City of Powell River Council voted to expend $30,000 from the city’s climate action fund to continue funding the CleanBC Better Homes municipal rebate top-ups program for heat pump conversion.
This will be a continuation of city involvement in the program. In February 2019, council allocated $20,000 toward municipal rebate top-ups to help upgrade homes to heat pumps. In July 2021, an additional $20,000 was allocated for the program.
At the September 1 city council meeting, councillor CaroleAnn Leishman said this has been an amazing program.
“Council has been very proactive and progressive in promoting people switching out of their fossil fuel-powered heating systems and switching over to electric heat pump systems,” added Leishman. “There are really good rebates available through the province and there is this opportunity that has been available for the last few years for municipal councils to offer a top-up, which is $350 per homeowner to changeover to a heat pump from their fossil fuel-powered heating systems.
“It’s just something the city can do to help the community reduce emissions because we have been doing amazing work with our corporate emissions, but it is trickier to get out and reduce the community emissions,” said Leishman. “This is a good way to do that. I fully support this allocation of funds. We have a healthy sum in that climate action reserve fund, so this is a good use of funds.”
Councillor Rob Southcott said the fund comes from provincial money, so it’s not city tax dollars being expended.
“For a small investment, the return on carbon emission reduction is profound,” said Southcott. “It’s a big way of having an impact for a modest investment of provincial money that has been given to us. It’s one of those toe in the door kinds of things that helps people start realizing, yes, they can actually do something and also receive a real benefit back. I support all of the elements of this.”
Councillor Cindy Elliott said not only does the program help the city lower its emissions, but given that the weather is getting warmer, it’s also an effective way to cool homes.
“It will get pretty popular over the next little while,” added Elliott.
Councillor Jim Palm said he supports the endeavour and this will be the third time the city has allocated money for the program. He said the first two intakes were $20,000, which were amply applied.
“We still have a few funds left in the second allocation,” said Palm. “They haven’t been used up yet, is my understanding. I’d like to be consistent, but if council thinks this is a good idea for spending $30,000, we can go with that.”
Elliott said she recalled that staff said the uptake had increased and that $30,000 wouldn’t get the city as far as the previous allocations.
“The uptake has been more popular and they are going through the money faster,” added Elliott, “so that’s why the increase was requested.”
Council voted unanimously in favour of the expenditure.
