Electric heat to cost 77 percent more than natural gas, federal agency says | Hacker News Reader

Electric heat to cost 77 percent more than natural gas, federal agency says

denvergazette.com

42 pointsalex_young179 comments

This article was Sponsored by WhatTheFrack Drilling Company.

Fracking/Natural Gas follows the same playbook as big Tobacco, they hire experts and sponsor all kinds of studies that align with what they want people to believe.

The main cost here seems to be the energy monopolies, not the method of heating.

It's literally the playbook of every single business. Database vendors and graphics card manufacturers tout studies that show their product performs better. Pharmaceutical companies pay researchers who conduct studies that show their stuff works. If Safeway wants a zoning variance to open a new store, they will pay for an environmental impact study that says it's fine.

I'm not saying this to convince you should trust this study. But I think it's important to recognize it's absolutely happening everywhere, not just in the industries we don't like. Most of the research we read was paid for, and an overwhelming majority of it reaches the conclusion that aligns with the views of the researchers or of whoever is footing the bill.

  This article was Sponsored by WhatTheFrack Drilling Company.

Where did you see that? I don’t see the reference anywhere.

Edit: feel free to downvote. I’m not defending the content, I just thought it was interesting. Maybe we should tax fuel oil or something. I just don’t see this report as being some shadowy conspiracy with an oil company.

Downvoted because people don’t like the question? I would also like to know, apparently others don’t

Same question here. I can't find the reference either. The author is also not labeled as a third party or anything, the word frack doesn't occur on the page, and the word sponsored doesn't appear in the article.

I guess people upvote the top-level comment because it sounds so plausible? But in reality it was meant as a joke and people (like me) were taking it literally?

It was written in part (I suspect in large part) by Robert Bryce [1], an oil and gas industry apologist, who has - if nothing else - been consistently arguing against renewable energy and for oil and gas interests for 30 years.

He's been funded by and a fellow with the Institute for Energy Research [2], a front group for Exxon Mobil, Enron, and Charles Koch, and with the Manhattan Institute [3], a corporate-funded conservative think tank, also funded largely by the petroleum industry.

The title of the article and main thrust is that if you use electric resistive space heaters and baseboards, it will cost more than gas. Everyone knows that. No one is seriously steel-man arguing for electric resistive heating (anymore), only heat pumps. I'm shocked it's only a mere 77% more, I would have assumed 2x or 3x.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bryce_(writer)

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy...

  It was written in part (I suspect in large part) by Robert Bryce

I don't see that he's an author or indicated as helping outside of an interview. He's quoted in the story, although not with the detail you provided.

I am an adamant supporter of electrification and of sustainable energy, but I don't see why we can't read articles such as this one, which seems to cover many points about the cost of heat pumps, the expense of energy, and many other aspects of the economics of the issue without needing to be spoon fed a story 'from our side' or whatever.

$46.19 for electricity is a little more than 3x the $13.97 for gas.

I'm not downvoting you but if you're being downvoted it's because you failed to do some due diligence and actually look up the answer to your question.

I've taken the step to do a basic lookup when replying in haste and gotten a genuine TIL moment that added to the discourse here instead of asking an easily answered question.

ya electric baseboard are expensive to tun

heatpumps are really cheap to run

> heatpumps are really cheap to run

But still more expensive than gas in most areas? Unless you get a ground pump etc. which has a much higher upfront cost.

As a nonamerican, I'm not sure how to read "most places" here. Do you mean most places in the USA or actually most places in the world?

i would say if you have a gas HVAC there is little point in replacing unless you also have a lot of solar on the roof and sending a lot back to the grid.

If I was building a new home today and in an area that might get down to 10-15F as a low i'd 100% do heat pumps. The nice part about heat pumps for me is that they might get to temp and run at 10% all day long and keep the heat right at 71. Where a gas will turn on at 69 and heat till 73 and continue that cold/hot cycle

being cheaper also depends on current utility rates also

> But still more expensive than gas in most areas?

Using numbers from the non-profit Efficiency Maine, with natural/methane gas at $2.561 per CCF (therm), and electricity at $0.1595 per kWh, standard efficiency heat pumps have better $/MMBtu down to about 0F/-18C, and high performance HPs down to about -10F/-25C, per this presentation:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcwIz6heDss&t=39m30s

You'll have to do the math with your local prices. The same channel also has a presentation on dual fuel / hybrid setups:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_9P3Dn7is0

Generally: if you're buying new HVAC+D equipment for your home, you might as well buy a heat pump instead of a 'simple' AC unit, and there are heat pumps that can work down below freezing quite well (which is probably good enough for most of the US population, except in the coldest locations).

And if you're building a new subdivision or apartment block, you can skip the entire gas system connection. Safer and cheaper.

Places off the current gas grid are also low hanging fruit generally.

Disagree.

I see the same thing where I live. Natural gas heating is much cheaper than electric. And we have one of the lowest electric rates in the country.

Gas heating was also cheaper when I lived in the Midwest.

In fact, I often feel the opposite of you - that Big Electric is pushing propaganda. I often see people switching to heat pumps "because it's more efficient", but they don't see their bills go down, and on top of that it's a lot more expensive to install. Even if the bills go down a little, they'll probably not make up for the added cost of equipment in the whole time they are in that house.

"much cheaper"

I can believe it has a lower price, but I'm sure the cost is higher.

