Decarbonizing and electrifying your home, with Sarah Grant of Goldfinch Energy

Most Canadians are eager to combat climate change. But how? One actionable area is reducing emissions from our homes. In episode 141 of thinkenergy, Sarah Grant, founder and co-owner of Goldfinch Energy, shares ways you can reduce your home’s reliance on fossil fuels. Goldfinch Energy is a women-owned, Toronto-based organization offering energy assessments, clean tech roadmaps, and green renovation support services. Listen in to learn about home decarbonization and electrification solutions.

Related links

 

• Goldfinch Energy: https://www.goldfinchenergy.ca/ 

• Sarah Grant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-grant-89ba152b/

• Natural Resources Canada Energy Advisor program: https://natural-resources.canada.ca/energy-efficiency/homes/professional-opportunities/become-registered-energuide-rating-system-energy-advisor/20566 

• Trevor Freeman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trevor-freeman-p-eng-cem-leed-ap-8b612114/ 

• Hydro Ottawa: https://hydroottawa.com/en  

 

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Transcript:

SPEAKERS

Trevor Freeman, Sarah Grant

Trevor Freeman  00:07

Welcome to think energy, a podcast that dives into the fast, changing world of energy through conversations with industry leaders, innovators and people on the front lines of the energy transition. Join me, Trevor Freeman, as I explore the traditional, unconventional and up and coming facets of the energy industry. If you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas for topics we should cover, please reach out to us at [email protected], hi everyone, and welcome back. And welcome back from the summer. As you know, think energy paused over the summer, and hopefully you got a break over the summer as well, time to rest and be rejuvenated. There were certainly times of that for us here. I was able to get out and do some camping and canoeing with the family, which, if you're not from Canada, if you're if you're not in Ontario, there's some fantastic camping and canoeing spots here, so come and check them out. But it was also a busy summer. Things, some things do slow down, and others just seem to fill in that empty space in the calendar. So, we've been busy and hard at work. One of the things we've been doing is spending some time thinking about what this next season of think energy has in store. There are lots of great topics to explore, lots of interesting and smart people out there to talk to the world of the energy transition and energy in general is not slowing down. In fact, it's picking up steam quite a bit. So, lots to dive into this season. We may take a different approach on some topics, on some episodes. We might try out some new things. So yeah, come along for the ride. So today, for our first episode of the season, we're going to kick things off with something close to home, and you will forgive me for that very intended and poor pun, because we're talking about home decarbonization and electrification. We know that most Canadians want to do something about climate change. The data shows us this, and you can go back and listen to my conversation with David Caletto from abacus data for more information on this. We want to live in a society that isn't producing harmful emissions that are jeopardizing our future, but it often feels like so much of that is out of our control. So when it comes to climate action, what we often look to is those things that are in our control, which, for those fortunate enough to own their own homes, is the emissions that result from where we live and, by extension, for somehow we get around the city, so our vehicles, even that action, however, can be daunting if we don't know where to start and we don't know what our options are, and we're relying on contractors, or tradespeople who tend to take maybe a more traditional, fossil fuel based approach. There are great contractors out there, but sometimes it's hard to find them, so today we're going to explore that a little bit. Now I do want to throw a quick caveat out there to say that this conversation is really through the lens of kind of a single family or semidetached home, and through the lens of those that either own their own home, or at the very least have some decision making. Power for that home. Decarbonizing multi-unit buildings like apartments or condos or decarbonizing for renters, is a whole different but equally important conversation that I do plan on tackling at another time. So my conversation today is with Sarah Grant, who is the co-founder and co-owner of Goldfinch energy. Goldfinch energy is a Toronto, Ontario based, women owned small business that is dedicated to helping Canadians reduce their homes reliance on fossil fuels. They offer energy assessments, clean tech roadmaps and green renovation support services. Sarah has degrees in engineering and computer science. She's held leadership roles in renewable energy and local food systems, and is a certified energy advisor. And is really someone who's just passionate about tackling climate change and passionate about talking about it as well. So, I think you're going to enjoy the conversation today. Sarah, welcome to the show.

 

Sarah Grant  04:21

Thanks for having me

 

Trevor Freeman  04:22

so. Full disclosure to our listeners here, Sarah and I have actually known each other for quite a long time. And I was trying to do the math there, I think it's like getting close to 20 years now, and we know each other from a different line of work. We both were in international developments and worked overseas for a while. So, I think my first question is, tell us how you came to be in the home energy business. That's a bit of a shift from international development. And then tell us a little bit about what Goldfinch energy does.

 

Sarah Grant  04:53

Awesome. It is true. It is a bit of a shift, although I have always been interested in big, big problems that the world is facing, and working in international development, yeah, I guess 20 or so years ago, I could already see the impacts of the climate crisis, working with subsistence farmers, hearing them tell the stories of how they would plant and um, reigns weren't as predictable as they had been before. And so, when it was time for me to come back to Canada live a bit closer to family, it was something that I was always interested in, and felt like it was another global problem that I could start working on more locally, more specifically, sort of how Goldfinch was born was, to some extent, out of the pandemic. So, some goodness came out of that. Early in the spring, I was working in another sort of climate focused endeavor, a nonprofit that it was clear wasn't going to do very well with the pandemic ongoing, and a friend actually approached me and said, hey, I have this idea. She herself had been working in the sort of climate change world and had had a furnace die, and had asked about heat pumps, and was just laughed at. So, she ended up with a oversized, gas guzzling furnace to continue to heat her home and knew she could have done better. So, Goldfinch energy was sort of born out of that idea that we're not alone. Many of us want to do something, and our homes are a large portion of our individual commissions. If you are lucky enough to own a home, that is, and there are small steps, big steps you can take. All of it matters. And so that's Goldfinch. So, we then, early on, decided, in order to help people, it was going to be useful to become energy advisors. So, I took some training. Actually, it's a really interesting program the federal government through Natural Resources Canada administers the, I guess, the industry of being an energy advisor. And so, there are sort of two exams you take. And so, we studied in 2020, and launched Goldfinch energy with the idea that, after doing some market research as well that, you know, what was really going to be helpful was being able to help people sort of break down the complexity of what's going on with their homes, what they can do to address the climate change crisis. And also, you know, with a home, it's also not just about that. It's about maybe making it a bit more comfortable, or maybe there's a planned renovation that someone might want to do to change the layout, what have you. And so, we establish golden energy to help people make their homes better for the planet and for themselves.

