The legislation previously required the installation of heat pumps in new commercial buildings, but will now include residential buildings.
Nearly all new residential and commercial construction in Washington state requires a heat pump to be installed within one year. This follows the Climate Commitment Act, which the state signed into law last year to limit pollution in order to meet greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets.
Back in April, the Washington State Building Code Commission (SBCC) voted to install heat pumps in new commercial and multi-family homes. The council recently voted to require it for new home construction as well, and both laws are expected to go into effect in July 2023.
These updates to the state’s commercial and residential codes encourage the electrification of buildings, an important step towards phasing out the use of fossil fuels for heating and cooling.
A heat pump can be an ideal replacement for heaters and air conditioners because this technology allows it to absorb heat energy and move it from one place to another. Air source heat pumps are more energy efficient than standard gas-fired heaters such as stoves because they use electricity to transfer heat from outside to inside when heating and vice versa when cooling.
“Because they move heat rather than generate it by burning, they heat more efficiently than burning,” said Jonathan J. Buonocor, assistant professor of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health. gas stoves, oil heaters, wood stoves or any other source of combustion, you can benefit the environment by replacing the source of emissions of greenhouse gases or other air pollutants.”
A 2021 study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters found that 70 percent of US households can reduce the climate damage from carbon dioxide emissions associated with home energy consumption by simply installing heat pumps. For example, if all single-family homes used heat pumps, residential carbon emissions could be reduced by 32%. The introduction of heat pumps can also reduce financial costs for about 32% of households.
“In new buildings, installing a heat pump can be cheaper than expanding natural gas connections, installing a furnace and air conditioning,” said Part Vaishnav, assistant professor of sustainable systems at the University of Michigan School. environment and sustainability who participated in the study.
In 2018, about 88 percent of newly built single-family homes in Washington were already using some form of primary electric heating, according to a report by the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. Under the High Efficiency Electric Home Rebate Act (HEEHRA), low-income households who want to forgo burning heat for heating can receive up to $8,000 in rebate on heat pump installation costs.
In a recent study published in Scientific Reports, Buonocor and his co-authors analyzed data on building energy consumption and determined the Falcon Curve, a monthly energy consumption profile in the US. Peak total energy consumption occurs in December and January for heating and July and August for cooling.
Buonocore said policymakers can predict future electricity demand by adding more non-combustion renewables to the grid to provide winter power. Installing heat pumps will be an effective electrification technology to decarbonize buildings.
Without energy storage or other ways to manage grid load, meeting peak winter power demand from renewables would require a 28x increase in wind power generation in January or a 303x increase in solar power generation. However, if the building uses high-efficiency technologies such as air or ground source heat pumps, only 4.5 times more winter wind or 36 times more solar can be added to match the winter peak, ideally flattening the Falcon curve somewhat.
“Heat pumps make it possible to efficiently use electricity for heating,” Vaishnav said. “If electricity is produced in an environmentally friendly way – using wind, solar or nuclear energy – then we can eliminate CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels in stoves.”