For this month’s edition of the Yale Climate Connections Editors’ Corner, we got together to talk about the climate-friendly, energy-efficient, all-electric replacement for furnaces and air conditioners: the heat pump.
Sara, who lives in North Carolina, is already the proud owner of a heat pump. In chilly Rhode Island, Pearl is dreaming of a heat pump water heater. And Sam, a renter in Wisconsin, plans to drop hints that her landlord should swap out her furnace for cold-climate heat pumps.
This discussion has been edited and condensed.
Sam: Heat pumps have been on our radar lately because we’ve been researching Vice President Harris’ climate policies, and she called heat pumps “a piece of art.” Also, the U.S. Department of the Treasury released information about Inflation Reduction Act tax credit uptake, and apparently, over 260,000 households have gotten heat pumps using the tax credits, and 100,000 have gotten heat pump water heaters with the tax credits.
Sara: Nice.
Sam: Yes, and I also think it’s a good time to talk about it while it’s still warm because, despite their name, heat pumps are also air conditioners. I thought we’d start out with the question: What is a heat pump?
Sara: What’s most important for people to know is that if you need your house to have air conditioning and heat, a heat pump is your one-stop shop. It can heat your home. It can cool your home. It’s very efficient. It runs all on electricity, so you’re not burning fossil fuels in your home. If you’re a homeowner who is concerned about climate change, the next time your furnace breaks or your air conditioning breaks, consider replacing it with a heat pump, because that is one of the most important ways to make your home more climate-friendly.
Pearl: I have a question for both of you as the heat pump newbie in this. I know that there are heat pump water heaters too, so if you have a heat pump that’s generally cooling and heating your home, do you also have to have a heat pump water heater?
Sara: It depends on your exact setup, but if you have separate systems for heating your hot water and for space heating, you’ll probably need heat pump versions of both.
Sam: And the secret on the money-saving here is that if you can get the two kinds of heat pumps in different years, you can get the most tax credit savings. There’s a 30% federal tax credit for heat pumps, but it’s capped at $2,000 annually. So if you bought them the same year, you might hit that cap,
Sara: Speaking of costs, I’ve been through this. My air conditioning unit broke in 2021. It was a combined air conditioner and gas heater. It broke in the middle of summer when it was incredibly hot, so we were rushing around to replace it, but I still wanted to take the opportunity to make my house more climate-friendly.
I got a quote for replacing the unit with exactly the same thing, which would have kept burning fossil fuels for another 10 or more years, and also a quote for a heat pump. And at that time, the cost was exactly the same. So for me, there was no penalty for choosing the more climate-friendly option. But it’s super exciting now that for many people, heat pumps are actually cheaper because we’ve got this 30% federal tax credit. So there’s even more of an incentive to make the climate-friendly choice.
Pearl: So when you got the estimate, it was before the tax credits came into effect?
Sara: That’s right.
Sam: A silly question is: Do we have beef with the name heat pump, and what would we rather it be called? Since it is not only pumping heat into your home, it is also pumping cool air into your home in the summer.
Sara: I really want to hear Pearl’s thoughts on this, but I will say I have a huge beef with the name, and I think it should be called something else. I am a bit of an evangelist for heat pumps. I’m very excited about them, but first of all, it’s kind of a boring name, and also it’s a confusing name, which is just a horrible combination.
I was telling a friend of mine about heat pumps and how great they are, blah, blah, blah, blah, and she was like, “But does that mean you have to get an air conditioner too?” And I was like, “No, it does both, but you would never know it from the name.”
Pearl: I agree with you. It’s poor marketing, calling it a heat pump. But would you call it? “The cool heat pump?” “The heat pump that cools you?”
Sam: It needs a little jingle. There’s a song, right?
Sara: Oh, there is a song about heat pumps.
Pearl: There’s a whole music video, isn’t there?
Sam: Oh, incredible. We’ll have to embed that.
Sara: OK, so what should we call it instead? I mean, I guess we could just explain it until the end of our lives.
Pearl: It is kind of our job.
Sara: How about “the climate-friendly furnace?” No, but that sounds like it just heats.
Pearl: Yeah, and furnace, in my mind, I just always think of gas burning.
Sam: “Cool … cool … the cool” … nope. Before I asked the question, I should have had an idea. [Everyone laughs.]
Sara: “The climate-friendly HVAC?”
Sam: Another part of the heat pump conversation is it seems like there’s a little bit of a lag in contractor education. I know, Sara, you had an experience. And other people I’ve talked to have had an experience where they really had to fight a contractor for a heat pump. I imagine it’s hard because you feel like, as a homeowner, you need to have all the answers so that you can teach the professional. But I think that’s changing also with more training.
Pearl: Wait, Sara, so when you got your estimate for your heat pumps, did you get multiple people in to give you estimates?