 

Trevor Freeman  07:52

Great. Yeah, it's, I think I hear that a lot from folks, and it's in my own experience of, you know roughly that you want to do the right thing, you know, roughly that, yeah, I want to, you know, reduce carbon, but I don't know how. And the answer I'm going to get from my average contractor is not going to point me in that direction. I'm hoping that we're seeing some change, and folks like you guys are maybe pushing that a little bit, but it's great to know that there's organizations out there that can provide that direct support. So, I mean, what we're talking about today is pretty much home electrification, or, let's say, home decarbonization. And so, let's pull apart what that looks like. And there's probably a few different scenarios of how a homeowner could approach this work. There's the one that you described where your furnace kind of dies in the middle of January, which is my own experience a number of years ago. And you have to make a really quick decision. But let's park that scenario for now. Let's talk about if you have time, if you know you want to do this, and you can start planning now, what where do you start? And, oh, you know, looking through the services that you guys provide, you have the energy assessment, the cleantech roadmap, talk us through some of those tools that you use to help people kind of start their decarbonization journey.

 

Sarah Grant  09:16

So, this is a great question. The best way to start is just by getting a sense of where your home is now. A lot of the homes that I work in, I'm based in Toronto, are 100 plus years old. So, you know, when they were first built, didn't have any insulation. They leaked like a sieve. They were probably heated with wood or some type of fossil fuel. And you know, different expectations were had and over the over the decades, often homes have had a myriad of homeowners and renovations or no renovations. So, an energy assessment is a way for someone to better understand what's going on with their home right now and our clean tech roadmap, then segues from that and helps goes deeper into okay, I now know where my home is losing heat, where you know how efficient or not it is, what levels of insulation exist in behind the walls and in the attic, and you know how drafty it is. There's a cool tool that we use to measure that, the clean tech roadmap, then puts that assessment and translates that into helps people translate that into a plan that they can then ideally act on. So, this plan includes details like, Okay, what you know if you are going to be renovating the basement, stay and want to finish that space. What are the recommended insulation materials that you should use? And how should you treat water? Because, you know, often basements are a little bit below the water table. So, what does that look like? How can we better air seal that space to make it less drafty as well? And maybe you're going to be touching the heating or the hot water. So, what are the options there? What are some contractor names? So, it's really designed to give people all the tools that hopefully they may need if they have the time to not only understand where their home is at, but what they can do and then even have everything at their fingertips to start to seek out quotes and start to take action on their home in the way that's best suited to them. So, some homeowners are able and fortunate enough to kind of do everything in one big bell swoop of, you know, a big, big renovation, perhaps, or, you know, over a few months’ time, able to kind of get, get everything off the list. A lot of the homeowners that we work with aren't in that sort of circumstances. A lot of homeowners who just bought a house, so the house is new to them, but maybe 100 years old. And so, having that clean tech roadmap in their hands then allows them to sort of say, Okay, well, what? What do we want to do this year and the next year, and I've had people that, you know, we worked with four years ago, have who have come back to me a few years later and said, Okay, well, now we're ready to do this? Can you help us which, which is so great, so it's designed to sort of meet people where they are, where they are, with their goals, with their budget and their lifestyle. Because not everyone can afford to kind of do all the you know the right things all at once.

 

Trevor Freeman  12:24

Yeah, so, I think like having someone in to one understand what's there, because not everybody knows exactly what's in their house, as you said, and then have that plan. That doesn't mean you have to implement the plan today all at once, but knowing you know when this piece of equipment goes or when I work on this part of the house, here's what I'm going to do, here's the things I need to consider. And having that kind of in your back pocket. Or when you do that work is super helpful. You touched on something else that I want to ask you about, which is, you know, oftentimes when we think about decarbonizing our homes or changing out big pieces of equipment. Of course, we're thinking of, you know, our heating system, our cooling system, our hot water system, but you mentioned a couple other things. So, what are some things to address before getting into those big equipment purchases? You know, changing out your furnace. What should what should you do in advance of that?

