Now a little backstory and context.

Saul Griffith, Alex Laskey and Ari Matusiak started Rewiring America in 2020, around the same time I started Carbon Switch. Heat pump world is a small world, so it wasn’t long before we all met. On my first call with Alex, he told me about their plan to convince Congress to pass legislation with billions of dollars of incentives for people to electrify everything. At the time, I remember thinking that there was no way this small team of less than 5 people could accomplish something so ambitious. But I was wrong.

In just two years, Rewiring America has become one of the most influential nonprofits in the climate movement. They successfully convinced Congress to include tens of billions of dollars worth of electrification incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. They’ve convinced some of the most talented people in their respective fields to join the team. And they’re just getting started.

All the guides, reviews, and articles that I’ve produced over the last two years will still live under the Carbon Switch brand and website. But as a part of this partnership, I’ll be stepping down from my full-time role and producing independent stories about climate change.

If you’re interested in following my work and reading my new stories, you can subscribe for email updates here or follow me on Twitter.

We’re planning to share more details on this partnership in the coming weeks and months. But in the meantime, if you know of any talented folks who are interested in writing about heat pumps and all things electrification, send them our way. Rewiring America is hiring a writer to produce guides and reviews for the Carbon Switch website.

* Why the asterisks? Well, I’m technically donating all the assets of Carbon Switch to Rewiring America. But “The assets of Carbon Switch are being donated to Rewiring America” just sounds… clunky and confusing.

The post Rewiring America Is Acquiring Carbon Switch appeared first on Carbon Switch.

This week we published two guides comparing the different options homeowners have when it comes to getting a new stove: one on induction vs. gas stoves and another on induction vs. traditional electric stoves.

Friends don’t let friends install gas stoves

Readers of this newsletter won’t be surprised to learn that we recommend induction stoves over gas stoves. Cooking with gas stoves causes indoor air pollution and may be one of the leading causes of child asthma in America.

Just this week, the American Medical Association voted on a new policy position, stating that gas cooking “increases household air pollution and the risk of childhood asthma and asthma severity.”

Gas stoves are also bad for the environment. The methane that leaks from gas stoves every year—just the functioning stove, not any gas lines—has the same emissions potential as 500,000 gasoline-powered cars on the road.

But how does an induction stove compare to a traditional electric cooktop?

Induction doesn’t save much electricity

Many people hear that induction stoves are more energy efficient than electric stoves and think that makes them the clear environmentally-friendly choice. But the truth is that the energy savings aren’t much to write home about.

According to the Energy Information Agency (EIA), the average home uses 11,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity per year. Only 1.4% (140 kWh) of that electricity is used for cooking. Induction stoves are about 10% more efficient than electric stoves. So we’re talking about 14 kWh of savings.

To put that in perspective, consider that switching to a heat pump water heater will save you 2,000-4,000 kWh. Even switching a single LED bulb will save you more electricity (35 kWh per year) than an induction stove.

You’re paying for a better cooking experience

So what’s the appeal of induction over traditional electric? It mostly comes down to cooking performance. Many professional chefs will tell you it’s a superior experience. It’s lightning fast, responsive, and easier to clean up when you’re done.

But that better performance comes with a cost. As Kevin writes in our guide:

“Browsing major appliance vendors, electric stoves cost between $550-$2,000, from the most basic, exposed-coil, knob-operated model to flat-top, air-frying models that clean themselves with steam.​

In the same stores, most induction stoves start at $1,200 and run up to $2,000, within mainstream brands and common sizes. Premium models with more features start at $3,000.”

So the decision of whether or not to choose induction is really a question of how much you’re willing to pay for a better cooking experience. If money’s tight, and the idea of a more responsive cooktop doesn’t speak to you, we recommend going with a traditional electric stove. Otherwise, we say splurge and get the induction stove.

But whatever you do, don’t install another gas stove. To quote Kevin: “Electrifying your home, with as many efficient devices as possible, helps move us all closer to a world without fossil fuels.” And that’s a world we can all aspire to.

The post Is Induction Really Better? appeared first on Carbon Switch.

As some of you know, we’ve already written a bit about induction in our Induction Cooktop and Stove Buyer’s Guide. We’ve also written about why cooking on gas is terrible for both the planet and our health (Part One and Part Two).

But after publishing those articles, we received hundreds of questions via email and Twitter. Over the next month our goal is to answer as many of those questions as possible. 

We’ve already got the first induction article for you—but first, I’d like to ask a quick favor:

Induction stove survey

If you recently purchased an induction stove or range, can you help us and fill out this two minute survey?

Last time we asked our readers to weigh in like this, we ended up with a unique resource on the cost of heat pumps. This kind of data isn’t easy to come by. And it’s helpful for researchers, journalists, and other people working to help people understand why we need to electrify homes and reduce emissions.

Ok, now on to the first story in our series.

Our first story of induction month

One of the best ways to try cooking with magnets instead of fossil fuels is to buy a portable induction cooktop. Most models on the market cost less than $200 and can be on your doorstep in less than 48 hours. But there are a dizzying number of options out there. 

Kevin Purdy, our Senior Staff Writer, went deep down the rabbit hole to find the best portable induction cooktop. If you’re wondering what induction cooking is like, he’s found a good device for you.

To read more about the best portable induction cooktops, check out his guide here.

What’s coming next

Here’s what you can expect in the rest of the induction series:

• How much does an induction stove cost?
• The best induction stove
• Induction vs. gas cooking
• Induction vs. traditional electric cooking

As always, if you have any other suggestions on what we should cover, we’d love to hear from you.

Until then, internet strangers!

The post It’s Induction Month at Carbon Switch appeared first on Carbon Switch.

