Zubot used to live in a cold, poorly insulated house on an acreage. As for the extended cold snap, Zubot said the bright sunny days went a long way toward keeping the family toasty. The rest was supplemented by the home's heat pump, another feature that appears on many net-zero homes instead of a natural gas furnace. One barrier to designing and constructing net-zero homes is how expensive they can be. "They are aware of climate change and they have an ideological reason for [building a net-zero home]," Rott said.

Source: CBC News February 14, 2021 14:00 UTC