Thank you so much for the question.
We actually released a report today looking at household affordability and energy transition. We really crunched the numbers on the impacts at the household level of adopting EVs and making the switch to heat pumps. We looked at average households in the greater Toronto and Hamilton areas that made the switch to a heat pump or to an electric vehicle, or at the condo level may have adopted a transit pass or switched their cooktops to electric. We found that the further you went along that spectrum, away from how we have traditionally heated and powered our homes and vehicles with fossil fuels, the more money you saved. It really added up over time. We found that a household homeowner in the GTHA could save $800 a month, or $10,000 a year. A condo owner could save $5,500.
Colleagues at the Climate Institute as well as the IEA have also found that over time, through the energy transition, energy prices for individual consumers and households will actually go down. Right now consumers are really feeling the pinch at the gas pump. Electric vehicles can be powered by electricity that will still cost less over time. With electric vehicles being more efficient, even if rates were to raise slightly, they would still cost less than what households are currently paying for their overall energy bills.