 

Sarah Grant  13:20

I mean, first and foremost, you know, if you have a home and you have issues with water, with mold, those are kind of, you know, structural issues. Those are aspects that tend to, you know, they're top of the list. But, you know, assuming, let's assume, you know, we're talking about homes that kind of don't have those pressing needs. Some of the some of the items that are ideal to address before electrifying are involve making your home better at keeping the heat in. So that's really comes down to just insulate, more insulation where you can, to the extent that you can, and reducing air leakage. So, a lot of people are familiar with insulation. Usually, most contractors these days, if someone's renovating a kitchen, will find a way to add some insulation. Reducing air leakage is still, I would say, not as much on a contractor's radar as it would be ideal. A lot of the green contractors and architects that I work with, it's sort of as important, or even more important, and to us it is as well. So, in the winter, the insulation for your house is kind of like your sweater, and if you don't have any sort of windbreaker, you're going to have a lot of air leakage. So, the air leakage for your home is kind of like adding a windbreaker. Sorry, I started to talk about it like with homeowners, like there are different levels of air leakage. So, level one just involves walking around with a caulking gun and doing what you can to seal up the gaps and the cracks, maybe around the windows. In the window trim, maybe along the baseboards. People often have a good sense of some of the larger sources of air leakage, because they feel drafty, and so that's kind of level one, air leakage. Level two could involve maybe doing a little bit more in the basement, around what's called the rim joist. So, if you look up in your basement and your basement is unfinished where the sort of the ceiling joists meet the walls, those are often a huge source of air leakage. And there's a lot that can often be done to reduce air leakage there. And there are different products. I don't know if we want to get into that today, but I'll just leave it at that for now. And level three is if you are going to be replacing the siding from the outside or from the inside, gutting your house, adding an air barrier, which is a material that serves to reduce the air leakage. Overall, it is like wrapping your house in a big windbreaker. If someone is able to do that, if you're able to say, if you have siding on the outside of your house that you need to be replaced. Adding an air barrier can have the most significant impacts in terms of reducing air leakage. So, you asked, sort of, where should someone start? I think, you know, it does come back to a lot of people I find replace their siding or replace their windows, maybe more for esthetic reasons, or they have reached their end of life. But reducing air leakage, doing what you can if you're replacing your siding, to also add insulation, isn't always on people's minds. So again, back to having that plan. If you have a plan, if you know, okay, when I need to redo my flat roof or redo my siding or redo my windows, I'm going to be thinking about these extra pieces that will ensure that I'm going to take a few more steps to make my house do a better job of keeping the heat in, by adding more insulation, by reducing air leakage. Those are great, great first steps when possible.

 

Trevor Freeman  16:54

And the added benefit, I think, of that, and this is important for people to know, is there's a huge comfort impact there. I mean this, we're not even really talking yet about energy savings and carbon you will just have a more comfortable home if it's less drafty, if it holds the heat in better, keeps the heat out in the summer, and that is one of the drivers for some of these changes that we're talking about here today. It's not just because you really care about climate change, it's also because you want a more comfortable and efficient home.

 

Sarah Grant  17:25

100% I think that comfort just like someone having a broken furnace. Well, maybe not exactly, but similar to, I think, is can act as that trigger, as that motivator, to push people. So I do often have people calling and saying, Hey, like, can you come and do a consult? Because we don't often use the third floor of our house. It's just not as comfortable. And so we'll figure out what's going on and help people make a plan to address that. And ideally, you know, I find when I'm able to do that, I'd rather help someone make a better use of existing space than help them plan out an addition. Um, I have sometimes ended up talking people out of an addition, because upon sort of discussing their house real, we've realized, okay, like they don't use their basement because it's unfinished, it's dark, it's damp, it's, you know, it's the scary, cobwebby place. And so we develop a plan that involves adding more sunlight and making it comfortable, making it not so damp and scary, and that helps. They're already heating that space. It's sort of a space that you're already sort of half there. And so energy wise, you're making an improvement, and have avoided making your house bigger, which is maybe required, but it can be avoided, is better too.

 

Trevor Freeman  18:49

Okay, so I want to dive into the things that probably people are most familiar with when we talk about reducing our own fossil fuel consumption in a home. And so these are your big users, like how you heat your space, how you heat your water, and for some people cooking. So especially those first do space heating and water heating. The majority of Canadians at least use some kind of fossil fuel to heat their homes, especially here in Ontario. So that's typically natural gas cooking is a little bit more of a mixed bag, but there's a lot of gas cooking out there. So maybe talk us through what would be the sort of low to no carbon option for each of those three things.

 

