Rethinking Lifestyle

Last week in this blog, George Klassen reminded us of something we all know: we are in the midst of a climate crisis and we will continue seeing manifestations of this crisis as we go along. A week before that, The Steinbach Chamber introduced us to the newly appointed Economic Development Officer for Steinbach. The appointment of such a person implies planning. What kind of a city should we plan to be in 2030? 2050? Just bigger, or different? We tend to think that “the world will continue to move on as it has”, as demonstrated by the recent reveling in growth that we have seen in Steinbach, Niverville, Ste. Anne and other centres in Manitoba’s southeast. So what advice do we have for this newly appointed development worker?

The climate crisis will ensure that the future will not be like the past. What the future will look like, no one knows, but in thinking about that, we at SETI want to anticipate the future and offer a series of essays suggesting what kind of a world we ought to anticipate and to plan for.

This first essay is my take on how the crisis might affect how we build houses. Not only in 2050, but even today in anticipation of conditions in 2050.

If we are serious in saying that we want to emit zero greenhouse gases (GHGs) by 2050, we will need to heat our houses very differently than we do now. Today most houses are heated with natural gas. Although natural gas is cleaner than coal, the burning of natural gas still results in the emission of GHGs.

In most cases, getting off natural gas will mean switching to electricity. The gas furnace can be replaced with an electric one or by electric baseboard heaters. But not so fast. Even Manitoba, with all its hydro-electric capacity is unlikely to have enough electricity to go around. We have to use our electricity more efficiently, and this is where heat pumps come in, both ground to air and air to air heat pumps. We have featured these in previous articles. With the same amount of electricity, an air to air heat pump can produce almost three times as much heat as an electric furnace. We will need to produce some of the necessary electricity on site with solar panels on the roof top. Houses with an east=west roof line will have a distinct advantage in 2050.

We will also be much more conscious of solar gain. Windows gain heat when the sun is shining, but lose heat at night. Solar curtains can conserve heat, but create condensation problems. Solar curtains may be a technology for 2050, but they need more development.

We may need to change our lifestyle. It’s easy to heat up water with a solar collector, but only when the sun is shining. It does not work at night and it does not work on a cloudy day. We may need to adjust our lifestyle and take showers and do our laundry only during sunny days.

What about wood heat? Small cities heated basically with wood exist in Norway, Sweden and Finland. But to heat with wood effectively, a wood burning stove in each house is not the answer. Such a wood stove is too inefficient and produces too much air pollution, which is hazardous to health. This is unacceptable. District heat, where a large furnace heats water or steam that is then piped to the homes for heating, is necessary. There is a lot of wood in the poplar bush south and east of Steinbach. The pine forests of that area are being managed for the harvest of sawn timber, but the poplar forests are simply left for grazing. What is the potential annual wood harvest from these forests? This has not been explored. When do we start building housing developments with district heat?

And then there’s insulation. What is the optimum amount of insulation? The currently recommended wall insulation of R20 and ceiling insulation of R50 is based on current energy prices. But that won’t do in 2050. Energy prices will be significantly higher, and government may have taken other steps to bring us to this goal of zero GHGs. Bylaws by 2050 (and perhaps much sooner) will require that houses are much more insulated. Houses not built to the standards of that day may need retrofits. This may be dealt with through regulation, but more likely the market will give incentive enough.