I want to show you an equation that doesn't make any sense,
but is actually true
For the home heating and cooling technology known as the heat pump
this equation means big potential savings both for carbon emissions and for utility bills
I'm Shannon Osaka and I'm a climate reporter for Grist.
I've been looking at two different questions -- first,
how good are heat pumps for the climate, and second, how much money do they save?
The term heat pump is actually a little bit confusing. A heat pump
is actually a super efficient heating and cooling machine -- and the thing
about a heat pump is that it doesn't actually make heat -- it moves it.
That sounds a bit weird, but this is how it works: So if your house is too hot a heat pump can
basically take the warm air from inside your house and put it outside -- that's exactly the same as
an air conditioner. But if your house is too cold, a heat pump can also bring warm air from outside
into your house -- and it can do that even if the outside air is really pretty cold. The science
here is a little bit complicated but because a heat pump is moving heat instead of creating it,
it can reach efficiencies of 300 or 400 percent. A normal heating system, on the other hand, can only
reach an efficiency of about a hundred percent at best. And because of this efficiency superpower
heat pumps can actually save a whole bunch of greenhouse gases from spewing into the atmosphere.
Depending on your current heating source, switching to a heat pump can save you anywhere
from about 1 metric ton to about 7 metric tons of carbon emissions every single year.
The carbon savings are the most dramatic if you have an old electric baseboard heater. In that
case you can save over seven metric tons of carbon dioxide every year by switching to a heat pump.
For reference, if you went vegan for an entire year, you'd be saving about one metric ton of
carbon. And if you skipped an international flight to Europe, then you'd be saving another ton.
But in this case you don't actually have to give up meat or your international
travel plans to save carbon, you're just ensuring a pleasant year-round environment.
"Have you heard the expression room temperature?" "Of course."
"This is the room. This is the room temperature room."
Okay, but let's be real -- being a homeowner is expensive and retrofitting your home
heating system is often super expensive. So even with all these carbon and climate
saving benefits does switching to a heat pump makes sense financially?
First off, everyone's house is different and heat pumps like houses can come in all different shapes
and sizes. They can be ductless or ducted, they can be geothermal or air-source or water-source.
Some of them can even look like George Clooney.
So whether a heat pump makes sense for you is going to depend on what type of house you have,
your existing fuel system, and all of these other little complicated details.
But... it turns out that for a lot of Americans,
buying and installing a heat pump is going to make a lot of financial sense.
To understand why, let's crunch... some numbers.
So let's say you're a homeowner and your fuel oil furnace is near the end of its life
you're trying to decide "Okay do I buy a new fuel oil furnace
or should i go for an air-source heat pump?" According to the home repair site fixer
for a 2,000 square foot house, the average cost of buying and installing a new oil furnace
is about $6,000. Buying and installing a new air-source heat pump that will
fit into existing ducts on the other hand, is about $10,500. So nothing to sneeze at. But,
electricity is a lot cheaper than fuel oil and don't forget about heat pumps monster efficiency.
The energy research group Carbon Switch calculates that for the average homeowner, switching from a
fuel oil furnace to an air-source heat pump will save about $950 every year in utility bills.
That means that in less than five years your heat pump will have actually paid
for itself and you'll be saving almost a thousand dollars every year after that.
And on top of that you'll also be saving about four tons of carbon
dioxide from spewing into the atmosphere every single year.
But for some people buying and installing a heat pump isn't going to make quite as much
financial sense. Let's say that you're the same homeowner, but instead of fuel oil your home is
heated by a natural gas furnace. Actually, the prices for a gas furnace are about the same,
$10,500 and $6,000, but natural gas in the U.S. is still pretty cheap -- partly
because we haven't accounted for all the harms that it's doing to our environment.
"I'm gonna head back down and see if i can't get that heated to stop leaking methane gas!"
So natural gas is only about one-third the cost of electricity. But remember how I said earlier
that heat pumps are three to four times more efficient than any other heating system? That
means that you'll still be saving some money, just not quite as much. Again,
based on those same earlier numbers from Carbon Switch the average U.S. homeowner can expect
to save around $104 a year, if switching from a natural gas furnace to a heat pump.
That makes switching to a heat pump a little bit less affordable,
but it would still save carbon emissions -- about 1.1 metric tons every year.
And your heat pump will also double as an A/C, so that could actually save you another $7,000 or so.
Some utilities and cities are willing to give you rebates for up to a couple
thousand dollars off the initial cost of buying and installing a heat pump
and if your home is heated by pretty much anything that's not natural gas,
you can expect to save between $800 to $1,200 a year on utility bills.
And it's important to remember that these averages are just averages. While the co2 savings for heat
pumps are pretty clear, the financial savings are a little bit more complex. If you want to dig a
little bit deeper into these numbers, we'll leave a link to other sources in the video description.
Each house, installer, and climate zone means something a little bit different for heat pumps.
And if you're anything like my editor, you're probably asking yourself
"That sounds great, but is this system going to be
able to keep up with these cold New England winters?"
Back in the 80s heat pumps were mostly installed in warm southern states where there was a need
for air conditioning in the summer and just a little bit of heat in the winter.
The common refrain was, heat pumps don't work below 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now, a new technology known as variable speed compressors -- which is basically
just a way to speed up the flow of heat -- means that there are now air-source heat
pumps that work when the outside temperature is down to negative 31 degrees Fahrenheit.
In Maine, a group called Efficiency Maine has given out rebates to help homeowners install
about 100,000 heat pumps in basically one of our coldest states. That state now sells
more heat pumps per capita than even the heat pump crazy Scandinavian countries.
Now it is still true that some older or lower performance models still don't work super well in
the cold, so if your heat pump from 10 years ago doesn't work in sub-zero temperatures, don't be
surprised. But if you get the right heat pump for your environment -- and potentially have a backup
source of heat for the really really cold days -- then heat pumps can pretty much carry you through.
The bottom line is, the humble heat pump can save loads of co2 emissions,
it can keep you warm in the winter, it can keep you cool in the summer, and, in lots of cases
it can also save you money... -- it can also save you money.... it can also save you money.
If you want to learn more about heat pumps be sure to check out the links
in the description or check out some of my reporting for Grist.