Why Heat Pumps Are Such an Important Climate Solution

Heat pumps aren't the most exciting climate solution. But they can cut a lot of emissions.

This is the first story in a series I plan to publish over the next month about one of my personal favorite climate solutions: the trusty heat pump. I spent two years writing about heat pumps and other home electrification solutions for Carbon Switch. So it brings me immense joy to be writing about HVAC and plumbing again 🤓

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Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. Otherwise known as HVAC. There aren’t many words that are guaranteed to make someone’s eyes glaze over more than those ones. 

But the energy we use to heat and cool our homes is responsible for 12% of emissions in America. And that is why climate experts are getting excited about one energy-efficient HVAC solution in particular: the heat pump.

The problem that heat pumps solve

In order to understand why heat pumps are such an important climate solution, it’s helpful to first consider a few things.

First, home energy use is responsible for 20% of emissions in America. That’s a billion tons of emissions per year. If America’s buildings were a country, they would rank 6th in annual emissions, just behind Japan and ahead of Iran. So anything we can do to cut these emissions will have a country-level impact.

The second thing to understand is that heating and cooling homes requires a lot of energy. This makes sense when you consider that a typical fossil fuel heating system is basically a zippo lighter that heats up air or water and pumps it throughout a home. 

In total, heating and cooling is responsible for 60% of the energy used in a home. That means in America we’re emitting 600 million tons of emissions per year running our furnaces and A/C. To use the country comparison again, if our furnaces and air conditioners were a country they’d rank 10th in annual emissions. 10th!

Globally, heating and cooling is responsible for 15% of emissions. But this number is expected to rise as populations and incomes grow in low and middle income countries. 

Fortunately there’s a solution that has been around for decades that can cut these emissions significantly. Enter the heat pump.

What makes heat pumps different

At risk of oversimplification, you can think about a heat pump as an air conditioner that also heats a home (or vice versa). It’s a machine that sits in your basement or on your walls that blows hot or cold air through your home just like any old furnace or A/C unit. 

It sounds fancy. It’s not. It’s actually really sort of boring. 

But as a climate solution, heat pumps are anything but boring. Compared to traditional heating and cooling systems they have two primary advantages:

They run on electricity. That means when they replace a natural gas, propane, or fuel oil heater they enable decarbonization that wasn’t otherwise possible. After all, installing solar panels on your roof or signing up for community solar wouldn’t do much to cut the emissions from your natural gas furnace.

They’re super efficient. Compared to electric furnaces or baseboard heaters they use way less electricity. (If you want to understand why here’s a good video). That means if we can get heat pumps in every home we can build fewer wind farms, solar panels, and transmission lines. Given local opposition to building this infrastructure, some which is being funded by fossil fuel companies, that’s really important.

Why everyone is excited about HVAC

With those two ideas in mind we can zoom out a bit and look at why climate and energy experts are so excited about HVAC.

First, the scale of opportunity in home electrification is massive. If we can get heat pumps in every home in America and transition to a 100% renewable grid we can cut emissions by 600 million tons per year. There aren’t many other climate solutions that can help us make so much progress towards our climate goals.

Second, unlike other important climate solutions, this technology is already production-ready. Heat pump technology has been around for decades. Manufacturers are already making tens of millions of units per year due to their popularity in countries and regions with high electricity prices. Compare this to a climate solution like direct-air capture, that is still decades away from sucking hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 from the sky, and heat pumps look pretty good.

Finally, heat pumps are one of those rare climate solutions that can actually save many people money. For tens of millions of homeowners in America, heat pumps are an investment that pays dividends for years. Many of these homeowners can save thousands on their utility bills over the course of a heat pump's life. A lot of climate solutions require sacrifice. Heat pumps are the opposite: they put money in people’s pockets.

Barriers to heat pump adoption

Now for the bad news: There are a lot of barriers in the way of reaching this 100% electric heating and cooling future. 

While heat pumps can save some households thousands of dollars over the course of their life, they currently cost a lot of money upfront. Last year, I ran an informal survey of 125 homeowners across the country and found that the average heat pump installation cost $14,000. That’s much more than the average homeowner pays to install a gas furnace. 

And those savings that I mentioned earlier? They look great over a 15 year time horizon, but most people don’t think about their personal finances over that kind of time frame. Saving $7,500 over 15 years sounds great. But that only works out to about $40 per month, which is significantly less exciting. 

Savings also vary significantly depending on what kind of heating fuel you replace. Millions of Americans use expensive fuels like oil and propane. But 56 million homes (45%) use cheap natural gas. And replacing a gas furnace with a heat pump won’t save you much money. 

Even if you’re willing to fork up the extra cash to get a heat pump, you might struggle to find someone to actually install it. I spent a couple years writing about heat pumps and home electrification and people frequently asked me for recommendations on how to find an installer. In many cities I couldn’t find anyone. Even in Los Angeles, I could only find a single installer who was booked out for months. 

All of that’s to say that getting a heat pump in every home in America over the next few decades won’t be easy. But if we are to meet our climate goals, it will be essential. 

Are we installing heat pumps fast enough?

According to the IPPC, we need to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change. That means no more fossil fuel heating systems and a lot more heat pumps. 

In the next story of this series, I plan to look at how much work America has to do in order to replace all its fossil fuel furnaces with heat pumps. I’ll cover: 

• How many heat pumps are being installed each year in America 

• Which states have the most, and least, heat pumps 

• How many fossil fuel furnaces are being replaced each year

• How these numbers compare to a net-zero by 2050 scenario

I’m planning to only send that story to paid subscribers. So if that sounds interesting, you can sign up to get that in your inbox by clicking the button below. 

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