On running cost alone, a heat pump beats electric baseboard in New Brunswick by a wide margin: C$20.51 against C$48.68 per million Btu of heat delivered. Against a gas furnace, the answer hinges on a number the data here does not carry, your local gas rate. Below, you’ll see how to check which side of C$20.51 that rate falls on.
The short answer for New Brunswick
A heat pump at 8.1 HSPF2 (a seasonal COP of about 2.4) costs C$20.51 per million Btu of heat delivered. Electric baseboard, which turns each unit of electricity into one unit of heat, costs C$48.68. That leaves C$28.17 per million Btu in the heat pump’s favor. These are Canadian dollars, computed from the average residential electricity price Hydro-Québec published for Moncton, ENERGY STAR efficiency levels and the standard 3,412 Btu per kWh conversion.
Natural gas is the missing line. There is no gas price in the verified data for the province, so putting a number beside the other two would be guesswork. Gas prices must come from your local utility. Take the price per million Btu of gas (a cubic foot carries about 1,037 Btu) and divide it by the furnace’s efficiency rating. If the result lands under C$20.51, the furnace is cheaper to run. Over that line, the heat pump is.
Keep the limits in view. This is running cost on the same unit of heat, not a yearly bill, and not the price of the equipment. A yearly bill depends on the house: its size, its insulation, how many million Btu it needs to get through a winter. Buying and installing either system is a separate calculation.
The line to write down: if you heat with electric baseboard, a heat pump is cheaper to run; if you have a gas line, compare your utility’s gas rate with C$20.51 per million Btu before you decide.
What each option costs to run in New Brunswick
| System | Efficiency used | Cost per million Btu delivered |
|---|---|---|
| Electric baseboard | 100% | C$48.68 |
| Heat pump | 8.1 HSPF2 (seasonal COP about 2.4) | C$20.51 |
| Natural gas furnace | No gas price in the data | Not computed; ask the local utility |
Behind the table sits one price: 16.61 cents per kWh, in Canadian dollars. It is the average residential price before taxes at 1,000 kWh a month, measured in Moncton under rates in effect in April 2025, from the Hydro-Québec comparison of electricity prices in North American cities. It is a city average before taxes. That makes it useful for comparing fuels and unreliable as a prediction of your bill. And because it is in Canadian dollars, it should never be set beside a U.S. rate.
Efficiency matters as much as the fuel price because a heat pump moves heat instead of making it. At a seasonal COP of about 2.4, each unit of electricity brings in roughly 2.4 units of heat, while baseboard returns one. Same electricity price, less than half the cost per Btu delivered. A gas furnace follows the same logic in reverse: cheap fuel, but some of the heat leaves up the flue, so its rating belongs in the math too.
The 8.1 HSPF2 used above is the U.S. ENERGY STAR minimum for ducted and single-package heat pumps. For non-ducted (ductless) split systems the bar is 8.5 HSPF2, per ENERGY STAR’s key product criteria. A ductless unit loses no heat in ductwork, so it starts ahead and has to perform better to earn the same label. What HSPF2 Measures, and Why Ductless Asks for More covers the rating in detail. When comparing two units, match the letters: HSPF2 for heating, SEER2 for cooling.
The takeaway: compare systems on cost per million Btu delivered, never on the price of the fuel alone.
How cold it gets, and what that does to a heat pump
Moncton A, the reference station, records about 4,696 heating degree days a year below 18 °C (64.4 °F), according to Environment and Climate Change Canada’s 1981-2010 Climate Normals. Degree days turn weather into cost: twice the degree days means roughly twice the fuel for the same house. This is one station, so homes elsewhere in the province will land higher or lower. The base, the unit and the averaging period are all Canadian, so the figure does not line up with any U.S. degree-day count and should not be set beside one.
The coldest month at that station has a mean daily minimum of -13.9 °C. That is an average of nightly lows, so a fair number of nights go colder. Winter here is long and it does not let up in January.
