Nine states are teaming up to accelerate adoption of this climate-friendly device.
Death is coming for the old-school gas furnace—and its killer is the humble heat pump. They’re already outselling gas furnaces in the US, and now a coalition of states has signed an agreement to supercharge the gas-to-electric transition by making it as cheap and easy as possible for their residents to switch.
Nine states have signed a memorandum of understanding that says that heat pumps should make up at least 65 percent of residential heating, air conditioning, and water-heating shipments by 2030. (“Shipments” here means systems manufactured, a proxy for how many are actually sold.) By 2040, these states—California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island—are aiming for 90 percent of those shipments to be heat pumps.
“It’s a really strong signal from states that they’re committed to accelerating this transition to zero-emissions residential buildings,” says Emily Levin, senior policy adviser at the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM), an association of air-quality agencies that facilitated the agreement. The states will collaborate, for instance, in pursuing federal funding, developing standards for the rollout of heat pumps, and laying out an overarching plan “with priority actions to support widespread electrification of residential buildings.”
Installing better insulation is always the best first step, better than the climate control solution or solar. That’s why some of those states require insulation improvements before other rebates can be taken. Sometimes they also heavily subsidize the costs of improving the insulation.
Once the structure is properly insulated, then the best option between heat pumps and solar depends on the cost of electricity, as you noted.
A while back I sealed and reinsulated my house and replaced all the duct work. It made a massive difference on my electric bill as my house’s HVAC system is a heat pump. I did all the work myself and got a rebate from the electric company and it ended up costing me about $1000 out of pocket. I did some calculations back then and my payback period was only a couple of years so it has been paying me back for quite a while now. It was one of the best things I have ever done.