Why heaters are the future of cooling

A huge number of people still heat their homes with fossil fuels. There’s a better way.

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Experts call it the “cold crunch." As temperatures rise in regions that historically haven’t needed indoor cooling, global demand for air conditioning units is expected to skyrocket. Indoor cooling is already the fastest-growing use of energy in buildings. But the emissions associated with cooling buildings are still tiny compared to the emissions from heating them — and that's because while air conditioning uses electricity, our heat is still largely generated by burning fossil fuels.

The way we heat our homes and buildings is one of the biggest contributors to climate change. But a solution may actually come from the rush of consumers looking to buy AC for the first time. They're a huge potential market for a different kind of system — the electric heat pump. A heat pump works like a two-way air conditioner, using electricity and a chemical refrigerant to transfer heat either into or out of a building. Instead of using fossil fuels to generate heat, it uses electricity to transfer heat, and it does it efficiently. And if heat pumps are widely adopted, they could make a major impact on the carbon emissions generated by buildings.

Further reading:

This report from the International Energy Agency is a great visual look at how the rising demand for space cooling presents buildings with a big opportunity to make their heating systems more efficient:
https://www.iea.org/commentaries/is-cooling-the-future-of-heating

Check out Rebecca Leber’s reporting on another big air conditioning challenge — regulating the refrigerants that contribute to global warming:
https://www.vox.com/22638093/air-conditioning-worsens-climate-change-ac

And read the Carbon Switch report on heat pumps, which breaks down how much homeowners in each state can save by switching to heat pumps: https://carbonswitch.co/heat-pump-carbon-reduction-and-savings-potential-report

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