Just before Christmas of last year, Senator Joe Manchin went on Fox News to say that he wouldn’t vote for Build Back Better and its historic climate policies. In February, the Supreme Court heard West Virginia v. EPA, suggesting that many executive actions aimed at curbing emissions will be ruled unconstitutional. To top it all off, the U.S. solar industry came to a screeching halt last month due to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s tariff investigation. 

Despite all the bad news, the last six months were full of progress, too. It’s important to keep this in mind. After all, if you think nothing can ever change, what’s the point of trying?

In order to see, and appreciate, some of that progress for myself, I reached out to leading climate scientists, activists, and clean energy business leaders. I asked them a simple question: Has there been any progress on climate action in 2022?

If I’m honest, I thought the list would be short. Fortunately, I was wrong. In this article, I want to share some of the best news I heard for those who, like me, might need a little hope and inspiration. 

Electric vehicles

Transportation is responsible for a huge share of greenhouse gas emissions. The only way to get these emissions to zero is to stop burning fossil fuels in trains, planes, and automobiles. We’ve made a lot of progress on that in the last six months. 

EV sales are booming

In the US, EV sales grew by 76% in the first quarter of the year, enough to double their share of new car sales from 2.5% to 5.2%. 

Meanwhile in Europe, plug-in electric vehicles accounted for 22% of all new passenger vehicle sales in the first quarter of the year.

In China, EV growth was even stronger. In the first quarter of 2022, plug-in car sales rose 130% compared to the year before, bringing the total share of new car sales to 21%.

States ban gas-powered cars

Of course, the market alone won’t be enough to decarbonize the transportation sector. In order to prevent catastrophic climate change, we need policy. 

In March, Washington state passed a bill banning the sale of gas-powered cars after 2030. While Washington’s bill is considered the most ambitious, they aren’t alone: 12 other states will require electric vehicles by 2035.

Automakers finally invest in EVs

Anyone who’s seen the movie “Who Killed the Electric Car?” knows that big automakers fought tooth and nail to keep selling gas-guzzling vehicles. But it looks like they’re finally getting on the electric bandwagon. 

In December, General Motors announced it will invest $7 billion to build a battery plant in Michigan and retrofit an existing factory to produce electric pickup trucks.

That came just a month after Toyota, the largest car manufacturer in the world, announced it would invest $1.3 billion in a North Carolina electric car battery plant. Ford likewise announced a  $11.4 billion plan to build four EV factories.

Clean electricity

One of the best stories of the last decade has been the decline of coal and rise of renewable energy. Despite some recent hiccups, it appears the clean energy revolution is quickly accelerating. 

The decline of coal power continues

In April, Global Energy Monitor released a report showing that countries continued to build fewer coal-fired power plants in 2021 and retired many existing ones.

And while the US isn’t retiring coal-fired power plants fast enough to meet its climate targets, the U.S. Energy Information Administration expects 12.6 gigawatts (GW) of coal capacity to retire this year. That’s the equivalent of about 5 million homes worth of dirty electricity that will go offline. 

The US is finally building offshore wind

Today there are just two offshore wind farms operating in the US, with an embarrassing 42 megawatts (MW) of capacity. By comparison, Europe has about 1,000 times more offshore wind capacity than the US.

When the Biden-Harris administration took office, they set a goal of 30 GW of offshore wind by 2030. In February, they took their biggest step towards meeting that goal when the U.S. Interior Department’s offshore wind auction attracted a massive $4.37 billion worth of bids. By comparison, the last offshore oil and gas auction attracted $192 million in bids.

Once built, the new wind farms could supply enough electricity to power about 2 million homes.

And the Interior Department is just getting started. A few months after their record-breaking auction, they held another auction that could provide 1 GW of offshore wind capacity off the coast of the Carolinas, enough to power about 500,000 homes. 

Europe continues to build offshore wind

Meanwhile, Europe continues to make the United States’ climate ambitions look paltry. Earlier this month, four European countries announced they will build 150 GW (50 million homes worth) of offshore wind capacity in the North Sea by 2050.

The announcement comes as Europe is doing everything they can to reduce their reliance on Russian fossil fuels. 

China announces new “clean energy bases”

A few weeks before Europe’s announcement, China touted an even more ambitious clean energy plan. In the next five years alone, China will build a staggering 570 GW of wind and solar. 

To put that in perspective, in just five years, China plans to build more wind and solar than the top 5 countries (the US, Germany, India, Japan, and Spain), combined, have ever built. 

(chart showing China plan vs. current top ranking countries)

Existing nuclear plants get a lifeline

For decades, nuclear power growth in the US and other developed countries has been on the decline. That’s a problem, given that nuclear plants supply a huge amount of the world’s carbon-free electricity. 

The two main reasons for nuclear’s decline are politics and rising operating costs. This year there was some good news on both fronts. 

In April the Biden admistristration opened applications for a $6 billion program to financially support existing nuclear plants. A few weeks later, California’s Governor Gavin Newson announced he may extend the life of one of the state’s largest nuclear plants, Diablo Canyon. The plant could be key to California meeting its climate targets, while balancing its grid over time.

Buildings

Buildings are responsible for 40% of emissions globally. One of the most effective ways to cut building-related emissions to zero is to stop using fossil fuels for heat and power and electrify everything. Like other sectors, this isn’t happening fast enough, but the transition is gaining momentum. 

Heat pump installations are growing

Heat pumps are 2-4x more energy efficient than traditional heating and cooling systems. According to a recent Carbon Switch analysis, heat pumps can reduce emissions by 142 million tons in the US single-family housing sector alone.

