Environment Canterbury, New Zealand will provide funding for an initiative by Line Trust South Canterbury to run a heat pump project in Timaru this winter. The company has been running a Healthy Homes project, which has insulated over 300 homes so far in South Canterbury. Line Trust South Canterbury, in conjunction with a company called Energy Mad is now about to launch an ecoheater project. They will be offering subsidised, high quality and energy efficient heat pumps to participants, to replace their inefficient electric heaters. Line Trust South Canterbury has now offered to extend the programme to also provide heat pumps to 500 homes with open fires or woodburners if ECan provides the balance of funding for these. Environment Canterbury has agreed to initially provide NZD 100,000 towards this initiative. This amount will be sourced from funding received from the central government and will go towards heat pumps in 250 Timaru homes (NZD 400 per home). If the Ministry for the Environment agrees to provide NZD 50,000 funding, an additional 125 homes will be added to the programme.