Vancouver plans to be 100% gas free by 2050

Colsla said:

I am sure some of you have already read it, but I thought I would share this anyways

City of Vancouver plans to shift to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2050 - BC | Globalnews.ca

it's an ambitious plan by the city, and I wonder if it will be possible at all. Still, I am glad this is happening.

This may mean BC could potentially extend the tax incentives for EVs too:smile:.

Do you guys think this is possible? will the city by able to rely 80%? 90% on renewable energy by 2050?

Is there any other city in Canada that's already doing this?

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I don't find 2050 to be ambitious. The market will move toward "gas free" regardless of Vancouver's plans.

iKhalid said:

I don't find 2050 to be ambitious. The market will move toward "gas free" regardless of Vancouver's plans.

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Neither do I. When the momentum swings (as it seems to be, to those of us who are optimists...), the changes will happen very quickly.

more details about the city's plan on the vancouver.ca website here including a link to an executive summary of Vancouver's Renewable City Strategy

the strategy includes:

• T.3 Transition light-duty vehicles (cars and light trucks) to be predominantly electric, plug-in hybrid or sustainable biofuelpowered
  • ​T.3.1 Develop vehicle and fuel standards to support renewably powered vehicles
  • T.3.2 Develop supporting infrastructure that meets the needs of renewably powered vehicles

[end quote]

it also proposes that:

".... By 2050 about 25% of Vancouver’s personal vehicles would be electric using renewably generated electricity ... It will be critical to provide charging infrastructure at home, work and on-the-go locations."

in Vancouver, aside from public EV charging locations in parking lots around town, I know presently of a couple free-parking-for-EV/charging locations on city streets themselves, i.e. charging station curbside where a parking meter would otherwise be located. Hopefully we start seeing more and more of this and other kinds of public EV infrastructure here
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I wonder what the plan is to displace the 45% that comes from natural gas?

mknox said:

I wonder what the plan is to displace the 45% that comes from natural gas?

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there's a chart on the last page of the Executive Summary, showing for the total city's energy usage in 2050:

1% hydrogen
10% biomethane
14% biofuels
15% neighbourhood renewable energy systems
60% electricity

not only that, a total reduction in the city's overall energy usage of about 35% in 2050 compared to 2014
ambitious? yeah, maybe. how we get there? who knows. but it's a pretty long timeframe in which to achieve it... (the current council will be long gone by then)

maybe there'll be more details on exactly HOW the city thinks we can achieve this when the full strategy paper comes out in December.

p.s. I found another interesting aside in the plan - it claims to "support increased car-sharing and the uptake of renewably powered vehicles in car-sharing fleets..."
Hmmm... right now the city (and local taxi industry) is expressly opposed to certain ride-sharing companies *cough*Uber*cough*
I wonder if the city's plans will include ride-sharing in a future fleet of autonomous Teslas?

Well, it is ambitious. I assume there is a fair amount of natural gas heating in Vancouver (I have relatives in Victoria and Vancouver, and thought they had gas furnaces...). 45% of the city's energy as natural gas is a fair chunk. I was just wondering how that gets displaced. Maybe pump bio-methane through the pipes? Subsidize furnace replacements?

mknox said:

Well, it is ambitious. I assume there is a fair amount of natural gas heating in Vancouver (I have relatives in Victoria and Vancouver, and thought they had gas furnaces...). 45% of the city's energy as natural gas is a fair chunk. I was just wondering how that gets displaced. Maybe pump bio-methane through the pipes? Subsidize furnace replacements?

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You're right, natural gas is common. Unfortunately, there is also quite a lot of electric baseboard around too. However, Vancouver isn't really that cold and is evidently getting warmer... heat pumps would be a relatively easy drop-in replacement to a gas-fired forced air furnace.

yes lots of natural gas heating here in Vancouver, most people I know have it, especially older detached houses. Our >80yr old house has a NG forced-air furnace, plus we also use natural gas for the hot water tank, stove and also outdoor BBQ hookup. I wonder how easy it would be to convert all these to bio fuel? well I guess some things could be converted to electric (stove, hot water ... but not bbq!)

I think there would need to be some kind of rebate program to help the switchover, it would be a massive effort to convert that 45% usage. Thinking about many of the old houses like ours, at one time many were heated by oil, then at some point all switched over to natural gas. So nothing to say there couldn't be another switch of fuel.

Interesting move....

f-stop said:

yes lots of natural gas heating here in Vancouver, most people I know have it, especially older detached houses. Our >80yr old house has a NG forced-air furnace, plus we also use natural gas for the hot water tank, stove and also outdoor BBQ hookup. I wonder how easy it would be to convert all these to bio fuel? well I guess some things could be converted to electric (stove, hot water ... but not bbq!)

I think there would need to be some kind of rebate program to help the switchover, it would be a massive effort to convert that 45% usage. Thinking about many of the old houses like ours, at one time many were heated by oil, then at some point all switched over to natural gas. So nothing to say there couldn't be another switch of fuel.

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Heat pump space heating and heat pump water heating.
One reason to have such a distant target is that furnace replacement cycles are _very_ long.
With Vancouver's mild winter temperatures, I'd have thought it'd be a great place for heat pumps.