Not in the least. With baseboard heating, the cost to heat my 1 bedroom apartment was on par with heating a 4 bedroom house (with gas). With a heat pump, at best it will be comparable.

Comment you're replying to was noting the difference between price-to-consumer and cost-to-planet.

> With a heat pump, at best it will be comparable.

Would it?

e.g. according to https://c03.apogee.net/mvc/home/hes/land/el?utilityname=ure&... unless you live in area with extremely expensive gas and very cheap electricity it will always be cheaper.

Thanks. Went to my gas and electric bills to look up the rates. Plugged in the numbers on the site. Heat pump estimated to cost me $400 extra per year for heating.

If I were doing a brand new build, it may make some sense just because I like to be "green". But paying several thousand just for the install, only to end up paying more per year: Just doesn't make sense.

I guess that's the crux of the green initiatives: people don't care about going green because they don't care about their environment footprint, thus generally don't care about the planet or other humans. Now if I phrased this too negative I'm sorry, but I guess I'm still right.

I think that website is wrong or using obsolete data. I compared with another https://www.pickhvac.com/hvac/furnace-vs-heat-pump-cost/ and it said that with exactly the same numbers the heatpump was 50% cheaper than gas. My own observation is that our heating cost reduced dramatically when we replaced gas with heat pump.

Electric resistive baseboard is obviously extremely foolish as a primary heating source. It's not a real point of comparison, but closer to a straw man.

The point is exactly that electric heat pumps and gas are comparable. Which means that other things start to tip the scale like not having gas in the house (fire safety), having nicer air conditioning for the summer from the same unit, offsetting the grid electricity use with your own solar (lower generation in the winter, but it still helps), and envisioning grid scale sources moving towards renewables.

I mathed it a bit. Assuming that there's no reclamation built in to current pricing, pricing in 100% reclamation would increase the cost of natural gas by ~40%. Still not more expensive than electricity if the article is to be taken at face value.

> Natural gas heating is much cheaper than electric.

Does this include the cost of dealing with the effects of emitting CO2 into the atmosphere?

The global economy runs on energy and emitting co2. Last I checked majority of electricity is mainly produced from burning fossil fuels.

You mean the costs of having to mow the lawn more or harvest more crops from all the increased plant growth?

https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization...

But also, how green is your electricity? The "electrify everything b/c it's greener" approach seems currently largely aspirational. My understanding is that most states still get most of their electricity from fossil fuels.

https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/state-electricity-g...

My electricity is 99% green (wind + solar).

So is mine, supposedly, but overall we have a long way to go in switching the grid to renewables. The states that have the lowest dependence on fossil fuels for generation all have a significant amount of hydro power, which is probably not going to expand, and which can have its own environmental issues.

Some locations have a great mix of wind + sun, so minimal backup storage may be required. What is the plan/cost for offsetting solar cell production and recycling?

Solar electricity, including panel production and disposal, is so much less emissive than even the cleanest gas generator (let alone coal or such), that I honestly find that a worry for later. Let's get the world on low emissions before nitpicking about how to get it fully circular (likely, that's near-impossible and we'll eventually need to mine other bodies in the solar/star system, but that, too, I find to be a worry for later). It comes across as though you're asking a vegetarian if they've ever killed a mosquito. Perfect is the enemy of good

If it's a serious question, then this is where carbon capture will have to come in, if our emissions aren't already low enough to be workable for the earth's natural carbon cycles

You can get a lot closer to 100% green if you have rooftop solar no matter where you are. So moving to using more electricity just recoups your investment faster assuming you've overspecced even just a little.

According to [1], burning natural gas generates 0.0053 tons per therm. According to [2], the cost to reclaim CO2 from natural gas sources is approximately $90 per ton on the high end. Some quick math done on an old gas bill of mine suggests that reclamation would increase my bill by 40% (assuming that no reclamation is presently priced in).

So... If the article is correct, and electric energy costs 77% more than natural gas, then yes. Natural gas is still cheaper when factoring in emissions.

1 - https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gases-equivalencies-ca...

2 - https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2019.006...

> So... If the article is correct, and electric energy costs 77% more than natural gas,

If you use resistive heating, heat pump would be 40-50% or so cheaper. Of course with no subsidies the initial cost might be rather high.

I'll ask my landlord to install one right away.

Probably have to be an earth-exchange system to deal with temperatures lower than 40°F, given that heating my house in winter is the use case.

My Mitsubishi Hyperheat units have a COP above 1 down to -15F and still work normally at 5F (northern New Mexico, 6000', overnight). You're getting bad information.

Mitsubishis can work down to -13F/-25C and have a COP of 2.08:

* https://mylinkdrive.com/viewPdf?srcUrl=http://enter.mehvac.c...

If you live in US IECC Climate Zone 4 or above look for a cold climate air-source heat pump (ccASHP):

* https://neep.org/heating-electrification/ccashp-specificatio...

* https://ashp.neep.org/#!/

You can also get things installed in a dual fuel arrangement where you still have a gas furnace that kicks in if it does ever get 'too cold'.

My Lennox system is break even COP at -10 iirc. By then it's also running the heat strip, but we only hit those temps once or twice a year.

> According to [2], the cost to reclaim CO2 from natural gas sources is approximately $90 per ton on the high end

I may be reading that wrong, but I'm pretty sure that refers to the CCS cost when you capture at use (e.g. in a power plant). You can't really use CCS when you're heating a house, so the right price to compare to would be direct air capture which is an order of magnitude more expensive IIUC.

