Nine states are teaming up to accelerate adoption of this climate-friendly device.
Death is coming for the old-school gas furnace—and its killer is the humble heat pump. They’re already outselling gas furnaces in the US, and now a coalition of states has signed an agreement to supercharge the gas-to-electric transition by making it as cheap and easy as possible for their residents to switch.
Nine states have signed a memorandum of understanding that says that heat pumps should make up at least 65 percent of residential heating, air conditioning, and water-heating shipments by 2030. (“Shipments” here means systems manufactured, a proxy for how many are actually sold.) By 2040, these states—California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island—are aiming for 90 percent of those shipments to be heat pumps.
“It’s a really strong signal from states that they’re committed to accelerating this transition to zero-emissions residential buildings,” says Emily Levin, senior policy adviser at the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM), an association of air-quality agencies that facilitated the agreement. The states will collaborate, for instance, in pursuing federal funding, developing standards for the rollout of heat pumps, and laying out an overarching plan “with priority actions to support widespread electrification of residential buildings.”
I don’t get the “I’d need to add a lot of insulation” bit.
So you’re heating your house just now with gas or something, and you’re basically just pissing it up a wall, and fuck the environment?
Some people don’t think that far ahead. One day their gas bill will be just as bad and they’ll still complain.
Well, when the price of electricity is 3x the price of natural gas, it’s a different story. Also, low insulation in certain climate zones means you don’t actually need air conditioning in the summer time. Really depends on what your local climate is.
Our electricity is also about 3x the price of natural gas, and the math made sense for a heat pump over a gas furnace (Southwestern Ontario, Canada). We do have auxiliary natural gas and that is set to kick in at 20°F, but even then, the manufacturer’s chart says the heat pump’s COP > 2.0 (200% efficiency). If I remember correctly, it’s COP >3.0 by 30°F.