The Future of building heat and the natural gas network in a net zero Canada

The Canadian Climate Institute mitigation team wants to provide policy guidance to accelerate decarbonization of heating in Canada’s buildings, and avoid costly dead-end pathways. A central thrust of the project is modeling technological pathways to attain decarbonization goals and understanding the economic viability of Canada’s gas networks in them. The results of the technical analysis will be used to develop policy recommendations.

ESMIA is using NATEM to meet CCI’s needs – credible technological pathways for decarbonizing the building sector in line with achieving net zero emissions by 2050 in Canada and assessment of the impacts on the gas networks.

ESMIA will model various scenarios to 2050 or beyond, representing an array of space heating and cooling technologies, fuel and energy types, and energy efficiency and deep retrofit measures.

This quantitative analysis will illustrate opportunities by assessing multiple criteria, including cost (in total, for the gas distribution network and utilities, and for households and end users).