Heat pumps were supposed to help save the planet. But they've run into a bump.

[Mosby]

Last edited Mon Oct 21, 2024, 10:23 PM - Edit history (1)

Sales of solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles have soared over the last few years — helping to slow global warming and take dangerous pollutants out of the atmosphere.

But one technology critical to fighting climate change is lagging, thanks to a combination of high interest rates, rising costs, misinformation and the cycle of home construction. Adoption of heat pumps, one of the primary ways to cut emissions from buildings, has slowed in the United States and stalled in Europe, endangering the switch to clean energy.

Heat pump investment in the United States has dropped by 4 percent in the past two years, even as sales of EVs have almost doubled, according to data from MIT and the Rhodium Group. In 13 European countries, heat pump sales dropped nearly in half in the first half of 2024, putting the European Union off-track for its climate goals.

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Close to 5 million American homes are still using oil for heating. People like to claim that it's clean energy, but it produces 50% plus more greenhouse gases than a heat pump, depending on the various sources of electricity.

[Laurelin]

1. I have 3 heat pumps

They're great. They work well and my power bills d dropped. (Just in case anyone wants a personal review).

[sboatcar]

2. Same!

I had radiator heat previously, haven't seen how well they heat yet, but the AC was definitely a lot cheaper than window units all summer

[FrankTC]

3. Maybe Not As Great As Advertised?

I have three air sorce heat pumps, installed to replace electric baseboard heat. They cut winter electric bills in half, but still more than I wanted to pay. I installed a natural gas boiler, and the heat bills were cut in half again. On the other hand, I have to admit that the ASHPs are great for summer cooling — amazingly inexpensive.

[Think. Again.]

4. Yep....

"...thanks to a combination of high interest rates, rising costs, misinformation and the cycle of home construction..."

All of that seems to be behind a lot of our difficulty in making the transition away from CO2 emissions, especially the mis (dis?) information.

[localroger]

5. The problem is that, for most individuals, if you already have a working heater...

...it doesn't make sense to upgrade to a heat pump. In a hot climate (such as NOLA) you won't use it very much, so it will take years to justify the investment. In a cold climate, it is often too cold for the heat pump to keep up -- they can only effect a 40 degree F or so temperature shift -- so they require conventional extra backup heat anyway. It might make a big difference if everyone magically switched to heat pumps, but in this case "magic" is a synonym for "money." If ever there was a good reason for an individual home government subsidy, this would be it.

[pscot]

8. Heat pumps work both ways

They provide air conditioning as well as heat.

[localroger]

9. Yes, and they work pretty well for A/C

...although they are about 1.5x as expensive (at least last time I was shopping) for a heat pump equivalent to an AC, as they are more complicated to build and install. This is compared to a typical small house (I have 1600 sqft) self-contained heating-cooling package with a dedicated AC and electroresistive heating using the same ducts, blower, etc.

I could drop a heat pump in its place when I replace that central air/heat system, but it would be more expensive, and would still need electroresistive heat to come in when the heat pump can't do it. If my neighborhood had LNG hookups, the LNG would make any electric heating seem anemic by comparison. It's also terrible for the environment and the fuel is expensive, but you can't complain about the performance even if you need a 70F heating boost during a snowstorm. A heat pump simply can't do that, at all. As heaters they are cheap to run and great for the environment but they can't do more than about a 40F temperature increase. You need a very expensive 2-stage system or backup conventional heat just about anywhere it snows more than once every year or two.

If it's not part of your all-house system, backup heat also often takes the form of room space heaters, which are also quite dangerous compared even to room window A/C units, where you have to give a little more thought to their power and mounting needs.

[hunter]

6. The most efficient high-end models are hard to get, and qualified installers are expensive.

Whenever a new highly efficient heat pump model gets good reviews on social media sites such as YouTube those models are immediately sold out and back-ordered for many months.

If you are building a new house, or if your old furnace, water heater, or air conditioner quits working one day, you want it NOW, whatever they've locally got in stock.

Whatever they've got at Home Depot looks pretty good when you are taking cold showers or you can see your breath when you get out of bed in the morning or are soaked in sweat

Leading edge heat pump technology is still in the domain of those who have comfortable "disposable" incomes and some patience.