Let's see if we can fix that.

Found this article: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-captured-co2-worth that suggests it's about twice as expensive. Though it seems that's the credit that the government pays, not the cost.

https://www.iea.org/reports/direct-air-capture-2022/executiv... suggests $125-$335 per ton, so not quite an order of magnitude but still a big difference for CCS.

Your [2] reference is about capture & storage for nat-gas power plants. Natural gas for heating is done at the endpoint. That's going to cost a lot more to capture.

From the perspective of an individual consumer it doesn't matter much. e.g. if you 100% rational (which is not necessarily the best approach) there is no additional cost for you related to you choosing to use gas regardless of what happens with the climate.

That's not being rational, that is being individualistic and short-sighted in name of greed/saving cash. Rationally you want to keep the Earth viable for human populations, for at least the sake of the future of your family if you are that individualistic.

Not on the individual level, free-riding is perfectly rational if you goal is to maximize your personal wellbeing, wealth etc.

Perhaps the issue then is the hyperindividualisation after the atomisation of society.

To my mind it's not perfectly rational to maximise my personal wellbeing and wealth in detriment of others, maybe I have a collectivist sense higher than others, maybe we should instill that across societies.

The 20th century went too far with the me-first approach, we can see it's not really working for societies.

You will pay for it anyway, in terms of increased taxes or insurance rates to pay for areas damaged by climate change, increased food and housing costs as useful land shrinks, and to pay for the upcoming climate refugee crises and ensuing wars. Pay a little more now, or pay a lot more later.

My lay understanding is that gas is generally produced as a byproduct of pumping oil.

Consequently, as long as it's profitable to pump oil... more gas will be supplied to the market.

Which means that gas prices will generally be "low" (relative to energy content?) close to oil producers, as it's still profitable to "produce" gas even at low market prices (because you're mainly producing/selling more oil).

This is generally correct, that gas is often a byproduct. Consider the location and availability of gas pipeline and collector/compressor stations. And sometimes when pipelines are present they are already at capacity. It is a fascinating industry that is greening (less flaring, electric drilling).

Yes, for most of us, the cost of natural gas is almost completely transportation costs. The gas itself is only a very small fraction of our bill.

Gas costs just what the gas company asks for it, which is equal to what they think you’ll pay for it.

So it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to do this comparison to make some environmental point.

just pulled typical split-system listing in my country:

Gree Lomo Arctic R32 Inverter 2022 , about €740 (this is one of the top makers)

energy used while cooling: 0.7kW

energy used while heating: 0.7kW

cooling power: 2.7kW

heating power: 3kW

4x efficiency, yay! that's what heat pumps do

outside temperature from +43C to -25C. i've seen -30C and +48C in some models

Also, installation for split units is cheap around here

Split units in the US tend to be crazy expensive. When I was shopping for an AC, it was definitely a few thousand more than a regular (central) AC. I know folks in other countries buy it all the time, so it must be cheaper there.

"Cooling" and "heating" just means the inside coil is colder/warmer than the outside, it does not mean the inside temperature will be comfortable for everyone. Neither while cooling nor while heating.

Could you please explain what you mean? Split system in question is air-air, heat transfers between blocks via special liquid, and warmer /colder air spread through a room via fan. There are no coils. Also, keeping comfortable temperature inside is function of heat loss via walls/windows and effective power of cooling/heating

The special liquid is running through a system of tubes, called "coils" so it could exchange heat with the air. Keeping comfortable temperatures inside is also a function of the inside coil's temperature, which depends on the special liquid and the compressor. The higher temperature difference between the inside and outside coils, the higher compression is required and lower is the COP. Incidentally, the high inside coil's temperature is also required to heat the air inside at a reasonable rate.

technically speaking, you can crank up internal fan speed to eleven and get exhaust temperature slightly above current room temperature even if internals are way too hot. regular resistive heaters do that, with their heating elements fired up way past boiling water temperature

The problem is not the exhaust being too hot, but the heating element being too cold. Gas furnace, for example, burns gas at temperatures much higher than that of boiling water.

Here is the original report, no fracking sponsorship. The data in the article is accurate.

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/WinterFuels.php#tab...

From near the table you linked to:

> the expenditures included for households that heat primarily with electricity in this report would also include electricity used for appliances and lighting

That's not a fair comparison (gaslighting?) unless you use gas lighting, a gas dishwasher, and a gas freezer!

It also doesn't mention what heat pump efficiency is assumed, it just compares electricity "as a fuel" to other fuels, which means resistive heating. Wholly unrealistic for places that need any serious amount of heating per year.

(I was surprised to learn that a colleague in South Africa was cold and couldn't turn on the heater during their winter because they don't have heating installed! A 10€ space heater and some blankets is all they need for heat around there apparently. There, resistive heating makes sense as compared to an expensive heat pump system.)

The amount of electricity used by appliances and lighting is negligible compared to that used by the air conditioner compressor. Even the air conditioning fan is hardly more than a few light bulbs.

So while it's good that the report quibbled, they might have gone to the effort to quantify their equivalent at least to an order of magnitude.

PR is all that is left when government is leaning into the destruction of your business and its harmful externalities (heat pump subsidies). Electric resistive heat is inefficient, heat pumps are not.

