25 States Agree To Quadruple Number Of Heat Pumps In America::The US Climate Alliance met in New York City this week to explain the benefits of heat pumps, including better health for American families.
25 States Agree To Quadruple Number Of Heat Pumps In America::The US Climate Alliance met in New York City this week to explain the benefits of heat pumps, including better health for American families.
That’s a misleading number. In most other cases where we are using electricity–motors, CPUs, lighting, etc–we consider the heat generated to be inefficiency. It might be more accurate to say that electric resistance heating is 100% inefficient.
If you’re using resistance heating to heat your home, using electricity that’s originally produced by natural gas, then you’re using more natural gas compared to burning that gas for heat directly in a home furnace. Now, electric resistance heating can be a choice when it’s fed by clean electrical sources otherwise. Even then, though, you would prefer a heat pump if possible.
It’s not misleading at all. It’s the correct way to say it. Electric resistance heating turns 1kW of electricity into 1kW of heat. Heat pumps on the other hand can be over 300% efficient meaning that with the same amount of electricity it’s able to produce 3 times more heat that an electric radiator would. It’s not exactly like this but on the ballpark anyways.
Things can be correct and still be misleading.
And a heat pump powered by a natural gas power plant will bring more heat into the house for the same amount of gas, including losses in transmission. It will likely be more expensive to install and run, though.
But the heat is the goal.