In our short documentary ‘Fighting Energy Poverty with Free Heat Pumps’, we share the story of a unique free heat pump program on Prince Edward Island, Canada. Prince Edward Island has one of the highest energy poverty rates in the country, alongside increasing vulnerability to climate impacts.
Free heat pumps are one tool being used to improve energy efficiency, increase affordability, and increase resilience to extreme temperatures. Heat pumps are electric appliances used for both heating and cooling a home. They help replace gas or oil furnaces, allowing communities to reduce reliance on toxic & polluting fossil fuels.
Alongside reducing our dependence on fossil fuels -adaptation and building resilience to worsening climate impacts is non-negotiable, especially for communities on the frontlines of climate impacts in Canada. Although some provinces have dirtier grids than others, heat pumps lower emissions in all Canadian provinces because they are so energy efficient. The benefits will only increase as electrical grids shift to more renewable sources.
Our documentary ‘Heat Pumps Save Lives’ tells the story of how heat pumps helped keep people cool during the Heat Dome in 2021. This is when hot air is trapped by high pressure and prevents cool air from entering a region which causes temperatures to rise and stay high – often with devastating impacts. The Heat Dome was Canada’s deadliest extreme weather event to date and 619 people lost their lives due to the heat. In the story from H W Flesher Housing Co-operative in British Columbia we learn that tragedies like this could be prevented in the future by switching to heat pumps which can be used to both heat and cool your home. The members of this co-operative banded together to install heat pumps in all 100 units, months ahead of the 2021 heat dome, and they say this decisive action saved lives.
“The prices keep going up for oil, so I wanted to explore different energy alternatives and it’s an efficient method of drawing heat that’s essentially free from the air and heating your house with it, so it made a lot of energy sense and dollar sense as well. It also reduces CO2 output in the atmosphere that oil produces when it burns.”
~ Mark Sheridan, owner of a free heat pump, based in Vernon Bridge, Prince Edward Island, Canada who shares his story in ‘Fighting Energy Poverty with Free Heat Pumps’
“That summer was particularly hot and we opened the hall up as a cooling center. And we had a number of seniors that would come down during the heat of the day, do their knitting, read and just hang out and not worry about overheating. So the board seeing the interest that was in the community decided to start a retrofit of all the heating systems in the co-op. And luckily enough that was the winter of 2020-2021. And the heat dome happened in the summer of 2021. And personally I think that it saved lives here.”
~ Bob Gilson, resident of the Flesher Co-Op in British Columbia who shares his story in ‘Heat Pumps Save Lives’.”
‘Fighting Energy Poverty with Free Heat Pumps’: A huge thank you to Mark Sheridan, Karla Bernard, and Steph Arnold for their participation in this project. This documentary was beautifully created by PEI-based filmmaker.
‘Heat Pumps Save Lives’: This documentary was created by PEI-based filmmaker Millefiore Clarkes of One Thousand Flowers Productions.