They also don't function well below 40°F/4°C

Weird. Mine (Mitsubishi Hyperheat) have a COP above 1 down to -15F, and I've seen them work just fine at 5F (New Mexico, 6000', winter nights). Check your data.

COP "above 1" is nothing to brag about. I'd say that a COP of around 2 should be the minimum at which a heat pump is considered "working". Otherwise this propaganda seemingly based around the cost of resistive heating actually becomes relevant. (I've no idea of the exact current state of the art though).

COP == 1 is the point at which a heat pump becomes a resistive heater. As COP drops below 1, a heat pump becomes more and more like an actual resistive heater.

Nobody is bragging about COP == 1 ... it's just a reference point at which the benefit of a heat pump goes away and it becomes ... just an inefficient heater.

I just think this whole topic gets derailed in many ways by the lure of comparing things to resistive heating (eg the original article), and using parity with resistive heating as a reference point for practical heat pump source temperatures is an instance of this. The benefit from a heat pump has left long before COP = 1. I'd say a COP of 3ish (modern modcon boiler efficiency divided by common gas power plant efficiency) is a straightforward honest appraisal of where a heat pump starts to be less than ideal.

Of course I recognize low temperatures are merely one small portion of the time. Residential heat pump system design has generally taken advantage of this by having backup resistive coils. It would be much more efficient to fall back to a gas furnace, but for the capital cost. So an actual comparison necessarily takes into account expected temperatures over the day and the heating season, likely nighttime setback, thermal mass, etc. Which certainly isn't easy to button up into a simple comparison, but the point is resistive heating is a red herring!

You're drawing the wrong conclusion from the right numbers.

Sure, a heat pump with a COP of <2 is basically broken, but consider on how many hours of how many days it's actually going to perform at such a poor efficiency level.

Overall, your greenhouse gas emissions will be an order of magnitude below gas heating. Today, or at least until recently, it's about break-even at a COP of 3 iirc, but with solar and wind being the targets, it's going to be near zero by the time a heat pump bought today goes end-of-life.

This is not factually correct. As sibling comment mentions, they work down to -15F. You might need backup heat in the coldest climates on the coldest days, but a high thermal performance (insulation and tight envelope) of structure is most important.

https://cleanheat.ny.gov/heat-pumps-cold-climates-do-they-wo...

False.

This is a good reason to be extra skeptical, but is not itself much of an argument. Is there any evidence their analysis is materially wrong?

Where are you seeing this? Right there in the article, it says that a heat pump would be around the same price as gas!

It kinda makes sense. You can burn natural gas to make electricity. You get 0.4 energy units of electricity for each energy unit of natural gas. Heat pump COP is say 3.5. So you get 1.4 units of heating out. Converting to electricity has costs that eat away at that 1.4 units.

Call it a wash.

The big differences are the electric grid can be powered by zero carbon sources. And burning natural gas is a local pollutant. And if you ditch gas you don't need to maintain commercial and residential gas infrastructure.

A search seems to indicate there is not a drilling company named "WhatTheFrack".

I think that was part of OP's joke. I took the test of the post at face value though and feel mislead... This should not be the top comment

You gotta have proof before saying that. Otherwise it sounds like lefty bleeding heart conspiracy theories that turn out to have some sort of evil agenda

This "77%" is nothing new, just the latest, most up-to-date price quote on their terms.

IMHO the real percentage is more like 200% more.

It was this way even before the price of energy skyrocketed in the early 1970's.

People in their all-electric homes didn't care about the cost multiple when it was only a few dollars difference every month.

The underlying physics are hard to argue against, it simply takes about 3 times as much natural gas to generate the electricity to heat one home, compared to using gas heat burned directly for the same amount of indoor heating.

So you pay about 3 times as much for the same amount of electric heat as you do gas and that ratio has been holding steady for many decades.

I also expect the differential to be maintained even after power plants are further decoupled from natural gas fuel supplies themselves.

The last paragraph isn't about cost, and I think is quite important:

> “I think the United States is heading for a very catastrophic situation in terms of reliability,” said Federal Energy Regulatory Commissioner Mark Christie during a May 4 Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on Capitol Hill. “The core of the problem is actually very simple. We are retiring dispatchable generating resources at a pace and in an amount that is far too fast and far too great and is threatening our ability to keep the lights on.”

In California, we're on track to move to a new electricity pricing scheme, one major goal of which is to make the marginal cost of electricity cheaper (by moving a lot of costs to a fixed-rate fee to be connected to the grid), with the idea that lower marginal costs will encourage everyone to use more electricity, convert appliances to electric, switch to EVs etc. But we _already_ get warnings to not use our AC too much during peak hours in heat waves. It's not obvious that the grid will handle everyone trying to electrify everything. The pace at which we add capacity and demand need to be at least somewhat in sync. Combine this with intentional power shutoffs to reduce wildfire risks, and just accidental outages (tree branches etc), and I think it's fair to ask whether "basic" services will be less reliable.

I use AC because I am hot, electricity for AC generates CO2 as a bi product, everyone gets hotter?

The financials of electric utilities don't make sense to me. Most of them (like PG&E) have been massively cash flow negative over the past 10-20 years. They issues shares and debt to, literally and figuratively, keep the lights on. For PG&E, they emerged from bankruptcy with even more debt and outstanding shares than they entered in with. Margins exist on paper but it isn't clear what that really means.

From an infrastructure standpoint the US is clearly we are a very long way (many trillions of dollars) from a grid that will support a fleet of passenger EVs.

