For many of us, energy efficiency and renewable energy is the right thing to do for reasons beyond the short term economic impacts. We know it’s less expensive in the long run for those who make their homes and business more efficient, and also society as a whole in reduced health care costs and lower risks of long term cost escalations from resource scarcity. Of course, there’s also the benefits on future generations of a clean environment which is very hard to put a price tag on.
But for many people, short term costs matter. It’s hard to justify upgrading a furnace if it’s not going to repay the extra expense for 3 years. HVAC equipment is far less sexy than stainless steel kitchen appliances, even though we really need the HVAC equipment far more.
The price of natural gas (the main source of home heating fuel in the GTA / Ontario, and now an increasing fuel source in electrical generation) plays a big part in people’s decisions to improve the efficiency of their homes and businesses. With oil and gasoline prices moving ever upward it could make sense that we’d see natural gas prices rise too, but that’s not the case. In fact, the price today for homeowners in the GTA is about a third of what it was 5 years ago. Contrast this with oil, which costs almost twice what it did 5 years ago.
Fuel price summary for 2006 - 2012
There’s plenty of good and bad reasons why this is the case (which we’ll explore another time), but regardless, the impact on building efficiencies and renewable energy technology has been to damper growth, and maintain or increase pollution and waste.