A heat pump is a kind of HVAC appliance that handles both heating and cooling. It doesn’t burn fuel to generate heat. Instead, it uses electricity to move heat around. In the winter, it extracts warmth from outside air, the ground, or water and transfers it indoors. In the summer, it reverses the process to provide cooling. Heat pumps are far more efficient than conventional heaters and air conditioners.
Over the past 15 years, heat pump sales have doubled. In the first quarter of this year, heat pumps outpaced shipments of fossil fuel furnaces by 32%. They only just missed beating out shipments of air conditioner units.
A big part of the trend relates to new construction. In 2024, 46% of new housing included a heat pump while 47% went with forced-air furnaces. The trend is towards more and more heat pumps. They are better, more comfortable, and more efficient than furnaces and provide cooling as well as heating.
Three quarters of new apartments in the US are heated electrically. As a result, many have electric stoves as well, avoiding the need for gas pipes. While many new buildings opt for resistance heating, like baseboard heaters, heat pumps are at least twice as efficient, saving lots of money by using them.
There are multiple types of heat pumps such as air-to-air, air-to-water, ground-source, and water source, each with different advantages in installation cost and operating cost. There are now also networked geothermal heat pumps where utilities pump liquids into homes to provide heating and cooling.
Heat pump technology is growing in popularity and appears to be at a tipping point for heating and cooling.
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The US may be hitting a tipping point for heat pumps