Sarah Grant  19:31

Great, okay, going from large to small. So the largest source of emissions in a home is your space heating. Typically, the emissions are about the same as driving a sort of a mid to large sized car. You know, most people drive, on average, 15,000 kilometers a year. The emissions are going to be about the same so that that's going to be the biggest one, if someone is looking and they're a little bit overwhelmed, and the best alternative is a. Heat pump. So these are they come in many different forms, but the most common, and I think the most common scenario for most homes is if you have forced air. So ductwork and these kind of heat pumps can extract heat from the air outside. A lot of them can work up to minus 30 degrees. So even up to minus 30, they're able to grab latent heat in the air and pump it inside, and then it gets pumped around your house. The cool thing about them is that they can also work in reverse. So, in the summer, they act just like an air conditioner. In fact, the technology is very much the same as an air conditioner, just that they work in reverse in the winter too. So they can also cool. So these are called Air source heat pumps. And, yeah, someone has forced air and they have a gas furnace or an air conditioner or both that need to be replaced. An air source heat pump is, is a great option. A lot of the folks that we've worked with that have switched, you know, you talked about comfort, sort of some of the side benefits, I would say, of a heat pump is they're typically quieter if designed and sized and installed properly, they're they they're quieter both the outside and the inside aspects of a heat pump, and the air from the vents is a lot more comfortable. So we got a heat pump about three years ago, and the first winter we had it installed, my father in law came over for dinner one night and just stood in front of the vent, kind of like a cat basking in that warmth, and said, Oh my gosh, this is way more comfortable. It's not that dry, scorched air that a lot of people associate with poor stairs. So that's, that's an air source heat pump. You can also, there are also ground source heat pumps, but for a lot of you know urban areas, these ground source heat pumps involve drilling into the ground, either horizontally or vertically, to extract heat from the ground. They I have worked with a few homes in sort of more rural areas where it does make sense, but the costs associated with them are really high, and often there's not enough space in urban areas, so they're not quite as common. And I'd say sort of, just to kind of close the conversation on we'll conclude it on the on the heating side of things, if you do have another source of like heat, maybe it's, maybe it's cast iron radiators or baseboards. There are also heat pumps that can help you as well. So with cast iron radiators, they're what's called air to water heat pumps. So they'll the outdoor unit will look similar to someone who has forced air. So it's an it's going to extract heat from the outside air, and it'll transfer it to water. Now that can then go through your cast iron radiators, or maybe have insular heating or what have you. They're not as common, but the technology has existed for a long time in Europe, and there are more products and contractors that I'm working with that are becoming more comfortable with installing this technology. And last there are what's called ductless heat pumps. So if you don't have ductwork or cast iron radiators, or maybe have baseboards, or maybe there's a space where the ductwork just isn't sufficient, these ductless heat pumps can be installed. They can either go on the wall, on sort of these big white boxes. If you've been to Asia, you're probably familiar with them because they exist there, either in the form of heat pumps or air conditioners, or you can have little floor mounted ones as well, which look a little bit slicker, I suppose, but they do cost a little bit more. So that's heating for hot water. There are kind of two main options if you want to get off of fossil fuels. Usually that's yeah, for most of us, that's with the gas, but there could be propane as well. So, if you want to get off of fossil fuels with your hot water, the heat pump technology exists with hot water as well. Heat Pump hot water tanks is what they're called. Are actually, confusingly, sometimes hybrid tanks, because they use heat pump technology, but then also have an electric coil. So, they operate, they can operate like a simple electric tank, if, um, if needed. And they come with a little like Wi Fi app too. So they are, like, four times more efficient than a gas hot water tank. So you will save a little bit by switching to them. But the way they work is they'll extract heat from your basement, actually, so from your basement air and transfer that to the water. So, I would say about half the people I work with end up going with them because they have a space where it makes sense. Maybe their basement is large and they can put it kind of in the corner and a big mechanical room or a workshop where they're not going to go into it. So, if it, if that heat pump reduces the temperature by two degrees or so, it's not a big deal. But for me, my home is pretty tiny, and we're using every nook and cranny with five of us in it, so we opted for an electric tank and, um. And then paired it with a timer so that it only reheats the water overnight when electricity, if you're on time of use, is cheapest, and that's also when our Ontario grid is using the non-fossil fuel related forms of power production, like nuclear and water. So that can work if you're really lucky and you have an open an unfinished basement and a good space to install what's called a drain water heat recovery system. These are super cool, very simple technologies that can transfer the heat from any water that you've already used, like from your shower, and transfer it to the fresh water before that fresh water then goes into whatever heating mechanism you have. So, they can work with anything, even if you have a gas hot water tank, a drain water heat recovery system is a good way to kind of preheat the water by extracting the heat from the hot water you've already used a lot of hospitals I know in Toronto are starting to use these kinds of systems as well. So two main options, electric tank, you pump out water tank, and then those drain water heat recovery systems as well, and hot water. So, you know, I said you're heating, heating your house. It's usually about kind of 8080, or so percent of a home emission, home emissions hot water is, is around 15 to 20% just to give an idea of sort of how it fits into the relative picture. But ultimately, I wouldn't say, you know, do one over the other, unless you know, if you have, if you have a hot water tank that's broken, replace that with a with an electric tank, or heat pump hot water tank. Don't, don't just say, Oh, it's only 20% I shouldn't do that one. It's still worth it. Every little appliance that you can get off of fossil fuels is one step closer to then being able to disconnect from the gas utility or what have you, and sets you up for, ultimately, like a little bit of savings too, because you're no longer paying for that delivery fee to have access to that fossil fuel in your house. So cooking, cooking is cooking is probably, to be honest, like, the most fun of all of these just because, you know, it impacts your daily life. If like, hot water and heating and cooling are one of those things where you don't, like, I don't think about my heat pump unless it's not working properly, which we haven't had an issue with. But, you know, it just sits there and it does, it does its thing, and I'm happy to have it off of fossil fuels. But for cooking, switching, for us, switching. We switched from a gas stove to an induction stove about a year ago, and it's amazing, like I've got little kids, and I love that. I feel comfortable teaching them how to cook on this stove, just because of the way the induction stove works, the whole cooktop doesn't get heated up in the same way you accidentally leave, like a rag or a paper towel on the stove, not going to catch on fire. We did have a few of those incidences with our former gas stove. And, like, it's really quick. I know that there's a lot of stats and data about how quick it can heat up water, but it's one of those things that you don't believe it until you sort of experience it yourself. So yeah, so we got, we got a nice flick induction stove, because our gas stove was kind of reaching its end of life, and we were starting to smell some of the gas as well, even when it wasn't on, which I know is an issue, that's, that's, you know, something that's, that's hostages for our help. And, you know, there's a lot of research and evidence out there related to, like respiratory issues and gas related cooking. So, if you do have a gas stove and you aren't able to afford to switch now, make sure you're using your exhaust, like your range hood, properly, not just when you're using the top, but when you're cooking in the oven too. But yeah, if you're able to switch it out, then you can just break a little easier knowing that you're not, you're not using some sort of like fossil fuel to cook, cook with, and so your house is cleaner, and you're making the planet a bit cleaner as well.