In March, Jan Rosenow and Duncan Gibb released new data showing that heat pump sales are growing in countries around the world. They found that in Europe, heat pump sales grew by 25%, while in the US they grew by 15%. 

The US plans to ratify the Kigali agreement

After years of opposition, Republicans in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to move ratification of The Kigali Agreement to a floor vote. Ratifying The Kigali Agreement would effectively ban hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), potent greenhouse gasses found in many air conditioners and refrigerators.

The potential impact of this? According to the EPA, “The ambitious phase down schedule will avoid more than 80 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 2050—avoiding up to 0.5° Celsius warming by the end of the century—while continuing to protect the ozone layer.”

States and EU countries ban fossil fuels

In order to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, governments around the world must ban fossil fuel heating systems by 2025, according to the IEA. But the politics of this have been tricky, due to strong opposition from fossil fuel lobbyists.

In December of 2021, New York City made headlines when it banned fossil fuels in new buildings starting in 2023.

A few months later, Washington became the first state to ban fossil fuels in commercial buildings. The state plans to ban fossil fuels in residential buildings later this year. 

In Europe, Denmark and The Netherlands joined Germany and the U.K. when they announced they will phase fossil fuels out of buildings.

Other good news

175 nations agree to limit plastic production 

In order to make plastic today, you need oil. So not only does the stuff pollute our oceans, but it also causes climate change. In March, 175 nations agreed to write a treaty that would restrict the growth of plastic production. 

Tech companies commit $900 million to carbon removal

Like it or not, we will probably need to remove a lot of carbon from the atmosphere to limit global warming. In April, some of the biggest tech companies in the world announced a plan to dramatically increase funding for carbon removal.

Current net-zero commitments could limit warming to below 2°

In April, Zeke Hausfather and Francis Moore released a paper showing that if countries stick to their net-zero pledges—still a very big “if”—global warming could stay below 2 degrees Celsius. 

A planet that’s 2 degrees hotter is not cause for a street festival. But it’s worth noting that a few years ago, most climate scientists thought we were headed for 3 to 4 degrees of warming. That’s progress.

The SEC announces new climate reporting rules

In March, the SEC proposed new rules that would require public companies to report their greenhouse gas emissions, and how climate change is affecting their business. A public, regulated accounting of which firms are producing the most carbon is good data to work from.

Big oil isn’t investing like it used to

In 2013, the last time that oil prices passed $100 per barrel, oil companies invested more than $150 billion in new production. This year oil prices surpassed $100 per barrel, but companies are planning to invest half as much in new production, due largely to the fact that investors don’t see a bright future for fossil fuels. 

Insurers aren’t backing oil projects

Last month, Swiss RE, the second largest reinsurer in the world, announced it would only reinsure companies that align with science-based net-zero targets. In doing so, they became the 10th major insurance company to adopt oil and gas restrictions.

States continue to lead the way

For years, blue states have been filling the climate action void left by our paralyzed federal government. In recent months, that trend has only continued. This year saw the passage of a 100% clean electricity bill in Connecticut, a net-zero bill in Maryland, and somewhat surprisingly, a net zero commitment from North Carolina. 

A little good news isn’t enough

Of course, none of this progress is sufficient to avoid catastrophic climate change. One of the most frustrating things about this problem is that to solve it we need unprecedented action in every sector in every country all around the world. 

As Princeton professor Jesse Jenkins puts it, “We have to smash records every year for basically the rest of my life”  

Let’s go smash those records.

The post A List of the Climate Progress We’ve Made in 2022 appeared first on Carbon Switch.

Who we work with

We work with organizations that are building the solutions we need to reach zero-emissions by 2050. Here are the types of companies we do and don’t work with:

We work with companies that

• Build and sell products that help people live more sustainably
• Incorporate climate action into both their internal operations and the products and services they sell
• Are committed to diversity, equity and inclusion

We don’t work with companies that

• Haven’t set science-based emissions reduction targets
• Aren’t committed to a just energy transition
• Lobby against climate policy

Carbon Switch can reject sponsorships for any reason, including but not limited to quality, reputation, controversy, or legal grounds.

Types of partnerships

Branded content

Carbon Switch’s brand studio works with partners to create engaging content that promotes decarbonization and sustainability. This includes data-driven reports, eBooks, longform articles, and other types of content. Brands can publish this content on their site or partner with us to promote it on Carbon Switch’s site.

Budgets for these engagements generally range between $15,000 and $50,000.

In order to maintain editorial independence and integrity, this content is produced by a separate team of writers, editors, and designers than the editorial team that produces our guides, reports, and reviews. 

Nothing is more important to us than building trust with our readers and editorial honesty. When we publish branded content, we disclose the advertising relationship to our audience. 

Referral program

Carbon Switch has built an audience of readers committed to taking climate action. Many of them read our content while looking for products and services that can help them live more sustainably. 

We partner with companies we believe in to send high-quality leads and potential customers. The rate we charge for these referrals varies depending on the product and market. 

Sponsorships and display advertising

Our audience reads our guides before they make purchases, ranging anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars. We partner with companies to help promote climate solutions that can make our readers’ lives better. 

Affiliate advertising 

After our editorial team writes independent reviews of products, we sometimes add affiliate links to the products included in the article. 

This affiliate advertising doesn’t affect our reviews in any way. In many cases we write about products that don’t have affiliate programs, because they are simply the best product, or because they can help our readers live more sustainably. In some cases we recommend that our readers don’t buy any product at all. This will never change. 

Learn more

To learn more about how we partner with organizations, you can email partnerships@carbonswitch.com 

The post Partner With Carbon Switch appeared first on Carbon Switch.

