Whether you rent or own, heating your home during the chilly months of the year can be costly. If the size of your monthly bill is causing worry, there are a number of steps you can take — both immediately and in the longer term.
First things first: if you can’t afford to pay your heating bill, “there may be programs to help you,” says Jacqueline Wilson, a lawyer at the Canadian Environmental Law Association who works on energy affordability. The Ontario Energy Board has a list of programs for low-income residents. (If you’re worried about your heat being disconnected, just know that it legally can’t happen between November 15 and April 30. There’s a specific program that may be able to help you.)
Regardless of your situation, there are steps you can take to reduce your energy use and save some cash on that bill.
Things you can do right now
Cutting your heating bill without skimping on coziness is all about one big thing: energy efficiency. You want to use the least energy possible and ensure that the heat you are using is getting everywhere it needs to be — and nowhere it doesn’t, like the great outdoors.
In the longer term, you might want to consider getting a home-energy audit, which is a comprehensive assessment of where your home uses energy and how it could do so more efficiently. There are programs to help with that, regardless of your income level (more on those later). But to start with, it could be worth using the audit mentality and systematically looking for places where you could improve.
Start thinking about where your home is losing that hot air. “Air sealing is one of the cheapest ways to start your energy-efficiency journey,” says Maya Papineau, an economics professor at Carleton University who studies heat and energy use.
Papineau’s research indicates that air sealing alone can knock dollars off your bill, without costing much up front. At its simplest, it could mean putting rolled-up towels under exterior doors. You could go one step further by installing window-insulation film and making sure window and door weather stripping is intact.
Next, in terms of complexity, comes the hunt for air leaks, a.k.a. drafts — places where cold air gets in and warm air gets out. Natural Resources Canada has a guide to finding leaks and caulking them. Longer term, you can even look at changing insulation in attics and other key areas to make it more efficient.
Whether you’re using natural gas (like about three-quarters of Ontario households), electricity, fuel oil, or even wood, making sure the heat produced is getting to the areas in your home where it’s needed is key.
“We often think of fans as summer devices … but they actually can move warm air around your home,” says Lisa Hannam, executive editor of MoneySense. She suggests using the fans you normally use in summer to keep the hot air moving from place to place. Keeping your doors open can help with this: a closed door, Hannam notes, can make your furnace work harder. She also suggests checking where your furniture is placed and whether it’s blocking a heat source, such as a forced-air vent or baseboard. While you’re at it, make sure that heat source is working — if it isn’t, you can troubleshoot.
Optimizing your heat use is also about timing. Opening blinds when it’s sunny out and closing them when night falls can be helpful, Hannam says. If you have a furnace, check how often its filters need to be changed, and follow that schedule for maximum efficiency, says Usman Syed, the Ontario Ministry of Energy’s director of conservation and energy efficiency. He also suggests figuring out when your energy costs are lowest (you can check your energy provider’s website for rates) and trying to shift as much heat use as possible over to that time frame. You can install a programmable thermostat or a smart device to optimize when your heat is on. (With smart devices, it’s always worth considering the associated privacy risks and picking the one that has a security level you’re comfortable with.)
If you’re a tenant, some of the bigger adjustments aren’t things you can do — or should need to do. Landlords have specific responsibilities regarding heat. The Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario has a tip sheet for what to do if your unit is too cold and a longer blog post that covers the issue of heat more generally. Remember the general rules for interacting with your landlord: keep track of your communications, and gather data on your unit temperature if possible.
Things you can do (possibly) do in the future
Winter is already here, but it’s never too early to start planning for next winter and all the ones after. Planning ahead is a key part of making the most of your energy dollars — and it’s something most people don’t do. “We know that a lot of people make heating-replacement decisions when there's a high degree of urgency,” says Sarah Miller, the adaptation research lead at the Canadian Climate Institute. “So, when their system has actually failed or is imminently about to fail.” That can lead to decisions that aren’t the most efficient and will cost you more in the long term.
Hannam emphasizes that getting a home-energy audit will set you up for success, since your adviser will make suggestions tailored to your home and tell you about specific government rebates and no-interest loans that can cover part of the cost of upgrading.
You can even get a rebate to cover much of the cost of the audit itself, says Hannam. Audits usually run between $300 and $600, she says; a rebate as part of the Canadian government’s Greener Homes Initiative may cover up to $600. (Make sure to read about the Greener Homes Initiative so you understand what’s required — and keep your receipts!)
Miller recently coauthored an extensive study on the effectiveness of heat pumps in different Canadian climates and home types. She and her colleagues found that shifting your heating source to a heat pump is likely to pay for itself in just a few years. “If you're looking at it from a cost basis, we do find that, in almost all scenarios, the heat pump tends to be your best option,” Miller says.
The federal government has made heat pumps (including for those using heating oil) a policy focus, and the province recently added them to the Energy Affordability Program, a suite of income-gated measures to help Ontarians reduce their electricity use. Syed says heat pumps are currently part of an Enbridge trial program being rolled out in a few municipalities, and Enbridge customers may hear more in the future.
But changing the way you heat isn’t the only option. Making changes to improve your air sealing with new insulation, doors, or windows may be a great step, and there are a host of others. And when you’re saving money on your bill by making your home more energy efficient, you’re also directly reducing your climate impact, especially if your home is heated by natural gas, which is a fossil fuel composed mostly of methane. A reduction in your bill because your heat use is more efficient translates into a similar-percentage reduction in your climate contribution, says Papineau: “If you’re using fossil fuel, that’s kind of what your emissions savings will be.”
That’s one reason there are so many programs designed to offer support — they’re intended to help Ontario hit those all-important emissions-reduction targets. Since we know climate change will cost more the worse it gets, you can think of that as another way to save money.
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