 

Trevor Freeman  29:11

That's definitely one of those other benefits of going down that path. And everyone we're in a similar vein, I cook with electric resistance now, but our stove is near its end of life, and I've excited to get that induction stove, because everybody I talked to just sort of says it's one of the coolest things that you can add to your kitchen. So, I'm excited about. One other big source of fossil fuels in our daily lives that people will be familiar with, obviously, is, is our cars, how we drive, how we get around. Most folks still have an internal combustion engine car, and we know that for people that are going to switch to an EV if they can, the preferred choice to charge is at home. People want to be able to charge their vehicles at home. So what are some considerations when it comes to owning an EV at your house, as you're trying to decarbonize

 

Sarah Grant  30:06

Awesome. I'm glad you asked this question, because I was trying to figure out a way how to bring up electric like capacity in a home, knowing that you know, if you do electrify every appliance in if someone does electrify every appliance in their house, they may not need to upgrade. A lot of us are on 100 amp service, and I was able to, you know, install an induction stove switch from gas to induction switch from a gas hot water tank to an electric tank with that drain water heat recovery system and a timer switch from a gas furnace to a heat pump. And we had 100 amps, and we're fine with that. We didn't have any breakers trip or anything. And I've worked with a lot of homes where that's the case. I should just say, even before someone's going to switch to an EV though, the kind of the two main aspects, two main elements that may require an upgrade, would be an EV charger and, um, electric backup, resistance heating. So with a heat pump, they are amazing for so many reasons I've kind of already talked about they're more comfortable, they're quieter. You know, climate fighting machines that work on electricity, but they're not like electric baseboard heaters. They're using one unit of electricity to generate about three units of heat. So they're great. Their capacity isn't as high as as a gas furnace or our propane furnace may be. So if that's the case, and if your house, you haven't been able to do all the things you can to insulate and to reduce heat loss, then the largest heat pump may need to come with an electric resistance heating and these can, if they're working, can draw a lot of electricity. So the way this works with a heat pump is, on a cold day, the heat pump is going to always operate. And then if your thermostat notices, hey, my house isn't able to stay as comfortable. It's not getting to whatever, you know, 22 degrees, it'll then ask for the electric resistance oil to turn on and give a boost to the heat pump. So, um, you're not going to generate like, your bills aren't going to be excessive, like they would be if someone's heating with just electric heating, but larger electric resistance heating requires a pretty big breaker, like a 40-amp sort of thing. So, if, if that's the case, then that may be something that triggers you into the okay, maybe I need to upgrade to 200 amps EV chargers as well. They come in many different forms. We actually I'm just at my in laws cottage, and my father-in-law, very generously, installed an EV charger here, because we were lucky enough to purchase an EV a few months ago and so he put in one that's also on a 40-amp breaker, but you can get ones and put it on a 30 amp breaker, you put on a 50 amp breaker. So with upgrading and with switching everything to electric, I find that's an area that I think things still are evolving and changing. You know, I typically, I was previously doing sort of a what a lot of electricians or HVAC contractors would do with just sort of adding up all the all the aspects on the panel and sort of saying, Okay, well, if you're running your stove and your heat pump and your hot water all at once, here's sort of based on those breakers, here's how much electricity you're going to draw. And if that number is greater than 100 Okay, someone should upgrade which, which tends to be a little bit conservative. So, what we are now doing is, if you have the ability to access your electricity bills and look at sort of your hour-by-hour consumption, there is a way that homeowners can actually figure out, kind of like, what's my peak, what's my worst? Like, draw, I'm probably not using the right terms here, but, um, but. Or you could actually simulate that and just, you know, on a, on a like a really hot day, turn on make sure your air conditioner is running. Turn on. You all your, you know, your dryer, your electric stove, whatever kind of make it the worst-case scenario that you could reasonably see happening in your house and then go on and log into your utility data. And there's a way that you can look at like hour by hour, and it'll tell you your draw and based on that, if you look up online, there's a way to sort of translate that kilowatt draw into amps. And what I've found when I translate people's draw into amps is that like someone who's on 100-amp panel, who's got, you know, their electric dryer and their air conditioner and their induction stove running typically draws between 20 and 40 amps. That's way below the 100 amp. Environment and so upgrading, this is a long winded way of saying upgrading everything you know, from fossil fuels, switching your car, getting an EV charger, may or may not require you to upgrade to 200 amps, but if you have the ability to sort of do a little bit of research online, try and figure out what your draw is, so that, because you may not actually need to upgrade alive, find a lot of contractors are somewhat conservative and are telling people to upgrade before they necessarily need to. And the cost to upgrade can be around five or so $1,000 so at least what I've seen in Toronto and so that kind of cost can actually turn people off.