As we’ve written before, installing a heat pump is one of the best ways to save energy and money on your utility bills as a homeowner. That’s because heat pumps are 2-3 times more efficient than furnaces and traditional air conditioners. In a recent analysis, we found that the average homeowner can save $670 per year by switching to a heat pump. 

As the most energy-efficient way to heat and cool a home, and one of the few HVAC systems that can run entirely on renewable energy, heat pumps are also good for the planet. 

In this article we’ll answer one of the most common questions we get at Carbon Switch: How does a heat pump work? We’ll start with a simple description, then get deeper into the science. 

There are many types of heat pumps. But in this article we’ll be talking about the most common heat pumps in America, air-source heat pumps like mini-splits. In future articles we will cover ground-source, or geothermal, heat pumps. 

How does a heat pump work: Explain it to me like I’m five.

At the simplest level, heat pumps use electricity to move heat from one place to another. In cooling mode, a heat pump moves the heat inside your home to the outside, leaving your home cooler. 

Refrigerators and traditional one-way air conditioners work the same way. In fact, these appliances are examples of heat pumps, which means you’ve probably already experienced the power of this technology. 

But what makes a heat pump (such as a ductless mini-split) different from a traditional air conditioner is that this process can also be reversed. On a cold day, a heat pump can move heat energy inside and heat your home. (Yes, heat pumps work in cold climates).

If that’s a bit confusing, think about how your refrigerator works. When you put your hand inside, it’s cold. But if you stand behind it, it’s hot. Your refrigerator is pumping heat out of the insulated space inside and into your kitchen (or more likely a little-seen space behind the fridge). Now imagine you reversed this process. The inside space would now get hot. And the outside space would get cold. That’s what happens when you turn your heat pump on in the winter. 

If you aren’t interested in the mechanics of how a heat pump works, that’s really all you need to know. Heat pumps are reversible refrigerators. They’re air conditioners that also work as space heaters. And they are the most efficient way to heat and cool a home. 

But my guess is that many of you want to understand how these things actually work. So let’s dive a little deeper. 

How does a heat pump actually work?

In order to understand how a heat pump works, it’s helpful to understand the basics of the second law of thermodynamics. I know how that reads, but trust me, we can make it quick.

In simple terms, this law tells us that hot always wants to move to cold. Put a frozen bag of soup in a bowl of hot water and it will thaw. Open the door of your house in the winter and all the warm air will rush outside. In both of these examples, heat is moving from a high temperature space to a lower temperature space nearby. 

A heat pump takes advantage of this law. In cooling mode, it makes the coils inside the unit very cold, so that your home’s warmer air flows into it. That captured heat energy is then carried outside. In this way the coils are sort of like a warmth vacuum or magnet. 

How do the coils of the inside unit absorb heat like this? One way to think of it is that the heat pump is sweating for your house. Let me explain.

Within the coils, there’s something called a refrigerant. Compared to water, refrigerants have a much lower boiling point. This means it takes far less energy to change their state from a liquid to a gas. It also means they are great at absorbing and releasing heat. 

Before entering the coils, the refrigerant passes through an expansion valve. This reduces the pressure, which also reduces the boiling point. 

At this lower boiling point, some of the refrigerant vaporizes as it reaches the heat pump’s cooling coil. Another way of saying this is that some of the refrigerant evaporates. Hence why the heat pump’s cooling coil is also called an evaporator. 

Whenever something evaporates, heat is transferred into it. This is why when you sweat on a hot day, you feel cooler. (To learn about the science behind this, check out this video on Khan Academy).

The same thing happens when the low-pressure refrigerant evaporates. As the refrigerant changes states from liquid to vapor, heat from the air in your home is transferred into the refrigerant. The refrigerant has, in essence, soaked up some heat from the inside air. The refrigerant acts like perspiration for your home, minus the stinky smell of sweat.

Here’s a more accurate version of the image above, showing the refrigerant getting warmer as it absorbs energy from the air.

From here, the refrigerant travels to the outside unit, where it passes through a compressor that increases its pressure and temperature. This causes the boiling point to shoot back up again, so that the vapor refrigerant condenses back into a liquid when it reaches the heat pump’s outdoor coil. 

Now, instead of absorbing energy, the refrigerant must release energy in order to change phases. This is sped up by a fan that blows the outside air over the coils in the condenser. This is the phase that creates the heat you feel behind a refrigerator.

From here the cycle repeats until the ideal temperature inside is reached. 

So that’s how a heat pump works in cooling mode. By using a little electricity to run refrigerant through a compressor and an expansion valve, and blow some air over it to move things along, this technology can pump heat from the inside air to outside air. 

But what if we want to warm up our home instead of cooling it down? 

How does a heat pump work in the winter?

In heating mode, a heat pump works in much the same way. But the process is sort of reversed. Heat is pumped from the outside air into your home. 

At first, this is a little hard to wrap your head around. If it’s 10 degrees outside, how can a heat pump absorb any energy? 

Consider this: Even on a cold day, there is energy in the air. At a microscopic level, heat is basically just molecules bouncing around. Molecules bounce around a little slower in cold air than in hot air, but they are bouncing around nonetheless. In fact, there would be energy in the air all the way down to –459.67°F or –273.15°C, a temperature known as absolute zero. 

A heat pump absorbs energy from the outside air by offering it something even colder to flow into. It does this by pushing refrigerant through an expansion valve in order to reduce the pressure. At this lower pressure, the boiling point goes down and the refrigerant boils. 

In other words, the refrigerant changes state from liquid to gas; it vaporizes. That’s why the unit that this happens in is called the evaporator. (Careful readers will note that the evaporator and condenser are really the same thing. They’re just coils whose name depends on whether we’re in heating mode or cooling mode). 

