This report prepared by The Atmospheric Fund (TAF) was released in November 2020. To advance climate action and reduce carbon emissions in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), The Atmospheric Fund (TAF) is focused on scaling up the adoption of deep energy retrofits (defined here as savings of 40 per cent or more) in multi-family buildings. Deep retrofits offer multiple benefits to communities including carbon reduction, cost savings, and health and comfort improvements. The report describes the results of installing heat pumps at a nine townhouse blocks having 120 suites in total, ranging in size from one- to three-bedrooms. To demonstrate the viability of retrofits focused on electric heat pumps, TAF installed and monitored eight cold climate air-source heat pumps (CC-ASHPs) as a pilot project. The results and lessons of the pilot project are summarized here. The heat pump pilot demonstrated that the multi-split systems can effectively maintain comfortable conditions through a cold Toronto winter.
Key words: HVAC, energy management, research & development, system monitoring equipment, heat pump, deep retrofit