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Heat pumps may be more efficient in terms of energy expenditure, but are niche solutions to HVAC that rapidly lose effectiveness above 95*F or below 32*F. I submit that if you live where it doesn't get above 95* or below 32* then you don't really need HVAC at all. Toughen up. Just put on another sweater in the winter and walk around in your skivvies in summer. https://mrcool.com/blog/can-a-heat-p...-temperatures/
My earthberm house with no AC never gets above 75* in summer (outside temps low 90s) and is a toasty 70* even with temps well below 0* at night for three weeks each winter, heated by wood-- 100% recyclable.
Two stage heat pumps are much more efficient than natural gas for home HVAC, and my electricity comes mostly from the electric coop that has mostly renewable sources.
Yes, after ground source heat pumps - which are really expensive to set up, and a wood stove - which is a lot of work, an air source heat pump is the least expensive heating appliance to operate, and the cold-climate ones from Fujitsu and Mitsubishi still work down to about -10F, -15F, plus they provide both heating in winter and cooling in summer, so it's win-win-win.
In some cities, there has grown a movement to ban appliances that use natural gas, at least in new construction. In a few places, recently enacted city ordinances have gone further, and will require ratepayers to replace their gas appliances at some point in the near future.
Is swapping out gas stoves for electric stoves always a net gain, environmentally speaking?
What if the power used to generate the electricity is dirtier than the natural gas used in a stove?
Natural gas is better than coal, certainly. There are still some states that make heavy use of coal for power generation - WY, KY and WV, for example. But if you look at the big picture, US coal power plant output has fallen by over 50% nationally in the last 20 years, and renewables recently passed coal for power generation. In some cases, coal power plants are being replaced due to environmental regs, and in other cases they are being replaced because cheaper options are now available. Either way, coal is on the way out.
Scroll down to Power Generation Cost Charts and across to "Typical LCOE and weighted average cost..."
You'll see that PV & wind can't compete with fossil fuel sourced generation....and it's even worse than they show because they ignore the cost of back-up fossil fuel plants required for grid reliability.
Coal is being used less and less in the US mainly because govt restrictions have made NG even cheaper than coal...OTOH-- coal use continues to grow in India & China. China uses half of all the coal used in the world and plans even more coal fired plants. https://www.worldometers.info/coal/c...on-by-country/
The common wisdom is that co2 is a "well mixed gas"- ie- it spreads itself quickly and evenly around the globe..but now that we have a satellite that can locate co2 in the atmosphere, that wisdom may be wrong...
With HI, home of the "official" co2 measuring site (Mauna Loa), directly down wind from China & India, maybe those rising co2 levels aren't really as bad as we've been thinking. Check out the satellite video here https://www.nanowerk.com/news2/space/newsid=54635.php
China leads the world in solar panel production, and they also lead the world in renewable energy capacity installed. As noted in this Wikipedia article: "China is the world's leader in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over triple the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_China
However, they *also* use a lot of coal power. It's a nation of 1.4 billion people (4x the US population), and they have been rapidly developing over the past 20 years, a process which continues, and so they use a lot of energy and add a lot of electrical generation capacity every year - both from renewables *and* fossil fuels, although they continue to bias this mix more towards renewables.
As a percentage of their nation's total, the US is at about 23% of electricity generation from renewable sources, and China is at roughly 30% from renewable sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewa..._United_States
Our house is set up for natural gas - heat, hot water, and clothes drying. To change all that all over to electric would cost 10s of thousands of dollars. Being in Alaska, I don't see an electric heat pump working all that well in the winter time. Even if it did, we already pay 18 cents a KWHr and I doubt any savings we'd on our utility bills will cover the capital cost any time soon. So, going all electric is a big NO for me.
As a percentage of their nation's total, the US is at about 23% of electricity generation from renewable sources, and China is at roughly 30% from renewable sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewa..._United_States
Percentages are meaningless here...Would you rather have 10% of 1 dollar or 1% of 100 dollars?
As noted above, China already burns half of all coal used each year and has been building two new coal fired plants every WEEK... Xi has claimed China will be "carbon neutral" by 2060...but I think that will only happen because by then they have used up all the coal in the world. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=china+plan...t=avast&ia=web
I just swapped out my electric water heater and stove to propane models. I would not hesitate to do my heating system if it was not too expensive to do. My electric heat pump sucks and runs all the time.
I just swapped out my electric water heater and stove to propane models. I would not hesitate to do my heating system if it was not too expensive to do. My electric heat pump sucks and runs all the time.
We replaced our entire central air system, including air ducts, before COVID and it was expensive. Company that installed it said we lucked out because the prices had gone up dramatically since COVID. We were offered a heat pump with natural gas auxiliary heat should the temperature get cold enough. We immediately said hell no. We’ve both lived with older heat pump units. We went with a 2 stage natural gas heating. Depending on your system it works in one of two ways. One version has an outside air temperature sensor on the thermostat. If the temperature outside is above a certain range then the gas valve opens about 70 to 75% for heat. If the temperature outside drops to a certain point then the gas valve will open fully. In our case the unit will run with gas valve at 70 to 75% and if the home hasn’t reached set point in 15 minutes then the gas valve opens fully. We have a control setting on the thermostat to override the first stage and use full stage heating if we wish. Because of the complexity of the system, we have a service contract with the company that installed the unit. They come out twice a year to service the AC and gas heat. It has an electronic control module that a service technician can pull up diagnostic codes to look for any potential issues. Just wish natural gas was as cheap as it once was in early 2000 and further back.
We gain fuel efficiency at the expense of adding electronic complexity and dependence on a reliable source of electricity.
Maybe over all the most efficient is an open fire at the mouth of the cave-- as long as you have a sustainable source of wood, and even then you need a Keeper of the Flame in case the fire goes out.
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