Heat pumps are still a good investment even if your grid is powered by coal

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Many people believe that there is no point in electrifying if the electricity for things like cars and home heating comes from coal-fired power plants. After all, it is widely understood that coal-fired power plants emit more carbon than other thermal power generation technologies. Will emissions be reduced if a heat pump runs on electricity from a dirty electricity grid?

That’s right, according to researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. They modeled the entire U.S. housing stock and found that switching to heat pumps for heating and cooling would reduce emissions in all 48 contiguous states over the 16-year expected lifespan of appliances. I understand.

In fact, heat pumps reduce carbon pollution, even if the process of cleaning up the U.S. power grid is slower than experts expected. The NREL team presents his six different futures for the power grid, from aggressive decarbonization (95% carbon-free electricity by 2035) to sluggish (only 50% carbon-free electricity by 2035). I used a scenario. Their results were published last month in the journal Joule.

A summary of the survey results is as follows.

Electrification of fossil fuel combustion in buildings is a key element in achieving global greenhouse gas emissions targets. We use physically representative simulations of 550,000 statistically representative households to estimate the costs and benefits of three air-to-air heat pump performance levels, with and without insulation upgrades, across the diversity of the U.S. housing stock. Analyze the distribution of

Across five grid scenarios from 2022 to 2038, all performance levels ensure greenhouse gas reductions in every U.S. state, with full implementation reducing national emissions by 5% to 9%. I understand that. Air-to-air heat pumps were found to be cost-effective in 59% of households (65 million households) without subsidies.

This conclusion is worth repeating. Using heat pumps instead of heat sources could reduce total U.S. carbon emissions by 5 to 9 percent. Is there any other technology available to individuals that can do that? Yes, electric cars can. Yes, upgrading your insulation and sealing cracks can do wonders for reducing emissions.

However, heat pumps can reduce a large portion of a country’s carbon footprint even if they are not powered by renewable energy and people can do this on their own. The incentives included in the Inflation Control Act can help.

According to Canary Media, in 2023, only 21% of U.S. electricity generation will come from renewable sources, while nuclear energy will account for 19%. The remaining 60% of electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, making the electrical grid in most parts of the United States a major source of carbon pollution.

Reduce carbon emissions with heat pumps

NREL researchers found that heat pumps reduce a home’s annual energy emissions by an average of 36 to 64 percent, or 2.5 to 4.4 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per housing unit per year. That’s an astonishing amount of emissions. For comparison, preventing 2.5 tons of CO2 emissions is the same as not burning 2,800 pounds of coal. This is the same as not driving for six months or switching to a vegan diet for 14 months.

said Eric Wilson, senior research engineer at NREL and lead author of the study. canary media, “I often hear people say, “The grid is still dirty, so it’s better to wait to install a heat pump,” but that’s faulty logic. Instead of keeping a gas furnace or boiler for another 20 years, it’s better to make the switch now. ”

The same analysis applies to electric cars.according to Yale University’s Climate ConnectionEven in West Virginia, where more than 90% of electricity comes from burning coal, electric cars still use about 33% less energy than gasoline. EVs charged in West Virginia also reduce carbon pollution by 30%.

States with cold winters and where boilers and furnaces run on fuel oil tend to have higher emissions reductions. Maine has some of the coldest winters of any state in the United States. Heat pumps have proven so popular there that the state has already exceeded its target for heat pump installations two years ahead of schedule. A dirty grid does not offset the climate benefits of heat pumps. That is the importance of NREL research.

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Air source and ground source heat pumps

Climate think tank RMI’s 2023 analysis further supports climate change for heat pumps Authentic. RMI found that across the lower 48 states, replacing gas furnaces with heat pumps begins to reduce emissions in the first year of installation, and then reduces emissions every year throughout their lifetime.

Both RMI and NREL research focus on air source heat pumps, which can draw heat from outdoor air and be three to four times more efficient than gas furnaces. However, geothermal heat pumps are becoming more popular and are more than five times more efficient than gas furnaces, allowing for even greater greenhouse gas reductions.

NREL has created an online, interactive dashboard that can be used to determine how much carbon emissions will be reduced for homes in each state by switching to heat pumps.[州]Tabs allow you to narrow your search by state, building type, and heating fuel. For example, based on a moderate grid decarbonization scenario in Colorado, a single-family home that replaces a gas furnace with a heat pump could reduce its carbon emissions by a whopping six tons each year.

Rewiring America’s Personal Electrification Planner uses more specific information about your home and is useful, as are energy auditors and whole-home decarbonization companies that calculate emissions reductions as part of a home energy audit. It’s also a resource.

The final lesson Wilson shared is that if all American households using gas, oil, or inefficient electric resistance heating replaced them with heat pumps, the overall U.S. economy’s emissions would be reduced by ~5%. This means a reduction of 9%. That’s why heat pumps are so powerful as a decarbonization tool.

Take-out

If there’s a message here, it’s that you don’t have to wait for your local electricity grid to be powered by 100% renewable energy before switching to a heat pump or electric car. Both are significantly more efficient than gas boilers, oil furnaces, and traditional cars, so the benefits of reducing carbon emissions outweigh the effects of even the dirtiest power grids. Heat pump water heaters only increase the benefits available to homeowners.

The word has come out.According to data from the Air Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigerating Association, Americans twenty one% Introducing more heat pumps 2023 Better than methane-fired gas furnaces. This is the largest development achievement for lead heat pumps over conventional furnaces in the 20 years since industry groups began keeping records.

If the United States seeks to significantly reduce its total carbon emissions, heat pumps will be an essential part of that process.