 

Trevor Freeman  35:42

Yeah. So, I that's a great point to bring up Sarah. And I think we, we see that, of course, with our customers a lot as well. And I think it's important to know that the quick and easy way to determine if you need a panel upgrade is, as you said, to add up the numbers on the breakers, and if you if you're bumping over 100 yep, that's a panel upgrade. But that's not necessarily the most accurate way, because it's rare that we use the full amount of each breaker. And so looking at your utility data, or having your electrician, your contractor, help you, look at your utility data, can tell you that you maybe don't need a panel upgrade, that you can operate all this equipment that we're talking about on your 100 amp panel, and most utilities in Ontario, at least, I know for you in Toronto, and definitely for any of our listeners in our service territory in Ottawa, you can access Your hourly utility data online through whatever portal you have with your utility. So definitely go and check that out

 

Sarah Grant  36:47

if you end up realizing that your kind of on the cusp and you may need to upgrade. One of the other things that you could do instead is install a smart switch. So, there are products of their levatron is one that I know of. There are even smart panels that give you at your fingertips through a phone app, the ability to sort of say, oh, okay, I want to charge my car, so maybe I'm going to, sort of not let people draw electricity from other aspects in my home, or vice versa, you can kind of turn off and on your car charger. You can even run your whole panel as well. So, sort of the smart switching aspect is a way that, if you're kind of on that cusp, can enable you to avoid a service upgrade and also get some really cool data at your fingertips as well about your electricity consumption.

 

Trevor Freeman  37:42

Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up, and I've seen those as well. They're super exciting. And, you know, as a kind of a data nerd, it'd be awesome to have that granular data. And what's every circuit in my house doing? But I think at its most basic, it's basically saying, yeah, like, you can't run your electric clothes dryer and charge your EV at the same time. So it kind of forces one or the other, you know, and whatever slot in whatever piece of equipment you want there, which keeps you under that, that threshold for your panel, no matter what, even if all your things add up to more, you're still going to stay under because it won't let them go on the same time. So that's a great piece of technology. So, I want to quickly ask you about electricity generation and storage, where probably, if anybody kind of wanders around, you're seeing more and more solar panels on roofs. We're hearing more about home battery storage, although that hasn't quite taken off widespread yet, but it is out there. So how would something like that factor into a homeowner's plan?

 

Sarah Grant  38:42

Yeah, I think that typically, it's kind of one of the later aspects for a homeowner plan. So you know, if you were listening and you're someone who is interested in doing what you can to reduce your carbon footprint, you know the largest things you can do, the single largest thing is to install a heat pump. Get your heating off of off of fossil fuels, and install a heat pump. And, you know, do what you can to reduce your heat loss by adding insulation, making it less leaky. Solar panels are a fantastic complement to that, and I find they, you know, we include them in a clean tech roadmap, and we show people the impact. And some people do choose to do them first just because they're excited, and it is, to some extent, an investment in reduction of your energy bills. So, you know, the sooner you can get the panels on your roof, the sooner you can start to save and no longer spend, you know, and to some extent, also solar panels, at least in Ontario, they're producing their peak amount of electricity at a time when we're using our electricity grid in Ontario, mostly as nuclear and water. But you. Uh, you know, during peak times, we do have some gas power plants that their benefit is to kind of come on quickly and produce electricity really quickly, so that we can make up that that time, say, five o'clock on a really hot August day when everyone comes home from work or six o'clock and turns on their air conditioner and, and, and, but at that same time, solar panels are in peak production. So, you know, I know, I'm sure you've had other podcasts to discuss, sort of our electricity grid, so we don't need to get into more details. But you know, it is something that each can do to offset and reduce that sort of gas peak your plant consumption by putting panels on the roof. And I think a great aspirational goal for everyone would be to be net zero. Just as you know, I know, City of Toronto has a net zero goal as a city overall, so getting each home to net zero would certainly one way to achieve that goal. So there's some savings involved for us. We put panels on, like four years ago, and based on how much we're saving per year and how much we spent, we'll have saved as much in electricity as we spent in 11 to make up the cost in 11 years’ time, the cost the return on investment, isn't as great now because we were able to leverage a federal rebate that is no longer available, but For so that'll probably extend the return on investment. For many people to sort of 15 to 20 years’ time frame. The reduction in use of our gas peaker plants is another, another benefit and, um, no, I'd say the other like, sort of the pleasant side, again, comfort benefit for us, although I wouldn't say invest in it only for this. It's kept our house more comfortable in the summer. So these solar panels are absorbing the sun's energy, the sun's heat. So it's now no longer the sun's no longer cooking our roof as it used to. And although we did add insulation there, the panels are way more effective at just absorbing that energy. And so our second floor is able to stay a lot more comfortable as well. As far as sort of storage goes, You're right. I'm starting to see more and more batteries. But you know, a few years ago, I hadn't seen really any, any in people's homes. The costs, I know, and sort of the thread tape involved in getting them approved was still quite high. But they are a fantastic option if you do have solar panels, or if you're someone who's concerned about making your house more resilient in the event of a power outage, they're a good option to have, obviously, better than, better than a gas generator, which would be the alternative if you want some form of energy on hand in case the grid goes down. But yeah, this is sort of, I would say, if you're thinking about your house and where solar panels and storage could fit in, I would probably put them sort of later on the list. Again, decarbonize by getting, like, electrify everything in your house as much as possible. Do what you can to insulate and air seal, and if you're lucky enough to have a little bit left over solar and storage are great as well.

 

Trevor Freeman  43:04

Yeah, it's that's a great way to put it. I certainly look at them as supporting tools to someone looking to decarbonize and electrify their house. To your point, you don't get a lot of carbon reduction just from solar, partly, especially in Ontario, because our grid is primarily clean, primarily carbon free, but during those peak solar production hours, that's also typically our peak emission hours from the grid in Ontario. But what solar panels and storage, to a lesser extent, can do is give you some predictability in your energy costs. So, you're kind of locking some portion of your energy cost in the day you put those panels on, and if electricity prices increase, you've got that predictability based on what you put on your roof. So just getting close to the end of our conversation here today, Sarah, I want to ask you two more questions. One, I alluded to this at the beginning, and as did you there are those scenarios where you haven't done any planning or prep. You know that maybe decarbonizing or moving to a more modern piece of equipment is something you want to do, but you haven't done any work on that, and it's January, and all of a sudden there's no heat coming from your furnace. And you get someone to look at it and they say, yep, you need a new one. What can you do? In that sense, are there contractors out there who can turn around and put a heat pump in as quick as they can put a furnace in? Or are we not there yet? What's kind of on the horizon for folks in that situation?