Yes, public goods should not be run by private interests. They are a service and a cost, both get cut by private interests trying to make a buck and shirking their responsibility. Power is no different than roads, almost all are public goods and supported like that. If you want your own road, you can.

Shit like Enron and PG&E fires shouldn't have been possible, but private interests buy off governments.

Government owned roads are not necessary. I live in a town with roads that appear typical yet each property lot line meets, so the 'roads' are reciprocal easements to all other property owners. The town maintains the 'roads' so they look consistent, but the people have control and ownership. It's great, and there are zero parking issues on the 'roads' - just call towing company because it's private property.

> shouldn't have been possible

And Silicon Valley Bank shouldn't have been allowed to chase yield by going into long term Treasury debt creating a redemption glitch. But the regulator Federal Reserve allowed it and allowed mark-to-maturity accounting. Many industry regulators are captured by the industry.

How does that work in terms of DWI laws usually applying to public roads rather than private?

> a grid that will support a fleet of passenger EVs.

A neighbor got a Tesla last year. Some months later he got a green transformer in the yard from electric company. He told me he paid a small portion of that cost. Now I'm paying part of electric infrastructure cost so my neighbor can charge at high speed.

People should pay for their own toys instead of spreading the costs to other rate payers.

Does electric heat mean heat pumps or radiant? Because we have saved a bunch of money switching our heat from natural gas to heat pump

> One issue in the debate is that "electrification" doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. For one thing, the definition of “using electricity to heat their homes” used by the federal energy office appears to mean the use of electrical resistance baseboard heating versus natural gas heated-air furnaces.

> But, in the Energize Denver initiative, city officials are talking about heat pumps versus gas furnaces, which means a different set of cost calculations.

the report is from the US Energy Information Administration

The article addresses that

It's buried in the article, but the 77% number seems to be based on resistance heating instead of heat pumps:

> the annual energy bill to operate a standard gas furnace/AC combination is about $633 a year. With a heat pump, she said, it would likely be $609 to $718 annually, depending on the heat pump technology chosen and its configuration.

But, to be fair, the first sentence of the article is "The average American household that uses electricity to heat a home this winter will pay hundreds of dollars more than those who use natural gas." How many households have heat pumps, vs how many have old electric baseboards? I think it's entirely appropriate for a government report to be looking at the actual costs to households today. If most American's can't handle a $500 surprise expense, how many can afford to upgrade to a heat pump? And 35% of Americans rent -- how many old neglected apartments have electric heat which the landlord has no incentive to upgrade?

It really sucks because even with the government rebates, it’s still a big capital expense that takes years to be paid back. The good news is that since we have started investing in and incentivizing heat pump technology now, it will be the cheap option as heating systems fail over the next few decades. I think the government report should include this reality but also highlight heat pump adoption as it is currently incentivized and adoption is growing. It’s weird to me that they didn’t highlight the heat pump aspect as much

I just heard on NPR yesterday that 13% of all house sales last year were new construction. As much as I am loath to have stringent regulations dictating building technology, just imagine the pace of adoption if every piece of new residential construction used electric air-source heat pumps.

> The good news is that since we have started investing in and incentivizing heat pump technology

Yes, good tax news for those who own their house and can afford discretionary purchases. Also good news for those who peddle increased govt debt.

Described differently, heat pump and ElectrifyTodayCorp lobbyists had Congress write tax incentives for their businesses which are funded by taxes on working class that are renters or can't afford to replace their existing functional furnace.

Are these tax credits meant to encourage people to replace functional equipment with different types, or are they meant to encourage people to replace broken equipment with a different type? (Or to encourage new construction to use a different type than typical)

Often, for light users, the payback time for switching to a more efficient heat system is longer than the expected lifetime of a new system, so it only makes sense to consider it when the current heating system is broken or when the current cooling system is broken, since a new heat pump could replace heating and cooling.

It's potentially different if you're a heavy user of heating.

Heat pumps will never be a viable replacement because they only work efficiently at low heating temperatures. The heat pump itself may cost you 5 to 10k but you may have to spend another 50-100k on insulation of walls, windows, roof, basement as well as floor heating (and thus completely new flooring) in every room to make it work. This is doubly true in the US where many buildings still have single-pane windows (though you have the advantage of not paying 40c/kWh like we peons in Germany).

And btw: heat pumps are loud, so good luck with that high density housing every climate advocate wants so much.

It depends on the ambient temperature. Heat pumps can obtain a coefficient of performance of about 2.5 in very cold conditions (-20 C) or as much as 5 in warmer conditions (+5 C).

In theory, you could get even better performance by using a heat pump during the day to melt calcium chloride hexahydrate (mp 29 C = 84 F), and then freezing it at night to recover the stored energy. But now your system cost is even higher, since you need a ton of calcium chloride.

Most people don't really have a choice to switch to gas from electricity: it either runs to your home or it doesn't. Even having stored natural gas requires a yard, so good luck if you live in that high density housing everyone wants more of. On the other hand, people with natural gas could switch to electricity if they wanted to, and if they had a large pile of money sitting around and felt compelled to spend all of it and get a little bit of it back on their heating bill. What I'm saying is that this is an argument that people who write building codes should be having, it has almost nothing to do with homeowners.

Stored gas is usually propane, not natural gas. Nobody would choose propane over natural gas given the option, as it is much more expensive.

