Could a heat pump be your source of northern air conditioning?

The initial results are in from a study of how heat pumps perform – and how cost-effective they are – in the Northwest Territories’ climate.

Heat pumps have been promoted as a climate-friendly and affordable heating solution across southern Canada, but the new Arctic Energy Alliance study suggests they still have significant limitations in the NWT’s coldest weather.

From 2023: How heat pumps work and how this study began

Even so, Arctic Energy Alliance executive director Mark Heyck said the study – based on about 18 months of data from Housing NWT tenants given a specific type of heat pump – highlighted an additional use he hadn’t expected.

“These units can also be used to produce cooling. They produce heat but they can also produce air conditioning in a fairly energy-efficient way,” Heyck told Cabin Radio.

“The tenants reported back to us that they really enjoyed the ability to cool their units in the summertime.

“Ten or 20 years ago, we didn’t think air conditioning was a really big need in the North. As the climate gets warmer, it’s not just a week or two in the summertime that we might really need air conditioning. It’s expanding beyond that. There were some unanticipated uses of the equipment that came to the fore.”

If you want to know more about how a heat pump might help cool your home – or what the current pros and cons look like for heating – read a transcript of our interview below.

This interview was recorded on June 10, 2026. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Miriam Bosiljevac: Tell us a little about the study.

Mark Heyck: We had been getting a lot of questions about how well heat pumps could perform in a northern climate like Yellowknife. There’s been a big push to get people to switch to heat pumps, which use electricity to produce heat, and switch off fossil fuel-based heating appliances like oil-burning furnaces, for example, which are very common in the NWT.

The two biggest challenges in Yellowknife are the cost of electricity and the climate we experience.

A heat pump is a very efficient electric heater, and what I mean by efficient is heat pumps are a technology that can take one unit of energy and turn it into two, three, or four units of heat under certain conditions – unlike a regular space heater that’s using one unit of energy to produce one unit of heat.

Because heat pumps are more efficient, we wanted to test them out to see what the cost impact would be of trying to use a heat pump.

The other challenge is the climate. Heat pumps draw thermal energy from outdoor air. At a certain temperature they begin to lose efficiency, and below a certain temperature they don’t operate.

Down to what temperature would they work? What would the cost implications be of using heat pumps in comparison to oil or propane or wood pellets? Over the course of two years, those were the questions we wanted to answer.

What was the temperature at which the pumps no longer worked?

We observed they get down to about -26C, -27C before they stop operating.

In comparison to heating oil, from a cost perspective, down to about -12C it’s more economical to use a heat pump. Beyond -12C, financially speaking, it made more sense to have your furnace turned on, using oil or propane. O

ne question we wanted to answer was, for our shoulder seasons, is there an opportunity for heat pumps to fill the heating gap before you have to turn on your oil-burning boiler or furnace? The switchover point was about -12C, -13C.

The study talked about tenants controlling the devices. How much variation was there between the different units?

There was quite a bit of variation. It’s one thing to test out equipment in a lab but in a real-world situation, you’re going to have tenants who have some control over their heating system.

The study we conducted was in partnership with Housing NWT. We had a couple of bachelor units where we installed heat pumps, wall-mounted units that produce either heat or cool air. It comes with a little remote control, and tenants might crank up the heat at certain points or crank up the cooling in the summertime beyond what’s really needed.

As we came close to concluding what we’re calling phase one of the study, which was the research with Housing NWT’s units, we decided we wanted to look at how these would perform in a more typical housing type that you would see in a place like Yellowknife.

For phase two, we’ve installed a couple more heat pumps that work in conjunction with a forced air furnace in a townhome setting. There, the equipment is set up such that it automatically switches over from the heat pump to the furnace when we reach some of those lower temperatures where the heat pump loses its efficiency.

In systems like that, there’s much less human control involved. The tenant is just using a thermostat to control the overall heat.

What are the practical implications of this study?

There’s a lot of talk at the national level around electrification of space heating, of transportation systems. The federal government recently put out a national electricity strategy, the territorial government has put a lot of emphasis on electrification as a way to meet its 2050 climate goals and GHG reduction goals. We hope this feeds into that conversation about the technological solutions that can help us to get to net zero by 2050.

The cost of electricity is a major barrier to widespread adoption of electric heat. However, there are policy tools available to the territorial government in terms of setting the price of electricity if it were to be used specifically for space heating.

For example, right now in the South Slave, there is what’s called the interruptible rate for electric heat. In hydro-connected communities in the South Slave like Hay River, Fort Smith, Fort Resolution, you can apply to the NWT Power Corporation for this interruptible rate. They’ll install a separate meter on your building, and the electricity that goes in through that meter is used only for for space heating in the building.

The formula that NTPC uses has resulted in a rate for electric heat in the South Slave of six cents per kilowatt hour. Compare that to what we’re currently paying in Yellowknife, which is around 37 cents per kilowatt hour. If you have a special lower rate, it changes the economics of using this kind of equipment quite a bit.

The other part – that we hadn’t really thought about when we embarked on the study – was these units can also be used to produce cooling. They produce heat but they can also produce air conditioning in a fairly energy-efficient way. The tenants reported back to us that they really enjoyed the ability to cool their units in the summertime.

Ten or 20 years ago, we didn’t think air conditioning was a really big need in the North. As the climate gets warmer, it’s not just a week or two in the summertime that we might really need air conditioning. It’s expanding beyond that. There were some unanticipated uses of the equipment that came to the fore during the study.

Now that you’ve done the research, who should be getting a heat pump based on this?

If your primary need is cooling, these are a very efficient way – as compared to a traditional air conditioner – to produce that cool air.

They can also work quite well in very highly energy-efficient homes and buildings. If your house was built more recently and it’s highly efficient then that is going to affect the performance of the units.

At this point, it could be very expensive to produce heat with a heat pump. We’re still in a capacity-building phase in the North, in terms of contractors and tradespeople who can install and service this type of equipment, if we are going to see widespread adoption of this type of technology for heating.

Currently, it’s marginal from a cost perspective. We’re continuing with phase two of the study in these townhomes – we’ve got some initial results but I think there’s more work and analysis to be done,