 

Sarah Grant  44:36

Yeah, there are a lot of contractors out there who can put in a heat pump as quickly as they would a gas furnace. The rebate program that the federal government offered, which is unfortunately no longer available, did a lot of work to, I would say, get homeowners asking contractors about heat pumps, and that then got a lot of contractors on board with installing key pumps. And. And I'm finding actually, right now, we're in a good space, because a lot of manufacturers brought in a lot of stock, and so there's actually an excess of a supply of heat pumps, so the costs have come down a little bit, which is nice in the absence of rebate. So, yeah, the installation itself is, you know, if you're replacing a gas furnace with heat pump, it's no more or less complicated, to be honest, typically should take about, you know, just into two days, or maybe just under, like, you know, one, a full day, and sort of, and then some. And I would say the sort of the biggest, the biggest lost opportunity is, is, you may not, you may not have a contractor that feels comfortable getting you all the way off of gas. So I find a lot of contractors are more comfortable with recommending what's called a hybrid system, where you would have a heat pump and a gas furnace installed in your house. And in this case, the heat pump will always get the first opportunity to provide heating in a house, but then the gas furnace will kick on. Um, at some point. And I find in this case, like the heat pumps are, tend to be a little bit undersized, and so they may not, it's a bit of a lost opportunity. They may not be able to heat as long into the winter as if it was sort of the right size for your home. And you know, instead of the heat pump going all the way, which is the case if you get all the way off of fossil fuels, it'll switch over to the gas furnace as needed. So just like a hybrid car, you know, with a battery and gas in the car itself, this sort of system is still a great step in the right direction, though. So certainly, if you're stuck in the middle of a winter night or a hot summer's day and you've got no cooling or no heating call around, and you know, if you don't like the first answer, if you have still, there are still some contractors that are misinformed about heat pumps and will sort of say, Oh, well, they don't work greater. But I would say, for the most part, in the last four years, things have changed dramatically, and contractors are now on board, and because they have an excess of supplier are eager to, eager to sell them and install them.

 

Trevor Freeman  47:05

That's great to hear. And I think the important thing there is you're not going to know unless you ask, and if you don't get that answer the first time, you know, take another couple calls. Try call around, because there are, there are contractors out there who can support you in that. And kind of like you said, this is, you know, when you're replacing your major heating equipment in your house, that's your once in a kind of 10-to-15-year period, if not longer, to get that right. And if you lock yourself into something you didn't really want, then it's hard to hard to change course a few years down the road. So, take the time if you can, to ask those questions. Okay, last question for you here, before we wrap up, I want to zoom out a little bit and talk about just the overall process of retrofitting more homes. You know, you made the point earlier. There's a lot of homes out there. If we can start moving all these homes off fossil fuels, it's going to go a long way towards hitting our climate goals. How do we speed that process up? What programs or regulations or policies have you seen, or would you like to see that and kind of encourage these transitions?

 

Sarah Grant  48:13

Oh, I love that question. Yeah. I mean, if I had a magic wand and could change things, I would definitely like to see more, more incentives, more zero interest financing out there. You know, the homes that I've seen that have been able to get all the way off of fossil fuels, install solar panels, do what they can to insulate were able to access in the city of Toronto anyway, a zero-interest loan that went up $225,000 came with its own $10,000 incentive. They also accessed what is no longer available, the up to $10,000 incentives. So up to 20k of incentives, zero interest loan, those like of the homes that we work with, they're about 20% that have achieved that kind of like the got to sort of net zero, significant energy reduction, and we're able to, you know, access that level of financing and rebates. Those programs are not available anymore. Or at least, the City of Toronto offers their low interest loan. It's no longer zero interest, and doesn't have the incentives anymore. So that typically showed me that, you know, it's possible, but we do need more financing and support in place for people. You know, there's a there are a lot of great models in Europe and in Germany, the energy sprawl model exists where basically big like panels can be installed on the outside of people's homes that have insulation, that have an air barrier, that kind of come with the Windows already well installed those sort of options as well. If, if, if feasible, can also do a lot to accelerate our rate of decarbonizing or electrifying in in Canada. In that regard, there's a lot happening in the sort of the low income Social. Housing space. And I feel very honored or privileged to be just a small actor in that space and collaborating with many fantastic actors that are not only sort of retrofitting a large number of homes, at least in Toronto, but also treating it as an opportunity to sort of help think about how we can get to scale and how we can accelerate this and so they are changing contractors mindsets and impacting the availability of stock and supply. So, yeah, we need, we need, we do need more policies and support and levers in place, and then, as well, the sort of the contractor industry, there's a lot of training and support that's also needed. So it's a big, it's a big, exciting problem with lots of opportunity, but, yeah, lots of work to happen in order for us to achieve our net zero goals.

