Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Sparks

Heat Pumps Outsold Furnaces for the Second Year in a Row

And more funding is on the way.

Heat pump installation.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

It’s official: In 2023, for the second year in a row, heat pumps — highly efficient, electric space heaters — were more popular than natural gas furnaces.

That’s according to the most recent data from the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute, a trade association for appliance manufacturers that publishes shipment data for heating and cooling equipment every month.

Though the number of shipments in the data is technically defined as “when a unit transfers ownership,” it is a rough analog for sales. AHRI’s count for 2023, published Friday, showed that even as overall shipments were down in 2023, 21% more heat pumps were shipped than gas furnaces, up from a 12% lead in 2022.

Climate experts see heat pump adoption as a key pillar for getting the country off fossil fuels and halting global warming. It’s one of the most effective choices an individual can make to reduce emissions — even today, when the electric grid is still largely powered by fossil fuels. One recent study by University of California, Davis, researchers looked at the emissions savings of switching from a gas furnace to a heat pump in 99 cities around the country. It found that homeowners would likely cut their carbon footprint between 13% and 81%, depending on where they lived.

The new shipment data may be an indicator that state and federal policies designed to convince homeowners and developers to make the switch are working. A number of states offer subsidies for heat pumps. Starting last year, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, the federal government also began offering a $2,000 tax credit for heat pumps.

What this data does not tell us is how many of these shipments were for new buildings and how many were for retrofits. According to the most recent government data, some 60% of existing homes are heated by fossil fuels. But while heat pumps are often a more economic choice when they are integrated into a new building from the start, installing them in an existing building that has a natural gas furnace or boiler is a much more expensive and complicated endeavor.

A number of states — especially those in colder climates — are working on additional policies and incentives to solve this. Earlier this week, environmental protection officials from Massachusetts, California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Rhode Island signed a non-binding agreement to have heat pumps make up 65% of their residential heating equipment sales by 2030, and 90% by 2040.

It’s an ambitious set of goals. Emily Levin, a senior policy advisor at the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, an association of air quality agencies, told WBUR that heat pumps currently make up only about 25% of heating equipment sales in the nine participating states. As part of the commitment, the states agreed to develop an action plan within the next year outlining policies and other strategies to achieve the goals.

Additional funding is also on the way. Later this year, the Department of Energy will distribute funds from the IRA to states to create new or expand existing rebate programs for electric appliances. Electrification advocates are also eyeing other grant programs in the law, like the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, to develop additional ways to help homeowners pay for the switch.

Blue

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Sparks

Major Renewables Nonprofit Cuts a Third of Staff After Trump Slashes Funding

The lost federal grants represent about half the organization’s budget.

The DOE wrecking ball.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Interstate Renewable Energy Council, a decades-old nonprofit that provides technical expertise to cities across the country building out renewable clean energy projects, issued a dramatic plea for private donations in order to stay afloat after it says federal funding was suddenly slashed by the Trump administration.

IREC’s executive director Chris Nichols said in an email to all of the organization’s supporters that it has “already been forced to lay off many of our high-performing staff members” after millions of federal dollars to three of its programs were eliminated in the Trump administration’s shutdown-related funding cuts last week. Nichols said the administration nixed the funding simply because the nonprofit’s corporation was registered in New York, and without regard for IREC’s work with countless cities and towns in Republican-led states. (Look no further than this map of local governments who receive the program’s zero-cost solar siting policy assistance to see just how politically diverse the recipients are.)

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Sparks

Esmeralda 7 Solar Project Has Been Canceled, BLM Says

It would have delivered a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power.

Donald Trump, Doug Burgum, and solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Library of Congress

The Bureau of Land Management says the largest solar project in Nevada has been canceled amidst the Trump administration’s federal permitting freeze.

Esmeralda 7 was supposed to produce a gargantuan 6.2 gigawatts of power – equal to nearly all the power supplied to southern Nevada by the state’s primary public utility. It would do so with a sprawling web of solar panels and batteries across the western Nevada desert. Backed by NextEra Energy, Invenergy, ConnectGen and other renewables developers, the project was moving forward at a relatively smooth pace under the Biden administration, albeit with significant concerns raised by environmentalists about its impacts on wildlife and fauna. And Esmeralda 7 even received a rare procedural win in the early days of the Trump administration when the Bureau of Land Management released the draft environmental impact statement for the project.

Keep reading...Show less
Blue
Sparks

Trump Just Suffered His First Loss on Offshore Wind

A judge has lifted the administration’s stop-work order against Revolution Wind.

Donald Trump and wind turbines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

A federal court has lifted the Trump administration’s order to halt construction on the Revolution Wind farm off the coast of New England. The decision marks the renewables industry’s first major legal victory against a federal war on offshore wind.

The Interior Department ordered Orsted — the Danish company developing Revolution Wind — to halt construction of Revolution Wind on August 22, asserting in a one-page letter that it was “seeking to address concerns related to the protection of national security interests of the United States and prevention of interference with reasonable uses of the exclusive economic zone, the high seas, and the territorial seas.”

Keep reading...Show less
Blue