As I mentioned in the previous section, when something evaporates, it must absorb energy. In this case, the refrigerant is much colder than the outside air (an impressive feat in the winter, but true). Because hot wants to move to cold, some energy passes from the outdoor air to the refrigerant. 

From here the refrigerant travels into the home, where it passes through a compressor that increases its pressure. This causes the boiling point to go up. As refrigerant passes through the indoor coils, it changes state from a vapor to a liquid. In other words, it condenses. 

Whenever something changes state from a gas to a liquid, energy must be released. In this case, the energy of the refrigerant passes into the air inside your home. 

And that’s it. Heat gets absorbed into the refrigerant in the outside unit and then gets released inside. In this way, the heat pump moves the heat energy from the outside air into your home. Which is all to say, yes, heat pumps work in cold climates.

Heat pumps are more efficient than traditional heaters and air conditioners

By essentially exploiting the laws of thermodynamics, a heat pump heats and cools a home more efficiently than any other HVAC system. 

The most efficient natural gas furnace, for example, might work at 98% efficiency. What that means is that for every 100 units of energy that the furnace consumes, 98 units are converted into useful heat. Baseboard heaters and electric furnaces, to give a few more examples, operate at 100% efficiency. 

Heat pumps, by comparison, typically operate at 200% to 400% efficiency. In other words, they consume 1 kWh of electricity, and then convert that into 2 to 4 kWh of energy in the form of heat. 

That’s why, for most homeowners, heat pumps are the most efficient way to heat and cool a home. That they also can run without fossil fuels, whether in the home or at the power station, is almost just a bonus.

Special thanks to Kevin Kircher at MIT who reviewed this article before publication.

The post How Does a Heat Pump Work? appeared first on Carbon Switch.

But low energy prices aren’t an entitlement. When a petrostate like Russia goes to war or oil and gas production can’t keep up with the world’s insatiable demand for the stuff, prices rise. 

On the surface, the latest surge in energy prices might seem like a good thing to those that want to see climate action. After all, higher prices at the pump will likely lead to more demand for electric vehicles. Higher gas bills will mean more heat pump installations. It’s easy to imagine it will all work out in the end. 

But to celebrate high energy prices is to ignore the impact they have on the most marginalized in this country. Most people in America didn’t have any say in how we built our society.

The essential workers that commute an hour to work each way didn’t decide that we’d build interstates and sprawling suburbs in this country instead of dense, affordable housing. Yet, when oil prices go up, they pay the price. 

Even prior to the pandemic, a third of Americans struggled to pay their utility bill. Every year 25 million households in this country forgo food or medicine at some point to pay an electricity or gas bill. 7 million households have to turn off the heat at some point in the winter and tell their kids to wear a parka and a blanket to sleep. Few, if any, of these families have any say in our country’s energy policy. 

A cruel vision of climate action — one that celebrates high energy prices — ignores all of this. It says that everyone needs to take their medicine and atone for the sins of the Anthropocene. But what this vision ignores is the reality that in this world it is the poor and marginalized who pay the price for the sins of the wealthy. The essential worker turns off their heat in a blizzard to save money. Meanwhile the yuppie gets a new Tesla and calls it climate action. 

This is what an unjust energy transition looks like.

Of course, all of this is a bit of a conundrum for those that care about climate justice. How do you get people to stop buying gas-powered trucks, furnaces, and stoves in a world of cheap energy? 

At a high-level, the answer is simple: Provide people with cheaper, cleaner, more energy-efficient alternatives. And do it really fast. 

We need to build massive amounts of electric vehicles, heat pumps, and solar panels. We need to invent new technologies and processes to drive prices down. And when that inevitably isn’t enough, we need to stop giving subsidies to fossil fuel companies or tax cuts to the rich, and instead give money to low-income people to buy these cleaner alternatives. 

In short, we need to reduce our energy consumption as much as possible and then supply whatever demand remains with renewable energy. 

Of course, this strategy is far from novel. People have known this simple formula for decades. The difference is that we finally have the technology to make it happen. 

In the 1970s energy crisis, President Jimmy Carter famously told Americans to turn down the heat and put on a cardigan. Congress set the speed to 55 miles per hour to conserve oil. At that time, engineers hadn’t yet invented commercially viable solar panels, wind turbines, or electric vehicles. 

The last time oil prices were this high in 2008, lithium ion batteries — a core component in most electric vehicles — cost about $500 per kWh. Today they cost $130 per kWh. In 2008 it cost a utility about $0.40 to generate a kWh of electricity from solar panels. Last year it cost less than $0.04. In 2008 an LED light bulb cost more than $50. A few weeks ago I picked some up at Home Depot for a few bucks each.

Fossil fuel companies want you to believe that they are the only purveyors of cheap, abundant electricity. That we must choose between energy security and a habitable planet. But in 2022, this is complete fiction.

The solution to today’s energy crisis isn’t to “Drill, baby, drill.” But it also isn’t to watch energy prices rise and let the most marginalized among us suffer.

Much of the technology needed to provide cheap, abundant energy and avoid a climate disaster exists today. Now it’s time to deploy it.

The post Are High Energy Prices Good for the Planet? appeared first on Carbon Switch.

This past weekend, those same people fell out of love with McKay when he tweeted this.

Immediately climate scientists and researchers like Chris Colose and Hannah Ritchie criticized the tweet, arguing that the line between stability and disaster isn’t so black and white. The world won’t suddenly fall into chaos in 6-8 years. 

They also argued that at best this narrative distracts us from the fact that for some — like those living in the Global South — climate change is already wreaking havoc today in 2022. And at worst, the “biblical catastrophe” narrative will motivate a generation of activists for a few years, and then disappoint them when we fail to “fix climate change” by 2030. 

