Written by Richard Laszlo
Hybrid heating brings the best of natural gas and electricity to Canadians
Canadian homeowners are struggling with affordability. Energy costs, like everything else, have been increasing, and customers are looking to reduce their bills. Natural gas has been reliably providing affordable energy to Canadians for generations, with millions of Canadians counting on gas furnaces and water heaters for their home heating. At the same time, the vast majority of Canadians also want to reduce their carbon footprint and look to energy sources like electricity to help do so.
All-electric heating systems have gained popularity in Canada, and provide homeowners with many benefits, such as energy efficiency and reduced emissions. However, in a country like Canada, all-electric heating systems are not always ideal, struggling to keep up with the heating required in colder seasons and costing Canadians more in the process.
The challenge becomes finding an energy solution that delivers on all fronts: affordability, reliability, and sustainability. For Canadians seeking a solution to this energy trilemma, the best heating system will be a combination of equipment that uses both natural gas and electricity. These “hybrid” heating systems combine the best of both worlds, providing improved affordability, reliability, and thermal comfort, while also reducing carbon emissions by reducing peak electric demand.
In this article, I’ll discuss and compare all-electric heating systems with hybrid heating systems. By the end, you should have a stronger understanding of what hybrid heating systems are, how they work, and the immense value they provide to both individual homeowners and our wider society.
What are all-electric heating systems?
Heat pumps are good examples of all-electric heating systems that can be used in a home. As part of their efforts to reduce carbon, some governments across Canada have provided significant incentives for heat pumps, and they are working.
Canadians have installed heat pumps at a record pace, taking advantage of the federal Home Energy Rebate program, which provided grants for qualifying home energy upgrades, including heat pumps. The grants were intended to overcome Canadians’ unfamiliarity with heat pumps, as well as the sticker price — heat pumps typically come with a premium of roughly 2 to 3 thousand dollars more than a comparable air conditioner.
Heat pumps work just like air conditioners in the summer, providing space cooling on hot summer days and nights. What’s unique about heat pumps is that, in addition to providing these cooling capabilities, they can also switch their operating mode to heating in colder weather. During the spring and fall, when it’s not too cold out, heat pumps can operate very efficiently to heat homes and keep Canadians comfortable.
In peak winter months, however, unless homes are extremely well insulated, they will need a backup heating source. And that’s because even though a good heat pump can deliver efficient heating when it gets cold out, they struggle to move enough heat to make up for the heat homes lose to the outside environment.
For these reasons, proponents of all electric heating systems — aimed at reducing carbon emissions — recommend that homes install a backup electric furnace that uses resistive heating strips, similar to baseboard heaters. Imagine a large toaster oven inside your furnace providing extra heat, and you’re not far off. The electric furnace works to bridge the gap during colder months when a heat pump can’t efficiently heat a home or keep occupants comfortable.
The negative realities of all-electric heating systems
For homeowners that have taken steps to insulate their homes very well, top to bottom, all-electric heating systems might be a reasonable choice.
Unfortunately, most homeowners are simply not in a position to move all their stuff out, rip out their walls and ceilings, re-insulate and then put the drywall up again. Doing it right requires additional framing to spray foam insulation, so there are significant costs and impacts on lives for those willing to do it.
For homeowners who can afford it, it’s important to note that installing a backup electric heating system will significantly increase in electricity use during cold weather. Heat pumps struggle to deliver sufficient heat as temperatures drop, which means the electric backup system will need to work harder. This can result in using double or even triple the amount of electricity needed to maintain stable indoor temperatures.
And despite the heat of summer driving winter from our minds, Canadian winters can be harsh. Remember the mid-January 2024 temperatures across Western Canada dipping deep into negative territory? Friends of mine were joking that you know things are bad when the Celsius and Fahrenheit temperature scales cross over, and that’s what happened when it reached -40 degrees over much of Alberta on January 13. At those very cold temperatures, an all-electric heating system would be running flat out and could easily be consuming 10 times or more electricity than a home heated with natural gas. While gas bills will certainly be lower in an all-electric heating system, electricity bills will be much, much higher at those low temperatures.
How do hybrid heating systems differ?
Now that we’ve covered how all-electric heating systems work, let’s quickly cover how hybrid heating systems work differently. Where all-electric heating systems can yield higher heating costs in the cooler months, hybrid heating systems use multiple energy sources to ensure homeowners can call upon the most efficient and affordable energy source for whatever the temperature outside requires.
Hybrid heating systems combine an air source heat pump with a gas furnace, so homeowners get the best of both electric and natural gas heating equipment in a combined system. The heat pump is essentially a 3-season piece of equipment, providing cooling in the summer, and efficient heating in the spring and fall, and even on milder winter days. The gas furnace provides reliable heating throughout the winter and on the coldest days. This limits heightened electricity usage during times when electricity has to work overtime to keep homeowners comfortable, thus costing them more.
The case for hybrid heating systems
It’s important to note that increased electricity use during periods of extreme cold, as required by all-electric heating systems, isn’t just bad for a customer’s household budget — in most of Canada, winter and especially cold days represent peak demand periods for the electric grid.
You can think of the grid as a highway. In the middle of the night, the roads are nearly empty, and traffic flows freely. Peak demand periods are more like rush hour, with traffic at a standstill. During these times, the electricity system struggles to provide enough electricity to meet the needs of industries, buildings, and of course, our homes. And the homes with all-electric heating exacerbate the situation by requiring even more electricity just when the grid is already struggling to keep up.