[NNadir]

7. The first sentence in this text is untrue.

The massive trillion dollar "investment" in solar panels has done nothing to address the extreme global heating we are experiencing. The accumulation of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere is accelerating, not decelerating.

Statements to the contrary are Trumpian in nature, bald face lies.

[localroger]

10. So there is no single-button magic fix for climate change

Heat pumps are one stitch on a tapestry much of which will need to be changed. They do help, although there is debate as to how much and whether it's enough to justify throwing the money at them instead of some other stitches that might give a better ROI. I tend to think heat pumps are not worth it compared to other places we could be spending money, but to say they don't work or help at all is also untrue and unhelpful.

[NNadir]

11. This is precisely the belief that led to the extreme global heating we are experiencing.

There are obviously one form of energy that is vastly superior to all others. It was invented by some of the finest minds of the 20th century, nuclear energy, only to be demonized in favor of a series of unhelpful Rube Goldberg schemes that did not work, are not working and will not work via the application of fear, ignorance, and selective attention.

I note, and have noted repeatedly in my long tenure here, extending over more than 20 years, the limitation of using nuclear energy only for the purpose of making electricity is ill advised, since it can do much more because of the high temperatures which nuclear fuels exhibit in operation.

[localroger]

12. Well this wasn't about nuclear vs other sources of power

I think you are trying to generally loop back to the "tragedy of the commons" which is that a situation where everyone can prosper if nobody is greedy is ruined because individuals start taking as much as they can for themselves without consideration of the overall welfare. Unfortunately, the only real solution we have come up with to this is to legislate what must be done and enforce those laws. As things stand, it simply does not make sense for most individuals to upgrade to heat pumps if they have a working central conventional climate control system. And there are dozens if not hundreds of similar things (see: electric vehicles) where our entire society is structured to encourage individual autonomy and self-interest over the common good. Michael Moore said it as plainly as I've ever seen in his movie Sicko; they (countries with non nightmare health care systems) seem to have a "we" mentality instead of a "me" mentality. That is something far more fundamental than what kind of power plant we should be building to power all these electric cars and heat pumps.

[NNadir]

13. Any conversation that moves away from primary energy is superfluous in my view. At the end of the day...

...the real issue is that and only that, primary energy, at least if one is seriously concerned about the extreme global heating we are now experiencing. I'm compelled to disagree with your view, in the strongest terms possible, about what is and is not "fundamental."

Heat pumps are devices that do not produce primary energy; they consume it. If the motor is electric, it is almost certain except in places like France, that electricity from primary energy that is generated by the combustion of fossil fuels.

It is true that on an industrial scale, heat pumps can be, and often are, used for process intensification, which I applaud, but their purpose is to recover some primary energy that would otherwise be rejected into the environment, but that issue is technical. For household use, heat pumps are merely devices that consume energy, again, generally energy supplied by the combustion of dangerous fossil fuels with significant exergy destruction. They have, therefore, almost nothing to do with addressing the extreme global heating we are now experiencing since they have nothing to do with waste heat recovery.

As a technical issue, this is certainly out of the realm of comprehension by the likes of "Gore is the same as Bush," "Alito is the same as Ginsberg," Michael Moore.

What Michael Moore doesn't know about the world could certainly fill, and does fill, vast libraries. I have no use for the guy either as a philosopher, a political or social thinker, or a person who has any understanding of the world.

[localroger]

15. Well considering that the OP wasn't about primary power at all

...and my reference to Moore generally helps to make your point if you actually read what it says, then all I can say is nice knowing you. Good luck with your quest.

[NNadir]

16. Thank you for your good wishes. I can read quite well, and irrespective of silly diversions, my quest is seeing...

...better times, too little too late, but better than nothing,

[OKIsItJustMe]

14. Quick! How fast can you build a nuclear plant!?

We’re going to need a lot of them! and fast!

http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-power-plant/



Maybe, just maybe, it’s not strictly an either-or proposition:
https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/100-percent-clean-electricity-by-2035-study.html