As Canada tackles building emissions, what's a natural gas utility to do?

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This week:

Starting this year, the City of Vancouver is requiring all new low-rise residential buildings to use zero-emissions sources of energy. For many buildings, that means turning to electricity for heating, cooling and hot water, rather than furnaces that run by burning natural gas. 

The technology to make all this possible is a heat pump, a device that sucks in heat from the outside air (even cold winter air) and brings it inside a building. In the summer, a heat pump can do the reverse to cool the building, replacing air conditioners. Heat pumps are powered by electricity, and in B.C, 98 per cent of the electricity grid is made up of non-carbon-emitting sources like hydropower.

But FortisBC, the main natural gas utility in the province, wants to be a part of the future energy mix. It plans to increase its supply of renewable natural gas (RNG), which is collected from decomposing organic waste in landfills and other facilities. When that waste decomposes, it releases biogas, which is mostly methane.

FortisBC argues that rather than a single-minded drive towards full electrification of heating systems, which will require a massive expansion of clean energy generation in Canada, an approach that includes natural gas is important in meeting our net zero emissions goals.

"The transition to net zero and to achieving our … longer-term climate targets in 2050, it's going to require a lot more electricity. It's going to require a lot more renewable gas," said Doug Slater, vice-president of Indigenous and external relations at FortisBC.

"In order to find enough renewable energy and low carbon energy, we're going to have to use all of the different supplies that we have in the most efficient way possible."

Burning RNG is considered carbon neutral because it ultimately comes from plants that once absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and it's captured from waste that would otherwise release methane into the atmosphere while decomposing.

FortisBC's goal is that RNG will make up 15 per cent of its gas supply by 2030 — something Slater said the utility is on track to achieving — and 75 per cent by 2050. 

In an interview with CBC Radio last week, however, a FortisBC spokesperson said that RNG currently makes up only about one per cent of its system's supply. 

Meanwhile, BC Hydro, the province's main electric utility, is preparing to replace natural gas in homes. It is planning to increase its electricity supply and is encouraging people to switch to technologies like heat pumps.

BC Hydro's plans appear to have little space for FortisBC's ambitions to supply RNG to British Columbians into the future, a conflict that spilled over onto Twitter last year.

FortisBC responded to a BC Hydro tweet by claiming a furnace running on RNG could be carbon neutral and cheaper than an electric heat pump. BC Hydro tweeted back questioning FortisBC's goal of 15 per cent RNG by 2030 and highlighting the incentives BC Hydro was offering homeowners.