If your home relies on electric heat, there is a new opportunity for you to stay toasty in winter (and cool in summer) while slashing your electricity bill.
The provincial Save on Energy program has introduced new incentives for installing a heat pump in electrically heated homes: $5,000 for a cold climate air source heat pump and $10,000 for a ground source system.
Unlike an earlier Save on Energy program, these new incentives are not tied to household income. However, they are restricted to certain areas where there are transmission system constraints (e.g., Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston, Peterborough, Barrie, Muskoka).
Restricting these incentives to certain communities doesn’t make sense when the province is planning to build more expensive and polluting gas plants and high-cost nuclear reactors.
To see if you qualify for an incentive, go to the program page, scroll down to “View and search the full list of eligible postal codes”, and enter the first 3 letters of your postal code.
According to our calculations, installation of a heat pump in an electrically heated home (whether it uses baseboards or an electric furnace) could save homeowners $2,000 per year on average.
What you can do
A heat pump can cut your energy used for heating by half and providecooling. Heat pumps are also a simple way to avoid the need for expensive new electricity generation projects and increased gas burning.
We think these new heat pump incentives should be available to every electrically heated home in Ontario. If you agree, please send a message to Energy Minister Stephen Lecce.
P.S. If your home is heated by gas, heat pump incentives of up to $3,000 are available from Enbridge.