 

Trevor Freeman  50:50

Yeah, I think we have seen that there's a role for funding and financing to help lower that initial barrier of some of this, you know, still fairly nascent technology, although it's becoming more commonplace, but there is a role for those programs, and when they are in place, you know, your experience has shown they work, you're seeing more projects go through when there are funding and financing programs compared to when there aren't. So it's good to know that the programs work, and we just need to see more of them, so that's great. Okay, Sarah, we always wrap up our interviews with kind of a series of questions that I pose to all guests. So as long as you're ready, I'll dive right in. What is a book that you've read that you think everybody should read?

 

Sarah Grant  51:35

That is a great question. That's fun. I'm an avid reader, so it's hard to it's hard to answer this, to be honest, one book that comes to mind that I think everyone should read is called Ishmael. It's a book about a talking gorilla, and it it definitely changed the trajectory of my life. I read it when I was about 20 years old, I think, and in, you know, studying to become an electrical engineer, thinking about my next steps. I was in my last year of university, so maybe I was a bit older, but, yeah, it's a fantastic book that has, I think, still stood the test of time. I come back to it every few years and reread it.

 

Trevor Freeman  52:18

Awesome. I could be wrong here, my memory is hazy, but that rings a bell. I feel like maybe many, many years ago, you told me about that book. It's possible. I think we, for those of you who don't know this international development thing, Sarah and I did. A lot of us went through that path of being an engineering school and deciding there's got to be something more out there, and I want to have an impact in a different way. And that took a lot of us down to different courses in our lives. But if someone offered you a free round trip flight anywhere in the world, where would you go?

 

Sarah Grant  52:54

Okay, I hope that they're going to offset the emissions, if they're offering or I will offset the emissions, where would I go? I mean, I've always wanted to go to so assuming it's a carbon neutral flight, I've always wanted to go to New Zealand, and I used to play rugby. So I would definitely go catch a few rugby games and watch the All Blacks do their traditional Māori dance and hike the hills and the mountains and just sort of see the, see the landscape in New Zealand.

 

Trevor Freeman  53:29

Who is someone that you admire?

 

Sarah Grant  53:32

Okay, so, I mean, this is going to get real, really quick, so I would say, you know, I this is and a bit cheesy, but I'm going to say my kids, I've got three, and they're six, eight and 10, they're all very aware of their role in the world. They go to an alternative school, so perhaps that's part of it, but I just think perhaps it's also just being a kid of this age. And they are the reason we bought an electric car sooner than we could afford, because they started crying when we would go in the gas car, and they were concerned about the emissions. And so, I admire my kids. I admire their awareness and their ability to speak up when, when, when something happens. A few months ago, my partner came out to all of us as a trans person, and this is where I said it was going to get real, pretty quick, because my kids have taken it so well, like, they've taken it in stride. They've My daughter has embraced it. She's like, Oh my God. Now I have two moms I can, like, I'm not the mom that's going to take her to get pedicures, but she now has a mom that can take her to get pedicures. So, it's, I guess what I'm saying is, there was their awareness. and their resilience is astounding.

 

Trevor Freeman  55:03

Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks for sharing both of those things, and I echo that and seeing the way that my kids and kids you know that are aware of this stuff really find ways to identify their role in this and find ways to sort of advocate, even without knowing all the big picture and knowing all the nuance to it. And maybe that's even better, that they're just going based on kind of hard and what they know. So that's fantastic. Thanks for sharing that. Our final question here, before we wrap is, what is something about the energy sector or the work that you do, or something that you see coming in the near future that you're really excited about.

 

Sarah Grant  55:48

So there's so much to be excited for. So, um, one thing that is that is giving me a lot of excitement is, is the low income, the social housing work that I'm involved in because, because of the potential to help accelerate things, because we're all working in a very different way, I think traditionally, you know, and in any space, there's a lot of competition, but all of us who are working, whether It's I'm working with some architects, with some contractors, the owners, their land trust organizations, of these buildings, everyone is operating with the idea that, you know, we should be collaborating. And so there's a lot of knowledge sharing, a lot of investing in each other's awareness and connections. And, you know, it's net it's net positive. It's resulting in a lot more than if we were kind of just, like, holding our cards close and being like, Oh, you hired me to do this, and I don't want to tell you how I did it, because then maybe you're not going to hire me next time I'm happy, if I get worked out of a job to some extent. And what it means for gold trench energy is that we need to kind of keep adapting. Like, four years ago, the conversations I was having with homeowners are very different from the conversations now, and that's amazing, because four years ago, people didn't, lot of people didn't know about heat pumps, and I know that's still the case, but a lot of people that were hiring us didn't know, and now, four years later, they do, and so that evolving knowledge and enhancing Understanding and the fact that there are people out there who are working in a collaborative manner, I think that's going to get us a lot farther, faster, and honestly, it's just way more fun to collaborate with people.

 

Trevor Freeman  57:32

Yeah, totally. I echo that. I've said it on this podcast before. That one thing I've noticed having been kind of in this space now for close to 15 years in the sort of energy building sector, it feels like things are moving faster and more widespread. There are more people that are aware of the need to decarbonize. There are more people working on that. There are more people working on it in different ways, which is really exciting to see. So that's something definitely that I'm also quite excited about. So Sarah, it's been great chatting today. Thanks so much for sharing your experience and telling us a little bit more about what you do. And yeah, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat.

 

Sarah Grant  58:15

You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

 

Trevor Freeman  58:17

Thanks, Sarah, thanks for tuning in to another episode of The thinkenergy podcast. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, and it would be great if you could leave us a review. It really helps to spread the word. As always, we would love to hear from you, whether it's feedback, comments or an idea for a show or a guest. You can always reach us at [email protected]