I'm living in an area where propane is actually pretty cheap compared to other parts of the US, and it would still be cheaper to switch to natural gas if the utilities ever ran lines out to me.

Now that'd be an interesting comparison; Propane vs electricity + solar + batteries. I'd guess we're near the point electric could win there.

Depends on where you live, really.

I'm near the great lakes, but I don't get lake effect snow. Even so, it's not unlikely for the sky to be cloudy and overcast for weeks around the coldest time of the year.

When we do get a lot of snow, it isn't uncommon for the larger commercial solar installs to just go dormant for awhile. Rooftop is a bit better in that regard, but even so it isn't a question of solar+batteries+electric OR propane. You'd need propane just to keep up overnight to avoid an overwhelming electricity bill.

Places that are farther south and which already rely on resistive heat for emergencies would be much better off going that route over propane.

I do hear about people replacing their furnaces with heat pumps, when the furnace reaches the end of its life span

I see the argument that buildings installing house wide resistive heating in cold climates is committing a similar type of shortsighted economic foolishness as say skimping on insulation (aka principle agent problem, bordering on fraud). But in general the job of building codes is to make sure what is built is safe and up to current standards, rather than making top-down policy decisions like gas vs heat pumps.

As we did for light bulbs (amazingly!), the right way is to specify performance standards, not particular technologies. You base the standards on the best available today, and more often than not, a few years down the road, the best available exceeds the standard by a wide margin.

> But in general the job of building codes is to make sure what is built is safe and up to current standards, rather than making top-down policy decisions like gas vs heat pumps.

Building codes were traditionally about safety, but accessibility and energy efficiency are also important parts added over the past several decades.

It's actually a reasonable way to make top-down gradual improvements to the housing stock. And it's regionally adapted as well; most places have code based on the international building code, with federal changes, state changes, and sometimes county or city changes.

I don't necessarily agree that gas heating and cooking should be phased out, but prohibiting it in new construction is a reasonable way to do it, and putting it into building codes is a reasonable way to address new construction.

Anyone who has electric heaters in the UK knows that well. When at some point gas prices went up by 350% and electricity by 200% I compared by heating bill with someone who had has heating. I was paying ~£400 per month between November-February, they were paying ~£40. We had electric shower, they had a gas boiler. I should not this wasn't completely fair, as my bills includes also 2 laptops and a TV.

You’re not supposed to heat with electric heaters like it’s 1930. You’re supposed to use heat pumps, aka AC units.

Tell that to the 1500 new built flats they developed since 1995 in my area. All come with 9k-14k Watts storage heaters.

It’s true that updating these systems will be a challenge.

One might even say, expensive…

If they were happy heating electric the last 30 years, maybe they can keep at it.

Did you know that a heat pump can generate 4 times as much heat per unit energy than an electric heater?

Property management company forbids any such installations. It's my flat, but we're not allowed to drill any holes in bricks or ceiling.

I moved out from that flat, now live in a house that has a geothermal heat pump. 4 times bigger house, 3x lower bill...

That's not your flat

Sounds bad. I hope they change their rules to allow upgrading to heat pumps one day.

That's how leasehold and property management works in the UK.

I paid off the mortgage completely: bought the flat. Yet I'm not allowed to eg. better insulate walls, the attic belongs to me, the roof doesn't. If I wanted to replace windows, I would need to pay £100 application fee and justify it. Then the property management company sends their guy "who knows the job" who I pay THEIR AGREED price to replace the windows. Whole process take about 5 months and 3 weeks. Apparently, this is normal with FirstPort. If you want to buy a flat, you either agree to their rules or don't buy a flat. Changing the property management company is close to impossible. I fought many battles with them, all lost.

A sensible legal reform would be to establish that property managers and other private busybodies can't ban any reasonable energy-saving upgrades.

That's correct. I spent over a year trying to negotiate with them adding an external insulation because the flat has naked bricks. Their position was basically that they aren't legally forces to do so and finding a contractor is a lot of work.

That doesn't help much when electricity cost is 4-5x more per kWh. I can heat with either AC or gas, but the latter comes out cheaper.

But it isn’t.

It's right there on my bill. This has been the typical price ratio in the UK for a while now.

It helps with carbon emissions though.

Potentially, if electricity wasn't also often generated with gas.

Also, why would I pay more to have less comfortable heating? Individual action like that does nothing. The solution is collective.

I believe if the electricity is generated with gas it’s still less carbon intensive due to gas power plants being more efficient than gas heaters in homes.

Sure, but condensing boilers are already 90% efficient. The difference will likely be lost in electricity transmission.

It’s a reasonable guess but apparently heat pumps win

“With today’s refrigerants, heat pumps still reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20% compared with a gas boiler, even when running on emissions‐intensive electricity.”

https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-heat-pumps/executi...

Condensing boilers only reach that efficiency if you do the same kind of radiator sizing that people complain about needing to do for heat pumps.

Measured efficiency is 10-25% lower unless set up correctly.

Details: https://www.theheatinghub.co.uk/boiler-efficiency-guide-and-...

I'm in the UK. Looking at my bill, per kWh electricity is 3x more expensive than gas:

electricity: 30.823p

gas: 9.756p

It's much cheaper to heat my house with gas.

How much more does a heat pump installation cost?

How many years before the heat pump pays for itself?

