How do you heat houses without burning fossil fuels? The Greens’ answer is: heat pumps. They are pushing heat pumps as an all-electric solution, and the Biden/Harris administration has enacted major subsidies to try to entice homeowners off fossil fuels and onto heat pumps.
If you are not sure what a heat pump is, you are not alone. Neither am I. I am told that it is basically the same as an air conditioner, only in reverse. Heat pumps can, indeed, generate heat, but at what cost? Like all “green” measures, they are absurdly inefficient and therefore expensive. If you haven’t heard much about heat pumps yet, you should start paying attention. They are right up there with wind turbines in the Greens’ plan to downgrade your standard of living.
At Watts Up With That?, mechanical engineer Mark Krebs writes, “Heat Pump Subsidies: Never Enough.” There is a lot of information at the link, but I want to just pass on this anecdote, which gives you a sense of why heat pumps aren’t catching on:
As the owner of a 30-year-old gas furnace, I was in the market for a heat pump during all of 2023. As a low-income retiree, I also looked forward to an $8,000 subsidy from the Inflation Reduction Act passed in November of 2022. Well, as readers of this blog probably know already, the IRA subsidies did not take effect in 2023 (and are now projected to be available in California no sooner than late summer 2024).
I had gotten a bid in the summer of 2022 of $25,000 for a heat pump, but I was waiting for the IRA subsidy to take effect. Then I discovered that the bidder had failed to mention that installing a heat pump would also require new ductwork because the existing ducts were too small to handle the larger air volumes required by a heat pump. Two subsequent bids in mid- and late-2023 ranged from $30K to $40K when ductwork was included.
So when the furnace failed in December 2023 at age 31, I had to make a quick choice: a replacement gas furnace (costing $12K with an 18-month 0% loan, and a 2-day wait for installation), or $30K+ for a heat pump with a couple month wait for installation. The estimated fuel savings from the heat pump worked out to under $1000 per year, not even close to enough to outweigh the $18K capital cost differential. The fact that the estimated life for the heat pump was 15 years, versus 30 years for the gas furnace, didn’t help at all.
In other words, the heat pump made no sense–it is inferior technology–and the government’s bribe was nowhere near big enough.
But all of this is battlespace preparation on the part of the Left. First they cajole; then they bribe; then they use naked force. Liberals have every intention of depriving you of the option of heating your home (or driving your car, or turning on your lights, or cooking your food, or mowing your lawn) with fossil fuels, the greatest contributors to human material well-being in all of history. Rather, you will be forced to use absurdly inefficient technologies like heat pumps, whether you like it or not, and no matter how much the cost degrades your standard of living.
Consider yourself warned.
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