Britain declared a national emergency this week amid a historic heatwave that melted runways, disrupted train travel and smashed temperature records.The devastation is especially severe in a country like England, where 95% of the population does not have air conditioning.
A heat pump, with its misleading name, is a two-way air conditioner that moves warm air from your home to the outside, keeping your home cooler during the hotter months.During winter, they turn around, absorbing thermal energy from the outside and pushing warm air in.
Energy officials, lawmakers and scientists tout the devices as inexpensive, energy-efficient systems that can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared with traditional heating and cooling equipment.
An estimated 90 percent of households in Japan use heat pumps to heat and cool their homes, leading to a 40 percent drop in electricity use in the country over the past decade.In Italy, the government effectively pays citizens to use the technology; homeowners get 110% reimbursement for heat pump costs.
But these devices lack popularity in parts of the United States and Europe due to low public awareness and high installation costs.The UK is far short of its annual heat pump installation target for 2021.
Energy experts point to several reasons why heat pumps have not yet entered the mainstream.First is the name, which makes it hard to identify it heats and cools.”It’s confusing,” said Corinne Schneider, chief communications officer for the energy nonprofit CLASP.
High installation costs (systems can cost as much as $10,000 to purchase and install) are also a barrier for many users.
But as heatwaves force people to find ways to cool homes and Russia’s war in Ukraine has sent energy prices soaring, experts say a heat pump is a natural solution: an all-in-one system that cools during heatwaves and reduces reliance on gas in winter .
“It’s a home comfort issue. It’s a climate issue. It’s a safety issue,” said Alexander Gard-Murray, a climate change researcher and economist at Brown University’s Climate Solutions Laboratory.”Either one of these would be enough to go big on heat pumps, but taken together, I think the evidence is insurmountable.”
The technology that underpins heat pumps dates back to the 1940s, when American inventor Robert C. Webber built a prototype copper tube heating unit in his basement.Over the years, Weber’s creations have inspired the core technology of modern refrigerators that channel heat away from the back of the refrigerator, keeping the interior cool.
There are two main types of heat pumps.During the warmer months, an air-source heat pump sucks hot air from a room, blows it through the coils and circulates it through the refrigerant so that cool air returns to the room.During the colder months, the pump captures thermal energy from the outside air and circulates the heat through the machine, which is then blown inside.These pumps are similar in size to central air conditioning units.
Ground source heat pumps transfer heat stored in the earth into buildings in winter and out in summer.These options are less common and more expensive than air source options.
One of the most common complaints about heat pumps is that they stop providing heat on very cold days, experts say.However, advances in heat pump compressors have made them more efficient, cost-effective, and successfully delivering heat at cooler temperatures.
As heat pumps improved, lawmakers and policy experts tried to make the devices more mainstream.In the United States, a tax credit program offers about $300 in rebates for people who convert their homes to heat pump technology.Amid Congress’ stagnant climate agenda, a proposal raises incentives to $600.State and local utilities also have their own rebate programs.
In the United States, an average of about 16,000 air conditioners are installed per day.Researchers from CLASP and Harvard University predict that if all centrally air-conditioned homes purchased subsidized heat pumps over the remaining ten years, consumers would save about $27 billion in heating and cooling bills while reducing 49 million tons of Greenhouse gas carbon dioxide emissions to 2032.
The researchers noted that much of the savings is due to heat pumps being able to heat homes 50 percent more efficiently than furnaces and hot water boilers.CLASP’s Schneider said Europe’s heatwave was a good time for heat pump technology to go mainstream, as many people were buying air conditioners for the first time.
Other researchers point out that the stakes are high.”Every day [people] fail to physically install as many heat pumps as possible, which means they’re more dependent on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and Gazprom this winter,” said Gard-Murray of Brown University.
As climate change makes heat waves more common, cooling equipment should be low-emissions, added Sam Calisch, a heat pump expert at Rewiring America.
“It’s being used in more and more places where air conditioning hasn’t been installed more widely before,” he said.”So every time that happens, we need to think about heat pumps, because that allows us to… reduce some of the fossil fuel demand that we currently have.”
Because heat pumps are expensive, spending money can seem difficult.Since most people are forced to buy air conditioning and heating equipment, they often don’t have much time to decide what to buy, Schneider said.They end up with something commonly found in stores or recommended by maintenance professionals.
“If you’re in a heating or cooling emergency … you’re going to take whatever stock you have,” she said.”HVAC installers need to have a way to increase their inventory of this technology and understand it.”