I've got friends and family who installed solar panels a decade ago and claim they haven't "broken even" (the investment hasn't paid for itself) yet and that they may never b/c they're now facing maintenance, upgrades and/or replacement of old components. Also their insurance went up b/c of the solar installation (higher likelihood of roof damage, greater risk of fire, etc.)

I'm a KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!) kinda guy and have remained unencumbered by these "social complexities" so far.

> How many years before the heat pump pays for itself?

In most cases very few, given European electricity prices.

The real problem is that it's usually not possible to just switch to a heat pump in an apartment building, and that's assuming you own and don't rent (and ownership is also much less common in many parts of Europe, although I think it's a bit higher in the UK).

> the definition of “using electricity to heat their homes” used by the federal energy office appears to mean the use of electrical resistance baseboard heating versus natural gas heated-air furnaces.

> But, in the Energize Denver initiative, city officials are talking about heat pumps versus gas furnaces, which means a different set of cost calculations.

I'd argue that with a sensible cost of carbon and a decent rollout of cheap reneweables even direct electric heating would win.

But no one is suggesting that is the way to go, since we have much better options, so methane salesmen taking a victory lap feels like an attempt at misdirection.

Why are they afraid of doing the real sums? Did they do them and discover they didn't help sell methane?

That pertains to the direct heating with electricity? Of course it's ought to be expensive because of naturally low efficiency of electricity production from same natural gas with power plant being a heat engine that can't overcome natural limit put in place by Carnot cycle.

Try heat pumps.

Heat pumps are usually ~5x the efficiency of direct resistance heating, so they should be cheaper than gas! (this depends on climate though, as lower outside temperatures reduce the efficiency of the heat pump and increase the stress on the device)

That's true unless it gets really cold, where heat pumps become almost completely useless. In many parts of the US, heat pumps have to be augmented by the installation of emergency resistance heating elements. In the conditions where those system have to operate, they are less effective than gas and extremely expensive to run.

Modern heat pumps can work down to 0F https://homeinspectioninsider.com/heat-pump-work-subzero-tem...

Denver pretty much never gets that cold. Most of the continental US doesnt ever get that cold.

Heatpumps work as heat only in climates where temps never hit 0c for a prolonged period of time.

You go below 0c for a month, enjoy your baseboard-levels of efficiency.

Some anecdata: Neighbor is on heatpumps and has a comparable house (in terms of size) to mine. My house is significantly older than his, worse in terms of insulation, I have a number of old leaky windows, all of his are brand new, etc. I primarily heat with wood, with a oil furnace backup that runs a forced hot air system. His bill for four straight months last winter for electricity was 800 dollars a month (3200). My total for oil+wood was 2400 total and I still had firewood left over.

He also got to deal with the fun of heatpumps just not working in the dead of winter because it was too cold outside.

Newer heat pumps work well in much lower temperatures https://www.mncee.org/cold-climate-air-source-heat-pump-fina...

He installed the (brand new) heatpumps last year, which made the sting of it even worse. Also per that report "can operate" which is very different from "operate without issue" or "operate efficiently".

And yet, heatpumps are very popular across Scandinavia. All my Norwegian friends and colleagues seem to use them, and those I've talked to about it say they work just fine - even airsource pumps when it's -20C!

New Mitsubishi Heatpumps that have been hyped up to hell and back here. Past -14c they flat out stopped working for him.

I'm sure there'll be a lot of "oh it's the type of heatpump" "oh it's the installation" thing, but he isn't the only aquaintance I have who has seen absolutely diddly-squat for heating efficiency when using heatpumps. Around these parts, if it isn't setting something on fire, then you're probably doing heating wrong.

>Nordics

The average low winter temps in Stockholm are what, -5c? Oslo doesn't really get below -10-ish? Non-northern nordics are an indicator of approximately nothing in this discussion. :) Finland loves their steam/hydronic heat, which I will guarantee isn't being run off of heat pumps.

Anything that's closer to the ocean is going to have a significantly milder winter than going proper north.

Above, you claimed that they don't work when the temps hit 0C. Now you tell us a story about them not working at -14C. That's a fairly big difference. Our pumps (mitsubishi hyperheats) struggle a little at 5F (-15C) but they do not stop working, and that's in an old house with terrible insulation.

> Finland loves their steam/hydronic heat, which I will guarantee isn't being run off of heat pumps.

In my case, the steam is being generated by the 240V electric steam generator that takes power from my 7kW ground mount solar array.

brainfart on my end, should have said "below 0c for a prolonged..." I'll mea culpa that.

Like the other commenter hinted on, it depends on the ambient temperature. While for certain temperate ranges (above 0C) heat pumps are in their high efficiency range and depending on local electricity prices might be cheaper, it can change quickly once temepratures go below freezing. So there is a break even point where heating with gas is cheaper below that temperature and above heating with electricity through the heat pump is cheaper. Where that temperature is, depends on gas and electricity prices as well as your heat pump

~5x sounds like a magic to me. Let’s stay closer to ~3x over the heating season in southern Germany. Heat pumps are operating not always in ideal range here.

> For one thing, the definition of “using electricity to heat their homes” used by the federal energy office appears to mean the use of electrical resistance baseboard heating versus natural gas heated-air furnaces.

The article addresses that

I know I'm breaking the rules, but ... please read the actual article.

Where I live, heat pumps are usually still not cheaper per month. And even when they are, the amount people save doesn't make up for the added cost of a heat pump. If you want to be green, get a heat pump. If you want to save money, don't.

