to be created as the event sold-out in two to three weeks.

The exhibitor floor was filled with attendees networking and interacting with other skilled tradespeople.

The first-panel discussion set itself up to dispel the many myths that have come to be associated with heat pump technology, including the inability to operate properly in colder climates, smaller applicationspecific unproven technology, will break the grid, dependent on policy, and little training available. When discussing the need for more apprentices, Martin Forsén, president of the European Heat Pump Association, highlighted an American initiative that provides tax credits for installing geothermal heat pumps, but the benefit is that extra savings will be provided if the company installing the system has an apprentice.

When it comes to the electrical grid, Raegan Bond, partner at Dunsky Energy and Climate Advisors, challenged the myth concerning its capacity as Canada isn’t the only country in the world looking at decarbonizing the built environment, “Others have done this. It is not new, and we can look to them to help solve this issue. It can be solved,” she explained.

Not only does the grid need to be ready for a surge in demand, but it needs to come from clean sources, shared Julie Dabrusin, parliamentary secretary to the minister of natural resources and to the minister of environment and climate change, and the member of parliament for TorontoDanforth, “We need to make sure there are clean sources of energy available and that the infrastructure in place is set to be capable of handling the surge in electric cars and building.”

Get trained!

As previously mentioned, one of the panels during the conference focused on mythbusting. One of the panellists, Victor Hyman, executive director of ClimateCare Canada, shared his admiration for how “we are raising a generation of people that care.” But the industry still needs to educate what all these new changes will mean. He goes on to say that the industry should be familiar with going through these periods of change as we have gone through them before when making the switch from mid- to highefficiency furnaces. “The last thing we want is for consumers to have bad experiences because we aren’t trained, so get training!” shared Hyman.

There was plenty of time to network and explore the booths during the Heat Pump Symposium in between panel discussions, keynote presentations, and technical seminars.

During the “Building the Business Case for Heat Pumps” panel, there were a few lighthearted moments that had the entire group laughing in response, especially when Jim Bolger, owner and partner of Waterloo Energy Products and Mechanical, was pondering what he would do if he was in charge, “If I was king for a day, I would slap around a lot of people.”

Additionally, he challenged the current push for hybrid systems over complete heat pump systems as “gas expansion needs to be stopped.”

“If we are true to our resolve of decarbonization, hybrid systems shouldn’t be incentivized as much as heat pumps.”

The Heat Pump Symposium is expected to run again next year, but unconfirmed at the point of publication.