Michael Kozuch installed a heat pump in his Provincetown apartment to help reduce his carbon footprint and increase air conditioning, which he did not have before. “It is very effective. The cooling and heating work perfectly,” Kozuch said.
The working principle of a heat pump is to extract heat from the outside air and use that energy to heat the house. It works in reverse in summer to take the heat out of the home and keep the living space cool. This is a system, even if you don’t have air conditioning, you can easily modify it to work with your current heating system.
Heat pump technology has been around for some time, but in recent years, it has been improved to absorb heat from the air in colder climates, even if the temperature is below freezing. The system uses a small amount of electricity to run.
“Heat pumps are probably the most important thing consumers can do in response to the climate crisis,” explained Amy Boyd, policy director of the environmental organization Arcadia Center, which has a seat on the Massachusetts Energy Efficiency Advisory Committee.
According to Boyd, using a heat pump to convert a home from oil heat to full electricity is equivalent to reducing 12 cars. This is why the state has set a goal of transforming 100,000 households per year, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
To achieve these goals, the state relies on homeowners to receive millions of dollars in rebates from Mass Save. This is a program run by a utility company, but you need to pay for it.
“This money comes from all our electricity and gas bills as part of the freight,” Boyd explained.
“Rebates are part of the incentive measures. It helps make the final decision,” Kozuch said. “It’s frustrating.”
Semas’s system is much larger (over $25,000), so his rebates are also larger. He spent more than a year trying to obtain funds from Mass Save.
According to Boyd, this is a problem. He explained that Mass Save has just submitted a new three-year plan to the state that includes new multi-million dollar heat pump incentives.
“If it turns out that it is difficult for people to actually get rebates, then we need to fix the management system,” she said.
Energy efficiency is the most valuable tool for customers to save money and reduce energy use. We are committed to providing more powerful solutions and at the same time through our recently submitted 2022-2024 plan. The plan also reflects Mass Save Sponsor’s continuous efforts to improve the customer experience, including improving customers’ awareness and understanding of clean technology, providing one-to-one technical consultation, and introducing useful heat pump resources (such as our heating comparison calculator) , And establish a network of residential heat pump installers to connect customers with qualified contractors who are experienced and trained in designing heat pump systems.
Semas said his customer experience was terrible, and he didn’t get all the money until I-Team contacted Mass Save. “It is unrealistic to think that the homeowner can bear the cost before someone in the news participates,” he said.
The Massachusetts Attorney General told us that they have also received many complaints about the Mass Save program.