But hyperbolic as McKay’s tweet may be, it’s not that different from the argument that the UN has been making for years, or what Biden argued last fall in hopes of motivating a sluggish Congress. Both the UN and Biden suggested that if we don’t act this decade, a terrible future awaits us. 

Climate damage will be measured in more gradients than McKay, Biden, and the UN all suggest. There’s no cliff or line in the sand where the world falls into sudden chaos. Instead, the suffering wrought by climate change will sneak up on the world one ton of carbon and fraction of a degree at a time. 

Nonetheless, McKay’s tweet speaks to a truth of decarbonization: The only way to avoid catastrophic climate change is to act immediately. In order to see why, it’s helpful to look at some numbers.

The simple math of “deep, early cuts”

In 2021, all the people, corporations, and cow burps in the world emitted about 50 billion tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. 

Now imagine two different paths forward. In the first scenario, we all get our act together and start cutting emissions at the pace of 2 billion tons every year for the next 30 years. As a result we reach zero-emissions by 2047.

In the second scenario we drag our feet for the next decade and then start cutting carbon emissions at the same pace of two billion tons per year. In this scenario, we reach zero emissions by 2056. 

At first glance these scenarios might not seem that different. Who cares if we reach zero emissions in 2047 or 2056? Both are pretty close to the 2050 timeline that is so commonly referenced.

Looking only at the graph of annual emissions it’s tempting to think that we can delay action. We can wait for climate solutions to get cheaper and for our geriatric members of Congress to retire. 

But when measuring climate change, annual emissions are much less important than cumulative emissions. The total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is what really matters. And this is where the two scenarios diverge drastically. 

Despite only a decade of delay, the slow scenario results in almost twice as many cumulative emissions over the next three decades than the faster scenario. In absolute terms, that’s a difference of 450 billion tons of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. 

So how much is 450 billion tons? Let’s put that number in context. 

Between 1850 and today humans have pumped about 2.5 trillion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That means 450 billion is about 20% of all the emissions we’ve ever put in the atmosphere. 

According to the latest IPCC report, if we want to stay below 1.5 degrees, we can only emit another 570 to 770 billion tons in total. If we want to stay below 2 degrees we can only emit between 1320 and 1690 billion tons. 

A decade of delay will likely mean the difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees. And again, that might not sound like a lot. But it’s the kind of difference that terrifies the people that study this stuff for a living. It’s the difference between the Antarctic ice sheet collapsing. It’s the difference between hundreds of millions of more people living in areas of frequent heat waves, poverty, and extreme droughts. It’s almost certainly the difference between a world with coral reefs and one without. 

Whether or not our world will look like “a permanent state of biblical catastrophe” when it’s an average of 1.5 degrees warmer, as McKay suggests, will depend largely on one’s perspective and place in society. The wealthiest people may be able to insulate themselves from the worst of the damage like the villains of Don’t Look Up. But for the billions of low-income people around the world that will be more vulnerable in a world of increasing natural disasters, droughts, and extreme temperatures, McKay’s prediction might not be hyperbolic at all.

The task ahead of us, if we want to avoid that future, is daunting. But it’s not impossible. Many of the solutions we need have already been invented. With more funding, policy change, and people working on this problem, we can deploy those technologies at mass-scale and invent the remaining solutions that we need. 

One thing is clear though: Time is not our friend. We need everyone doing everything they can as soon as possible. Nothing else is sufficient. 

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Heat pumps are one of the most efficient ways to heat and cool a home. But can a heat pump system work in the winter when the temperature drops below 20 degrees?

Contrary to popular belief, modern cold-climate heat pumps can heat a home efficiently even when the temperature drops below -10 degrees. At this temperature the best cold climate heat pumps are still more energy efficient than furnaces and boilers.

Just ask the millions of homeowners in Scandinavia. People in Norway, Finland and Sweden are installing heat pumps at a faster pace than anywhere else in Europe. 

You might be thinking, “Scandinavians do everything better than the rest of the world.” But some states in America are actually adopting heat pumps at an even faster rate than the countries listed in the chart above — even some of the ones with the coldest climates.

Last year, in Maine, there were 50 units sold per 1,000 households, inching it just a little higher than Europe’s leading country, Norway. By comparison 23 units were sold per 1,000 households in the rest of the United States. 

There’s compelling evidence that heat pumps can save most homeowners a lot of money too. I recently used data from NREL’s ResStock model to see how much money the average homeowner can save by switching to a heat pump in various states. I discovered that the average homeowner in Maine — to use my favorite cold climate state as an example again — could save $718 per year.

In New York, a far more populous cold climate state, the average homeowner can save $637 per year. The millions of homeowners using fuel oil in the state could save $976 per year. 

I could go on and on. Pennsylvania: $935. Massachusetts: $838. Ohio: $676. You get the point. There are a lot of cold places in this country where heat pumps are simply the best way to heat a home and save money in the process.

The three myths of cold climate heat pumps

But why are there still so many contractors and homeowners that think heat pumps don’t work in cold climates? My theory is that three myths are to blame:

• The capacity myth, which argues that heat pumps can’t produce enough heat to keep your home comfortable in cold weather. 
• The efficiency myth, which argues that heat pumps lose their efficiency advantage when the temperature drops. 
• The money myth, which argues that due to their lower efficiency in cold weather, heat pumps cost too much money. 

To be clear, these are all myths. But like many falsehoods, their origins stem from seeds of truth. Sometimes the capacity of a heat pump doesn’t meet the load of a home. In some climates and homes it isn’t as cost-effective to use a heat pump. 