The C$20.51 figure rests on a seasonal efficiency, an average across the whole heating season. In deep cold a heat pump’s efficiency drops, and the coldest nights are carried by a backup: resistance strips inside the unit, or a furnace. On those nights the running cost drifts toward the baseboard number if strips do the work, or toward your gas bill if a furnace does. The seasonal average still favors the heat pump, because most heating hours are not the coldest ones. How Cold Is Too Cold for a Heat Pump looks at where performance starts to slip.
Read the table, then, as a season-long average and not a flat rate for every hour. Plan a backup for the coldest nights, and treat C$20.51 as a seasonal figure.
What homes in New Brunswick already heat with
Statistics Canada’s 2023 survey of primary heating systems (table 38-10-0286) gives province-wide shares: electric baseboard heaters at 31%, heat pumps at 27%, forced-air furnaces at 9%. For boilers with hot-water or steam radiators and for heating stoves, the survey does not publish a figure. The estimate was suppressed as unreliable, which is not the same as zero.
These shares describe what was installed, which says which fuel looked cheap when the houses were built. They are not a recommendation. They also cover the whole province, not one town, and they are not comparable to U.S. equipment shares, which come from a different survey, year and set of categories.
Still, the mix shapes the choice. Baseboard is the largest single group, and those homes face the widest gap in this comparison: C$48.68 against C$20.51. A baseboard house has no ducts, so the real question is how to deliver heat without them, which is the territory of Ductless or Central. The table here does not say which fuel the 9% of forced-air furnaces burn, and that matters: a house without a gas line cannot run the gas comparison at all, and the heat pump is measured against whatever the furnace uses.
A house with a boiler is a different conversion again. Hot-water radiators mean no ductwork to reuse, so a ducted heat pump has nowhere to send its air. For the wider picture, see Heating a Home in New Brunswick.
Before pricing anything: start from what your house has now, because baseboard, a ducted furnace and a boiler each lead to a different conversion.
When the other choice wins
Lower running cost does not settle everything. Four situations tilt the decision the other way, or take the gas furnace out of it altogether.
The first is a gas rate that comes out under C$20.51 per million Btu once you divide by the furnace’s efficiency. In that case the furnace is cheaper to run, and the heat pump has to win on other grounds. The second is an old furnace with years left. Running cost is only one line of the decision, and a working unit costs nothing to keep. Repairing a Furnace or Replacing It walks through that choice.
Dual-fuel is the third. A heat pump carries the milder hours of the season and a furnace takes over when the cold deepens. With a coldest-month mean minimum of -13.9 °C at Moncton, that division of labor is real here, not theoretical. The fourth is cooling. The data for this province carries no cooling degree day figure, so I won’t size summer for you. A heat pump does both jobs, and its cooling side is rated in SEER2, with an ENERGY STAR minimum of 15.2. If you plan to add air conditioning anyway, count that as part of the heat pump’s value. If you won’t, it drops out of the comparison.
A house with no gas service has no furnace question at all. The comparison there is heat pump against baseboard, and on running cost the heat pump wins by C$28.17 per million Btu.
The practical rule: if your furnace still works and your gas rate sits close to C$20.51 per million Btu, repairing and waiting can beat replacing.
Common questions
Is a heat pump cheaper to run than baseboard in New Brunswick?
Yes. At the average Moncton residential price, a heat pump at 8.1 HSPF2 costs C$20.51 per million Btu delivered, against C$48.68 for baseboard. That is running cost on the same unit of heat, not a yearly bill.
Is a heat pump cheaper than a gas furnace here?
The data here carries no gas price, so it cannot be answered with a number. Get your utility’s gas rate, convert it to cost per million Btu delivered using the furnace’s efficiency, and compare it with C$20.51.
Does a heat pump still work when it is very cold?
It does, with lower efficiency. The coldest month at Moncton averages a daily low of -13.9 °C, and the C$20.51 figure is a seasonal average. A backup, either resistance strips or a furnace, carries the coldest nights.
Which HSPF2 rating should I look for?
ENERGY STAR sets 8.5 HSPF2 for non-ducted split systems and 8.1 for ducted and single-package units. These are minimums to earn the label, not typical values, and only the HSPF2 figures should be compared with each other, since SEER2 rates cooling.