Council backs end of free gas pipelines
‘Nobody’s going to be using fossil fuels,’ Lachica argues
Peterborough city council voted at a meeting Monday to support the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) decision to stop the longtime practice of giving home builders free or deeply discounted natural gas pipelines in new housing subdivisions — although the Ontario government doesn’t seem to want to make developers pay.
The OEB is Ontario’s independent electricity and natural gas regulator.
Late last year, the energy board ruled that it’s time to end the practice of allowing deep discounts on infrastructure to deliver natural gas to new housing subdivisions. The OEB ruled the discounts for developers need to end in January 2025.
For years, the cost of those pipelines had been subsidized by Enbridge Gas customers. The company has long been allowed to charge all its customers more, over time, to cover the cost of natural gas pipelines to new neighbourhoods.
But natural gas — or methane gas — is a fossil fuel, and the OEB ruled that it must be phased out, in favour of other methods of home heating such as heat pumps. So it decided to end subsidized pipelines for developers.
However, the Ontario government wasn’t happy with that: it introduced Bill 165, which is being debated at Queen’s Park now, to overrule the OEB and allow Enbridge to keep charging all its customers more to subsidize the cost of natural gas pipelines.
On Monday at a city council meeting, Coun. Joy Lachica moved that the city support the OEB decision, and then inform the Ontario government that Peterborough city council disapproves of Bill 165 (which is expected to be presented for a third reading in the Ontario legislature by mid-June).
The motion carried 5-4. Voting along with Lachica were Coun. Alex Bierk, Coun. Gary Baldwin, Mayor
“This city is in the business of fighting climate change.
JOY LACHICA COUNCILLOR
Jeff Leal and Coun. Matt Crowley.
Voting against it were Coun. Keith Riel, Coun. Andrew Beamer, Coun. Don Vassiliadis and Coun. Kevin Duguay.
Coun. Lesley Parnell declared a conflict, saying she is an Enbridge customer (though other members of council — including the mayor — said they were Enbridge customers, too).
Coun. Dave Haacke was absent from the meeting.
Lachica’s motion states that the subsidization of natural gas pipelines is “inconsistent” with municipal efforts to curb climate change.
“We did declare a climate emergency in 2019,” Lachica reminded council, Monday night. “This city is in the business of fighting climate change.”
“We’re in a clean energy revolution and fossil fuels are on their way out,” she continued. “We’re not in horse-drawn carriages… it’s now the clean-energy world.”
Coun. Lesley Parnell said not only did she have a conflict, as an Enbridge customer, but she also felt uncomfortable voting on a matter under debate by the provincial government.
But Coun. Matt Crowley called it “government overreach” for Ontario to overrule the OEB — its own arm’s-length board of experts.
Coun. Kevin Duguay saw it differently, however, saying he would have liked feedback from local home builders, before the vote: “I’d really like to hear their side.”
Duguay also said it’s unaffordable for many people to switch out their high-efficiency gas furnace for a heat pump.
“Our support (of the OEB) implies we are telling the consumer they should be exchanging their gas furnaces for a heat pump,” Duguay said.
Lachica said that in fact, some homeowners are switching their gas furnaces for heat pumps — but her motion wasn’t about that.
“This is for big development — for new development,” she said. “It’s for 10, 20, 30 years down the road — when everybody’s going to be driving an electric vehicle, and nobody’s going to be using fossil fuels. It’s a waste to be spending money when that infrastructure is going to be defunct.”
Meanwhile, Bill 165 is also called the Keeping Energy Costs Down Act.
Mayor Jeff Leal said the average cost for a new heat pump varies between $15,000 and $40,000, while a new gas furnace costs between $4,000 and $6,000.
The mayor said he thinks the “real” challenge, for both the federal and for the provincial government, will be to come up with a “robust” rebate program “so that customers can make an easy change” from a natural gas furnace to a geothermal heat pump.
However, he said that in the meantime he did support Lachica’s motion because heat pumps are the future.
Prior to the vote, two citizens spoke to council in favour of Lachica’s motion: Alan Slavin and Caroline Tennent, both members of the climate change activist group For Our Grandchildren.
Slavin introduced himself to council as a PhD physicist, “so I understand very well how science works.”
Slavin spoke of how climate change is already causing “dramatic and cataclysmic” weather events such as extreme heat waves, droughts and floods.
Based on those events, Slavin said, the OEB has predicted a steady transition, in the heating of new houses, from methane gas to heat pumps, which are less expensive to operate and don’t burn fossil fuels.
As the number of natural gas customers dwindles, Slavin said, Bill 165 will cost gas-consuming households more money, “including all the Peterborough ones.”
Only housing developers will benefit, he said.
Meanwhile, Tennent said gas pipelines generally last 40 years which is “long beyond the point at which fossil fuel use is set to drastically decline.”
“Investments in new gas pipelines today will almost certainly go bad — and Bill 165 forces Ontario’s gas customers to make that bad investment.”
A third citizen, who said he was a certified geothermal designer, also wanted to speak to council but wasn’t allowed because he hadn’t registered in advance to do so.