Our children and grandchildren will look back on this part of human history with confusion and disgust.Americans spend roughly 90% of their time indoors, and we heat them by burning fossil fuels that also warm the planet and pollute the air in our homes.Our descendants will be especially confused because over the years we’ve had easy access to a cleaner, more efficient alternative: an all-electric heat pump.
Still, the humble heat pump is finally starting to catch on.Unlike boilers or furnaces, which burn fossil fuels to generate heat, this unit transfers heat to the indoor space through an outdoor unit.(It looks a bit like a traditional air conditioner.) In the winter, the heat pump extracts heat from the outside air, but in the summer it can pump the heat in reverse, providing cooling.Exchanging heat in this way is much more efficient than generating it.
Last year, 4 million heat pumps were installed in the United States, up from 1.7 million in 2012.Europe has also started using heat pumps, with sales in Germany up 28% in 2021 and 60% in Poland.That’s no small thing given the global pandemic slowdown, and it’s just the beginning of growth, especially with Europe’s push for energy independence from Russia during the war in Ukraine.
“Heat pumps are a few years behind electric vehicles, but are really worth watching, and if we deploy them sooner, emissions can be reduced significantly,” said Jan Rosenow, European programme director at the NGO Regulatory Assistance Project.Transition to clean energy.
Here’s how heat pumps work, how governments can use them to reduce emissions, and how to get a heat pump.
A heat pump works on the same principle as a refrigerator, it keeps food cold by pumping out hot air instead of cold air.The heat you feel outside the machine is actually being transferred away.Likewise, heat pumps can cool buildings by expelling hot air.Or, in winter, the heat pump can operate as a sort of “reverse refrigerator,” extracting heat from the cold outside air and bringing it indoors to heat the building.(Simply put, the engineering involved is quite complicated.)
“The air may be relatively cold, but it transfers heat from the cold air into your home,” said Randal Newton, vice president of engineering at Trane Technologies, which makes heat pumps.”Your refrigerator is cold and it’s still transferring heat from that cooler to your kitchen.”
Home heat pumps can even run on geothermal energy in your backyard.Geothermal pumps do not exchange heat with the air, but with the ground itself using plastic pipes buried in the yard.(You don’t have to live on a hot spring; once you go four or five feet underground, it maintains a fairly constant temperature throughout the year.)
“The easiest way to think about this is like your backyard is a battery,” said Ryan Doherty, president of Geothermal Exchange, a trade association that advocates for geothermal heat pumps.”You can use that thermal battery in the winter, and you can use the energy in your yard to heat your house. Then in summer, the process is reversed: you take the heat out of the house and put it back into the battery inside.”
The downside to a heat pump is that you can’t install one yourself unless you’re really handy.Whether using air or geothermal energy, a heat pump is no harder to install than an air conditioner, but you still need a professional.But the good thing is that the heating and air conditioning company (disclosure: my aunt owns one) has been installing these for years, so just check with local businesses for a quote.
Installation will cost between $4,000 and $8,000, but the heat pump’s efficiency pays dividends: It uses half the electricity of electric stoves and baseboard heaters.”Even if your heat pump is powered by coal electricity, it’s still a major upgrade,” said Duncan Gibb, principal analyst for heating and buildings at REN21, which advocates for renewable energy.”There’s really nothing to lose by making buildings more efficient and deploying heat pumps as soon as possible. I think the government should really take this seriously now.”
Of course, the long-term idea is to run heat pumps with electricity generated from renewable energy sources rather than fossil fuels.But economics is a bit tricky.Buying a heat pump is an upfront cost, and fossil fuels like natural gas for furnaces are still cheap.But as heat pumps become more popular, prices will drop, just like solar panels.Heating and cooling homes cleanly will therefore become cheaper, says Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at New York University, who sees both technologies as investments.”It’s like a solar panel,” he said of the heat pump.”First of all you spend a lot of money, right? Sure, it’s a lot less now than ever, but you spend money, and once you have money, you’re printing free electricity.”
To make heat pumps more affordable, especially for low-income people, governments need to provide tax breaks and huge subsidies to incentivize homeowners and building owners to switch.(Honestly, if billionaires really cared about saving the planet, they’d buy heat pumps for everyone.) But officials could also ban new gas connections, as cities like New York City and Berkeley are already doing.”Let’s cut the gas line, let’s install a heat pump,” Wagner said.”It creates a better indoor climate, which creates a better home. It’s a no-brainer.”
Another option is “heat-as-a-service,” where homeowners pay a monthly fee to have a company install and maintain the heat pump.(Such programs are starting to appear in Europe.) “It’s kind of like a phone program,” Gibb said.“This is obviously great because it not only reduces upfront costs for consumers, but also reduces the risk associated with fuel price volatility.” So if your local power plant is still running on fossil fuels and prices are soaring, your Heating bills will not be affected.
One of the next challenges will be making more heat pumps (in the midst of a tightening supply chain).Another is finding the labor required to install them.Gibb said the UK plans to install 600,000 heat pumps by 2028, which will require more work than currently trained installers.”There’s a general lack of skilled installers,” Gibb said.”There are a lot of small companies out there that install gas boilers, do retrofits and things like that, but they don’t necessarily know how to install heat pumps.”
Accelerating the deployment of heat pumps, therefore, will require juicing manufacturing — a device the Biden administration is reportedly considering invoking the Defense Production Act to produce to help rid Europe of Russia’s fossil fuels — and large-scale installations for skilled workers training program.thing.Our future generations and the planet will surely appreciate our efforts.