As we were discussing, yesterday I attended the NRCan workshop at the EY Centre out by the airport. One of the things that was a common theme was the many new technologies that are on the cusp: air-source heat pumps, advances to ground-source heat pumps, and a lot of condensation or condensing-type boiler systems, etc. The example given was that people are worried that if they adopt those systems, insurance companies will still insist that there's a backup of a more traditional system.
The audience yesterday included people like me, but also contractors and designers. The feeling was that we have these technologies that are on the cusp—they might not be ready for tomorrow, but they're coming—but that an insurance company, a household insurance company, might say they love it and it's great that you're putting in that system, but they want you to have a backup as well. If you put in the backup, then you've really just duplicated what your original cost was.
The message I got yesterday was whether we can somehow make allowances or encourage someone like insurance providers to adapt to that type of situation. Is there a way we can bring everyone to the table to say that we're going to do this, but they're willing to accept the risk or something like that...?