Making the problem even worse, hydropower provinces like British Columbia, Manitoba, and Quebec already struggle to meet the needs of customers at times of peak demand. There just isn’t enough supply, so they resort to importing electricity. BC imported record amounts of electricity in 2023, and according to Statistics Canada, February 2024 was a low water mark (excuse the pun) for Canada’s need for electricity imports from the United States, over twice the average level of net imports over the last decade. And these imports are almost always sourced from natural gas fired electricity generation.
Remember that the promise of all-electric heat pumps in reducing emissions is that the electricity that powers them needs to be largely non-emitting. If the electricity produced is from natural gas which is often necessary to meet the peak electricity demands, and the heat pumps are running when it’s cold enough that their efficiency drops, then heat pumps don’t actually reduce any carbon. In fact, operating under these conditions, heat pumps can actually increase overall emissions by shifting the emissions from the home to the stations generating the electricity.
These realities paint a clear case for the value and importance of hybrid heating systems, which leverage the abundant supply, affordability, and reliable heating power of natural gas to help reduce peak demand on our electricity grid. Quebec offers a cautionary tale in this regard, as it is truly a powerhouse of renewable hydropower electricity generation. Despite their abundant hydropower resources, even Hydro Québec has acknowledged they cannot meet existing winter peaks in Quebec without a significant build-out of the entire electrical system — up to $180B of investments are planned to upgrade generation, transmission, and distribution. While they find the resources to do that, they have paired up with the gas utility Énergir to develop a hybrid heating program that uses both electrical and natural gas systems to maintain affordable and reliable energy for customers, while continuing to bring down carbon emissions.
Quebec has seen the light, and they have embraced the age-old concept not to put all your eggs in one basket. It’s instead best to optimally use both the electricity and natural gas infrastructure. This approach combines affordable and reliable natural gas furnaces with efficient, carbon reducing heat pumps, providing the best the natural gas and electricity systems can offer.
In summary, why are hybrid heating systems preferable to all-electric ones?
We’ve covered a lot of ground so far, so let’s recap and expand on the case for hybrid heating:
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First, affordability. A homeowner looking for ways to cut carbon emissions might want to turn to heat pumps as a solution, but going all-electric poses a risk of higher energy costs. By contrast, a hybrid heating system with a smart controller such as the GreenBox gives the homeowner operational flexibility to switch between their gas furnace and heat pump to ensure the most efficient and low-cost source of heating equipment is running, lowering energy bills.
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Reliable thermal comfort. A hybrid heating system combines the higher efficiency of heat pumps in the shoulder seasons with the reliability of heating from gas furnaces on the coldest winter days. For homeowners concerned about power outages, a battery system can be set up to power your gas furnace and keep the fan operating for days. But the much larger power draw of heat pumps will quickly deplete even the largest battery system.
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An easy retrofit solution. Insulating homes to make them more efficient makes a lot of sense, but it’s just not a feasible solution for most families or seniors who would need to vacate their homes, move their stuff out, and do a significant amount of work to see the benefits. Similarly, window and door replacements are expensive, and typically only happen when they need to be replaced anyway. A hybrid system is relatively easy with no impact on homeowners. Contractors can pull out an older air conditioner and drop in a heat pump in its place in short order, with some minimal work on the existing furnace to connect the two.
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Reducing peak electricity demand. This one benefits the homeowner as well as the broader society. A hybrid heating system uses electricity when it makes sense to do so, for example during the spring and fall shoulder seasons when heat pumps provide heating very efficiently. These times of year are also typically when electricity demand is low and there is more non-emitting electricity supply. When temperatures get very cold in winter, however, a hybrid heating system will see the natural gas furnace kick on, reducing electricity use when supplies are low, and the system is under stress. This helps lower costs for all electricity customers and helps stabilize the electricity system for everyone.
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Reducing carbon. For Canadians passionate about cutting their carbon emissions, hybrid heating provides an easy way to do so, provided you are in a province with a relatively clean electricity grid. When heat pumps operate at high efficiency and the grid is clean, homeowners can cut their carbon emissions significantly. But when the temperatures drop and the grid is more reliant on natural gas fired generation, it makes much more sense from an environmental perspective to rely on natural gas furnaces for home heating, lowering overall emissions as much as possible.
Hybrid heating might not be the right solution for everyone, but for many homeowners, hybrid heating combines the best of natural gas and electricity systems to provide affordable, clean, and reliable home heating without sacrificing thermal comfort.
About the author: Richard Laszlo
Richard has been working on energy and climate policies and technology for over 20 years with a variety of public, private, and non-profit organizations and has facilitated and spoken at over one hundred events across Canada.
Richard and the team at CutYourHomeCarbon have worked with hundreds of homeowners over the past few years, helping them assess their options for home energy upgrades, connect with experienced contractors to implement measures, and access grants.
Richard’s consulting work at Laszlo Energy Services (LES) focused on providing project management, customer engagement, and energy and carbon policy, strategy and communications expertise to utility, real estate, and government clients.
Richard is an adjunct professor at York University and is the proud author of Pollution Probe’s first Primer on Energy Systems in Canada.
