Port Moody votes to ban natural gas in new home construction

A Metro Vancouver municipality has laid out plans to phase out fossil fuels for new housing starting next year.

Port Moody city council voted last week in favour of implementing the highest level of B.C.’s Zero Carbon Step Code, starting Jan. 1, 2025.

The new regulations would ban fossil fuels including natural gas for heating, hot water or cooking in new applications for housing.

“If we don’t do this now, all of those housing units will have to get retrofitted down the road,” Port Moody Mayor Meghan Lahti told council at the Sept. 10 meeting.

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“We will not be able to meet our targets, in terms of our emission targets.”

The city has joined 10 other B.C. municipalities in adopting the initiative years ahead of the province’s 2030 deadline.

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“We had a very lively debate at our council table in regards to it,” said Port Moody Coun. Callan Morrison.

Morrison said he backs the idea behind the ban, but not the timeline.

“When we’re doing it faster than the province is doing it, sometimes that can be difficult to manage, and I can respect developers not being able to deliver as affordable with it being accelerated that way,” he said.

Critics argue that the regulations would increase costs on already expensive new builds.

City staff said the gas ban regulations could increase the cost of a project by between zero and two per cent.

The city will further require all new home construction to be fully net-zero ready by Jan. 1, 2027, which staff said could increase the cost of a build by one to eight per cent.

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“We’ve got municipalities that don’t have the expertise, particularly smaller municipalities, making energy policy decisions that should be made by the provincial energy ministry and the BC Utilities Commission,” said Bill Tieleman, director of the BC Coalition for Affordable Dependable Energy.

Port Moody has taken the opposite approach to the City of Vancouver.

In July, Vancouver council backpedalled on its own similar regulation, voting 6-5 to restore natural gas as an option for heating and hot water in new home construction.