In the rest of this article I want to debunk each of these myths. But I also want to go beyond the black and white answer and explore why some heat pumps work in cold climates and others don’t. 

How do heat pumps work in the winter?

Before beginning our mythbusting adventure, it’s helpful to understand the basics of how heat pumps work on a cold day. 

Unlike traditional heating technologies like furnaces or electric baseboards, a heat pump doesn’t burn or use a fuel to generate heat directly. Instead, it uses a little bit of energy to run a compressor that effectively moves heat from one place to another.

While it might not seem like it on the surface, on a cold day there’s actually some heat in the air outside. A heat pump takes some of that heat and moves it into your home. 

This basic principle enables a heat pump to take in one unit of energy (in the form of a watt of electricity) and pump out three or four units of heat (usually measured as British Thermal Units, or BTUs). In more technical terms, by using a little bit of energy to run a compressor, a heat pump can achieve a coefficient of performance (COP) of more than one. 

If you’re curious to learn more about the physics of this, I recommend watching this 8 minute video and if you’re really curious, check out this 35 minute video. 

For now, the key things to understand are:

• Even on a cold day there’s energy in the air outside 
• A heat pump moves that into your home
• The net result is a super-efficient heating system

With all that in mind, let’s start mythbusting. 

The capacity myth

The first myth to debunk is “The capacity myth” which is the notion that heat pumps don’t have enough capacity to keep a home warm on a cold day. 

Earlier I mentioned two terms: load and capacity. To understand why “The capacity myth” isn’t true, it’s helpful to understand these two concepts.

The heating load of a home is the amount of energy required to keep it at a comfortable temperature. As the temperature changes, the load changes. On a nice 70 degree day the load is basically zero. On a freezing cold day it’s much higher; your heating simply needs to work harder to keep your home comfortable. 

The load also depends on unique characteristics of the home like the amount of insulation or the type of windows and doors. A home built in 1850 with no insulation requires more energy than a brand new home. The load is just a technical way to describe and measure all of this. 

The capacity is the amount of heat — or, in the case of air conditioning, cold — that a HVAC system can supply. If load is the leak at the bottom of your bucket, capacity is the faucet bringing in more water. 

Heat pumps are unique compared to every other HVAC system in that they don’t have a single fixed capacity. Whereas a furnace might have a fixed capacity of 100,000 BTUs every day of the year, no matter the weather, a heat pump’s capacity could range from 40,000 to 60,000, for example. 

If you think about it for a second, this makes sense. Earlier I mentioned that heat pumps effectively capture warmth from the air outside and bring it into a home. The lower the temperature drops, the less energy there is to move. Hence, the capacity goes down. 

As long as the capacity doesn’t drop below the load, the heating will work just fine. But if a contractor undersizes a system, then there’s a good chance that on a really cold day it’ll get uncomfortably chilly in the house. In the example above that’d be about -7 degrees. 

At that point, your home doesn’t immediately become an ice-box. No, that’s when backup heating strips kick on and your heat pump basically turns into a space heater. Using electric resistance heat like this isn’t efficient, but given that backup heat is generally used less than 1% of the hours in a year, it doesn’t impact operating costs very much. 

In home energy, nothing is black and white. A low-capacity heat pump in a leaky home won’t work. Even a good heat pump isn’t sufficient to provide all your heating if you live somewhere that regularly gets colder than -22 F, which is when the best cold-climate heat pumps start to tap out. 

But for the vast majority of people in America, heat pumps can supply 100% of the capacity necessary to keep their home comfortable all year round. Most complaints about heat pumps not working in cold weather are the result of user error — often by the installer — not the underlying technology.

The efficiency myth

Earlier I mentioned that the magic of a heat pump is that it converts one unit of energy into three or four units of heat. But this ratio – referred to as the coefficient of performance (COP) – isn’t a fixed number all the time. 

The colder it is outside, the harder it is for a heat pump to effectively find any heat in the air and move it into your home. Hence, the lower the temperature, the lower the COP. 

But a common misconception – we’ll call it “The efficiency myth” – is that at 30 or 40 degrees, the COP drops below one. If that were true then it would take one unit of energy to create 0.8 units of heat, for example. At that point it would make more sense to run a resistance heater or natural gas furnace since these systems convert anywhere from 80-100% of energy into heat. 

However, that’s not the case. Compared to the heat pumps of yesteryear, today’s cold-climate heat pumps can achieve COPs of more than one even at very cold temperatures. At 30 or 40 degrees, many of them achieve COPs ranging from two to three. 

Take a look at the chart below that shows the COP of a Mitsubishi cold-climate heat pump during a series of tests in Alaska. As you can see the COP generally remains above one until about -10 degrees fahrenheit. 

In other words, until the temperature reaches -10 degrees fahrenheit, this heat pump would perform more efficiently than any other piece of equipment. And how many hours a year is it really colder than -10 degrees fahrenheit where you live?

The takeaway: Today’s heat pumps are the most energy efficient way to heat a home even in extremely cold weather. 

The money myth

Most people don’t care about BTUs and COPs. They want to know how much something will cost them in dollars.

This is where the comparative analysis of all this stuff gets a little tricky. In America, energy prices vary widely depending on where you live. In Connecticut, electricity costs a little more than $0.20 per kWh. Those same electrons cost $0.10 per kWh in Louisiana. 

Natural gas has a similarly large range. In Florida the average price of residential natural gas is about $2. In Idaho it’s $0.65. In addition to that, every climate and home is different. Each one requires a different amount of energy to stay warm in the winter. 

To estimate the cost of using different fuels and equipment in every home in America would require a supercomputer crunching millions of data points. Fortunately those exist. 

