Are heat pumps pretty good in the Atlantic region? In Calgary no installer would recommend one, and only one quoted (high) last year.
You can get heatpumps with natural gas backup(/supplement). But that can affect rebate eligibility.
My wife and I replaced our oil burning furnace with a heat pump in 2021. No natural gas, but we are in Vancouver, milder winters than Atlantic Canada.
Also I did get nervous watching Texans die during their cold snap/ power outage whenever that was.
I believe I've heard that heat pumps are good all the way down to -30 or so, though the efficiency at that point is pretty bad. That said, geological heat pumps can circumvent that as long as the ground doesn't freeze too deep where you live. Dig far enough and heat pumps work anywhere that's not permafrost, and I'm talking about 20-30 meters deep, not something insane like tapping underground magma.
Ground loops just have to be a bit under the frost line, more like 3 meters deep than 30
I thought ones that shallow are only good if the ground doesn't freeze much? I know there are horizontal ones about that deep or so, and vertical ones that are designed for places where the ground freezes, or if you have little space for a horizontal installation.
The ground does not freeze that deep until you get to very northern latitudes but yea you do need the space for horizontal loops which not everyone is going to have.
All levels of government should be offering this -- cities/municipalities should be offering loans that are repaid through property taxes. Provinces should be upgrading building codes to require them, and offering rebates paid for through fuel taxes. The federal government should be using the carbon tax to ensure their buildings are using the latest heat pump tech, and funding research to make them more efficient and reliable, and incentivising manufacturers to meet our domestic supply needs by building factories here.