Toronto Star: Tyler Hamilton

The federal government appears to be getting serious about earth energy as a way to heat and cool our homes.

Ottawa’s new ecoEnergy “retrofit” program is coming into focus. Though it hasn’t publicly released this information, Natural Resources Canada has already established grant amounts for a variety of residential retrofits that improve a home’s energy efficiency.

By far the largest single grant offered through the program is $3,500 for any homeowner who installs a ground-source heat pump system, which also goes by the names “geoexchange” or “earth energy” or “geothermal” system.

First, a quick primer: two metres or more below the Earth’s surface, the temperature is a constant 10 to 15 degrees Celsius. A geoexchange system circulates a glycol solution underground through a grid of tubing. It extracts heat from the ground in the winter and stores it there in the summer. A device called a heat pump manages the balance by switching between heating and cooling, depending on outside temperatures.

It’s considered a clean-energy technology because it requires no natural gas or oil, and while electricity is required to run the heat pump, it’s a relatively constant amount, unlike power-hogging air conditioners, which put strain on the grid during times of peak demand. Overall, a geothermal system can reduce a home’s energy costs by up to 50 per cent.

Industry reaction from the federal incentive was clear enough.

“It’s amazing, it’s absolutely amazing,” said Deborah Kaplan, executive director with Zerofootprint Energy, a renewable-energy company trying to make geothermal systems affordable to Toronto homeowners. “This is huge for a federal government incentive.”

Continue reading the full article at The Star.