Everyone that has > 5KWp solar and a heatpump is laughing right now.

How efficient is solar in winter?

Also it seems that with no subsidies etc. overall heat pumps are considerably more expensive than gas

Ill-formed question. You must put solar in context: latitude, insolation.

Here in northern New Mexico, at 6000', my 7kW PV array(s) work extremely efficiently in winter, arguably slightly more efficiently than in summer because the panels prefer it cold. They collect somewhat less energy than in summer due to shorter days, but that's not a question of efficiency.

Yeah makes sense, I was thinking mainly about Europe and somehow forgot that the climate is considerably colder in the US but there is still much more sunlight during the winter.

There is a lot of 'it depends' on the efficiency of solar in winter. Solar is actually more efficient in winter, but depending on your latitude you get less hours of sun, and a lower angle of incidence.

Heat pump up-front cost are higher indeed. But depending on your local grid situation, they can drastically decrease the amount of electricity you shove and pull from the grid, by adapting to your solar performance. You can use them to convert your house into a thermal battery. Managing the time when you consume and produce energy will become the most important cost factor in the next few years in countries that advance towards renewable energy sources.

Does this include externalities?

Of course not. "Too hard"

Don't want to post an inflammatory statement, certainly do not want to offend anyone, just trying to understand, but I am reading through these comments and is there a sub set of these comments that seem to be leaning against climate change. Coming from Europe I find this strange, there is little support for the conspiracy theories against climate change?

The article doesn't make any mention of the massive government subsidies and other economic incentives that have kept fossil fuel prices artificially low for decades. I'm sure the green energy industry is lobbying itself up a little government pork of its own, but nobody compares to the corruption engine of the fossil fuel sector.

Give an example of an American fossil fuel subsidy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_subsidies

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/charted-5-trillion-in-fossi...

In 2019 governments spent $51 billion on natural gas consumption subsidies, which is why it's cheaper in a lot of places to heat your home with gas rather than electric.

That's worldwide, not US. No one seems to know what these "subsidies" are in the US context other than vague complaints about tax treatment of profits. The numbers are never netted out of, eg, fuel tax either.

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuels-received-5-9-trill...

Those aren't American numbers. Many countries for instance subsidize fuel, the US taxes it.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/biden-budget-target-...

Explains why it is difficult to pin down exactly but offers concrete examples too.

I was looking to get rid of our old oil boiler. Crunching the numbers on heat pumps and their efficiency at certain temperatures, I was surprised to find that a propane boiler actually came out ahead. And propane isn't cheap where I live.

I decided to put in a modern wood stove instead.

Then take the gas and make electricity in highly efficient turbines.

does this also account for the next time a petrostate dictator decides to stage an invasion of one of it's neighbours and cause the price of gas to rise 77%?

While that is pretty huge, its not that bad IMO.

Its not an order of magnitude higher. If I had the option to eat lab grown meat for 77 percent more, I'd take that in the blink of an eye.

With my income, I can afford this. I even imagine most families could afford this. They might not like having to cut from their luxury budgets(drugs/gambling/live events/prepared food), but its not like this would be impossible to pay for.

Something to consider -

You are nonplussed by paying ~2x as much for heating and you prefer engineered meat to the real thing. Absolutely nothing wrong with these preferences but this is not where most of your fellow humans are at.

also, renewables are getting cheaper but gas isn’t. 77% today may be 0% in a couple years

They buried the lede - about half way down it points out that heat pumps cost about the same even in Denver's climate.

Using electric furnaces like it's 1995 is yes, inefficient.

From the article:

> It’s 2.5 times more expensive for a heat pump for a 2,000-square-foot home versus gas forced air.

So if the running costs are about the same but the upfront costs are 2.5x more, which is cheaper?

I've done the math a few times over the years for a heat pump in my area. I live in a place where electricity is cheap and our winters aren't very cold, practically an ideal situation for a heat pump. But natural gas around me is also pretty cheap meaning the running costs are practically the same. However, all the quotes I've seen for getting a heat pump installed with the capacity for my house leads to an upfront cost of several thousands dollars more.

I don't know why seemingly the same AC unit is way more expensive as a heat pump in my area, but they are. And because a lot of AC people in my area refuse to work on them, the few that do charge a premium despite being practically the same thing as a traditional AC unit.

It is like in Eastern Europe in the 1990s. Electricity was abundant and cheap (commies have built massive steel industry to make a lot of weapons for upcoming war with the West, which has never come) so people started installing electric heaters, well guess what? Prices for electric energy rocketed up as demand for energy went up. So people have migrated to coal heating, which was much cheaper than electricity.

Search "who owns Denver Gazette":

"Clarity Media, which is the parent company of the Denver Gazette and is owned by GOP billionaire Phil Anschutz, purchased the assets and rights."

Now read his wikipedia page.

Ad Hominem is a poor substitute for an actual argument.

Funny, they don't link to the report. Wonder why.

There it is, the 9th and 10th paragraph:

> But, in the Energize Denver initiative, city officials are talking about heat pumps versus gas furnaces, which means a different set of cost calculations.

This writer knows which headline to write to get clicks. Now it'll circulate on everywhere people think heat pumps and electrification are scams to make people dependent on big companies and the government. Great work, Scott Weiser.

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/perspectives/2023/1...

If only there were such a thing as a gas-based heat pump. It would be a hybrid of electrical motors but the cold element would be heated with gas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator

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