Sara: I did. I got three quotes. Two of the companies were pushing me to stay on gas and asking me why I wouldn’t want to do it. And I told them straight up that I didn’t want to buy something that would keep adding methane to the atmosphere for 10 years.
Pearl: Did they look at you weird?
Sara: One of them was younger, a guy in his 20s, and was like, “Oh, that makes sense.”
There are some really good guides out there for homeowners about what you might need and how to ask for it. I don’t want people to feel overwhelmed. This is totally doable.
Everybody’s house is different, but at my house, this was not hard to do. The contractor came in and did it in one day. He just took the gas machine away and replaced it with a heat pump and, bam, I was done.
Sam: I think in the Upper Midwest too, there’s a lot of, not necessarily misinformation, but we’re still learning about how they work in really cold temperatures. And so contractors can be a little bit hesitant, or often the recommendation is that you keep your natural gas furnace. But they do work. They work really well in cold temperatures. We have a whole story about it, which we will also link.
Read: Do heat pumps work in cold places? Here’s what you need to know.
Pearl: I don’t know if it’s the same in every state, but in Rhode Island, you can – and I did this – you can have a consultation. It was really helpful because this person is not tied to any company that’s trying to sell you anything. They just really want you to get what works for your house. And it was just really helpful having that initial consultation because it is quite intimidating. I don’t know anything about this stuff. Just kind of getting some common-sense advice on what would work for our home was really helpful.
Sara: That’s great. Seems like every state should have that.
Pearl: Yeah, because I obviously want to get a heat pump system in our home, but the water heater is my primary concern because of my need for hot showers in the winter, and the one that we have, which burns oil, doesn’t do a very good job. The person I spoke to knew everything about hot water heat pumps as well. So it was just really helpful.
Sam: People are talking more and more about the danger of burning gas in your home and what it means for air quality. So I also wonder, Sara, as you have made steps to get away from gas, does that feel better?
Sara: I absolutely do feel better because there’s a couple of things that I think about.
One is I don’t like the idea of burning gas in my home. There’s just been more and more studies about how burning gas in the home contributes to childhood asthma and all sorts of potential health problems.
But then the other piece is there’s a lot of pollution in the community that comes from all of these appliances and heating systems that are burning fossil fuels, and so by taking that away and switching over to a heat pump, I’m actually doing my part to improve the air pollution in my community.
Pearl: Can you talk a little bit about what the utility bill is like? Obviously, your electricity bill is going to go up, because now everything’s run on electricity. But do you see a net saving?
Sara: For my house, it was initially about the same. Right after I got the heat pump installed, I was paying much less for gas but more for electricity. But since then, I’ve installed rooftop solar panels, so my electricity bill has shrunk dramatically, too.
When natural gas prices shot up after Russia invaded Ukraine, it made me feel a lot more secure because electricity prices are much more stable than natural gas prices, so the price that I was paying for natural gas shot up, but I wasn’t using very much of it anymore.
There have been studies that show that in many places in the U.S., for new construction, going all-electric is cheaper over the long term. For me, it has made a ton of sense financially to just make that switch.
Sam: Also, as places farther north that previously didn’t have to have air conditioning are getting hotter, and people are trying to figure out air conditioning solutions, maybe that’s a time to think about a heat pump. And a heat pump is more efficient than your average air conditioner.
Pearl: I still don’t have air conditioning. We did get one quote for putting in heat pumps and putting in a split unit. So we’ll get there eventually. Right now, we just suffer through. We put in one unit in Kai’s room. [Editor’s note: Kai is Pearl’s toddler, who could power the entire country if we could just harness his energy.] It’s just such a pain in the butt, and you can see the lights flicker in the house, because they’re pulling so much electricity.
Sam: The window units, they’re not efficient. They are very expensive.
Sam: So what do we call these things? “Cool pumps?” “The climate-friendly HVAC.” That’s the best one we’ve got.
Sara: It’s still pretty clunky.
Sam: “Electric home temperature control.”
Pearl: I like “the climate-friendly HVAC system.”
Sara: “The HVAC that doesn’t give your kids asthma.”
Pearl: We need an acronym. It should spell out CLIMATE.
Sara: “HVAC that doesn’t rely on a complex network of pipes that sometimes blow up?”
Pearl: That definitely spells out CLIMATE. [Everyone laughs.]
Sam: Well, we’ll keep thinking. Readers, tell us what you think. Write in.
Sam: Is there anything else we want to touch on?
Sara: I would say if you’re heat-pump curious, or if you end up getting a heat pump, it’s really important to talk about it, because still, most people don’t really know what they are. As we’ve just shown, they have kind of a bad name, but they’re amazing machines, and they have a really great tax credit attached to them. The more I talk about them, the more people in my social networks get them. And you can do the same thing.
Sam: And one day we’ll come up with the name, and we’ll all be famous.
Sara: That’s the plan.
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