In 2017, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) set out to find the best energy efficiency opportunities in every single-family home in America. After spending about a year gathering data, they plugged it into an algorithm. It took one of the most powerful computers in the country about 9 months to get through all the calculations. 

This herculean effort enabled researchers to see how much the average homeowner could save every year by switching from inefficient heating equipment to more efficient alternatives. So what’d they find? 

For the vast majority of people across the country, heat pumps are the most cost effective way to heat their home. 

Most relevant in this context, heat pumps can save people hundreds or thousands of dollars per year even in cold climates, debunking the myth that it’s too expensive to use a heat pump in a cold climate.

Again, here’s how much the average homeowner could save in a few cold climate states: 

The only places where people won’t save by switching to a heat pump are those where:

• They’re switching from a gas furnace
• And gas is much cheaper than electricity. 

But if you spend a lot of money heating your home every year, the odds are pretty good that a heat pump is going to save you money whether you live in Florida or Maine. If you currently heat your home with a standard electric unit, fuel oil or propane, there’s almost no doubt that you can save money. 

Over time, we can expect these savings to grow. Many energy analysts expect natural gas prices to go up and electricity prices to go down as governments begin pricing carbon pollution and utilities build massive amounts of cheap renewable electricity. Meanwhile, heat pumps keep getting more efficient, compared to alternatives like gas furnaces and electric resistance systems, which have already reached their theoretical maximum efficiency.

Which is all to say that today heat pumps definitely work in cold climates. But in the future they’ll work even better. 

Frequently asked questions

Do heat pumps work below 20 degrees?

Yes, modern cold-climate heat pumps can heat a home efficiently even when the temperature drops below -10 degrees. At this temperature the best cold climate heat pumps are still more energy efficient than furnaces and boilers.

What temperature is a heat pump not effective?

The best cold-climate heat pumps work effectively down to about -10 degrees. Many cold climate heat pumps have backup heating elements that turns on below this temperature in order to keep your home warm.

The post Do heat pumps work in cold climates? appeared first on Carbon Switch.

And no appliances are more important to electrify than home heating systems. In fact, the furnaces, boilers, and other heaters in our homes are responsible for roughly 500 million tons of emissions each year — as much as the entire country of Australia.

Recently I started to wonder how people heated their homes in the past and how that’s changed over time. Fortunately, the Census has been asking people just that since 1940.

Here’s what that data tells us:

In 1940, 80% of homes were heated by coal or wood

But coal and wood were quickly replaced…

… by natural gas and electricity…

… and very briefly, by fuel oil.

Now, most homes use natural gas or electricity.

The story of coal and wood is a hopeful one (sort of)

A few things stand out to me in this data. First, there’s the rapid decline of coal and wood. In 1940, about 80% of homes used the fuels to heat their homes. 30 years later, in 1970, that number fell to 4%.

As we try to electrify everything, the story of coal and wood’s decline is a hopeful one in some respects. Today, 57% of homes use fossil fuels for heating. If we could phase them out as quickly as coal and wood, we’d have 100% electric home heating before 2050.

But to replicate the speed of that transition today will be much harder. Why? In 1940 there were 37 million housing units in this country. By 1970 that number had roughly doubled to 69 million. Today there are 140 million homes – another doubling. And if there’s one universal law of energy transitions it’s this: The bigger the denominator, the longer the transition. In other words, big transitions take much longer than small ones. (For a country-level view on this, check out Valclav Smil’s wonderfully wonky book, Energy Transitions).

The frustratingly obvious key to electrification

The second thing that stands out to me in the history of home heating is the steady rise of electric heating. No other fuel has been so consistent in its growth.

Recently Lucas Davis, a professor at Berkeley wrote a paper to explore the causes of this growth. After analyzing massive amounts of data, he discovered that nothing has been more important in determining the trajectory of home heating in America than energy prices.

Since 1940, real electricity prices have fallen significantly, compared to natural gas prices which have risen.

I’ve read a lot of books in the last few years on the history of energy, and this was all very surprising to me. Biased mostly by the recent years of cheap fracked gas, I would have thought the opposite was true, that natural gas prices have steadily fallen and electricity prices have steadily risen. But that hasn’t been the case in the long term. Hence, why the share of homes heated with electricity has risen steadily.

One other way you can see the impact of energy prices on home heating is in looking at the regional variation over time. Take a look at the series of maps from Davis’ paper below. The darker a state, the higher the share of homes that use electricity for heating. As you scroll down, watch for yellow or dark red outliers.
​

​Your eye was probably drawn to the southeast where electric heating became dominant starting in the 1990s. But did you see what happened in Tennessee and the Pacific Northwest (especially Washington). Electric heating became more common in those two places early on. But why?

During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed a series of bills aimed at getting people back to work. This New Deal legislation created the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), two federal agencies created to provide cheap electricity to the masses and build massive hydroelectric dams like Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state.

Shortly after the first dams were built, America entered World War II and suddenly needed a lot of aluminum (for ships, planes, bullets, and bombs). FDR’s new dams offered a key ingredient: cheap electricity. Throughout the 1940s, America went on a dam-building spree. By the war’s end, TVA was the country’s largest electricity producer.

After the fighting stopped, America needed a lot less aluminum. But its dams were still producing huge amounts of electricity. As a result electricity prices fell. And they did so just in time for the returning veterans of the war to use it in their new suburban homes. Unsurprisingly, the homes closest to all that cheap public power — those in Tennessee and Washington — were the first to adopt electric heating.

Today, as we try to boost the share of homes heated by electricity from 40% to 100%, I think this history is important to keep in mind. Mandates, incentives, and R&D will all be important levers in the effort to electrify everything, but if past is prologue, nothing will determine how Americans choose to heat their homes more than energy prices.

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