Many people believe, thanks to years of public relations advertising by the natural gas industry, that fracked methane is a relatively clean version of fossil fuels. It certainly burns cleaner than coal or oil. But people don’t realize that fracked methane is really not clean energy.

According to the Canadian Association of Nurses For the Environment and the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (https://www.unnaturalgas.org/):

1. The fracking process to produce natural gas leaves toxic pollutants in the land and water, and occupies a significant land footprint in BC.

2. During every stage of the mining and production process leaking methane is a big problem. Methane causes immediately more global warming when it escapes into our atmosphere. In the short term, reducing methane leakage and flaring is the most important strategy to reduce our emissions.

3. Around these mine sites we have identified many health issues including birth defects, cancer, and asthma.

4. Using gas to heat our homes and our water and to cook our food exposes us to emissions, natural gas leaks, and puts at risk particularly those who are vulnerable to asthma.

5. Climate change is a public health crisis. BC Coroner reported Nov1, 2021 that there were 48 deaths on Vancouver Island and nearly 600 across BC attributed to the heat dome. There are many other ways Climate events are causing deaths.

In Nanaimo, 66% of single-family homes, 51% of townhomes, and 29% of apartments/strata are heated with natural gas. New developments like the one on Harbour View continue to add housing stock served by natural gas. Even older developments are “upgrading’ from baseboard heating to natural gas. Because we are growing so fast, we are increasing our emissions instead of decreasing them. Installing a natural gas heating system is a 20-40-year commitment to burning fossil fuels at a time when we have a climate emergency. It is even more absurd to think that these new homeowners would have the right to immediately apply for big public grants to change their heating system to heat pumps. It is far cheaper and more effective to design a Low carbon energy system like heat pumps into the building in the first place.

We are asking Nanaimo City Council to accelerate the implementation of Goal C1.1.4 in the draft city plan: to accelerate zero-carbon and energy efficient building design for all new construction before 2030 and to require this for all new construction after 2030. We would like to see hard targets for 2025, and a LCES bylaw requiring new buildings to be built to higher energy standards either by building to higher levels on the STEP codes or by installing LCES (Low carbon energy systems), or both, effective immediately.