This is part two of a three-part series on the problem of home decarbonization in the U.S. Continue reading with part one.
Heat pumps have a messaging problem.
Almost every campaign, rebate program, and educational effort I see is aimed squarely at people who already care about climate change — the same people who also tend to be early adopters of clean technology. But the HVAC contractors who actually install the systems skew heavily conservative according to political donation data.
For years, I’ve watched this play out in HVAC Facebook groups, where the tenor of the conversation can be summarized by “Heat pumps are a liberal thing,” “They’re trying to force this on us,” and “It’s all climate hysteria.” We politicized the technology, and now we’re paying for it. The very people we need to get behind these systems, to encourage homeowners to try something new, are skeptical at best, and combative at worst.
There isn’t time to stick with status quo sales tactics. The longer the home decarbonization community spends optimizing our pitch to the 15% of early adopters, the more time we waste before figuring out what actually works for the other 85%.
A quintessential example of the disconnect is the case of hybrid heat pump-plus-furnace system. I often hear that furnaces are the enemy: requiring fossil fuels like gas, propane, and heating oil, and accordingly resulting in high emissions in colder seasons.
But that furnace phobia is based on a fundamental misconception of how change happens. Cutting emissions isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. Replacing a one-way AC with a heat pump while, at least for now, leaving the furnace in place is far better than nothing, especially in cold-weather markets like the Midwest.
Insisting that homeowners get rid of a part of their system that makes them confident that they’ll endure the winter snug and warm is not a message that will win home decarbonization any new proponents.
What’s not working
There are a few approaches that are getting us nowhere:
Leading with climate. Climate change is real, urgent, and a perfectly valid reason to care about electrification. I care about it deeply. But climate messaging is terrible at moving markets. Mainstream homeowners don’t wake up thinking about their carbon footprint. They wake up thinking: “Why is my bedroom always freezing?” or “Why is my energy bill so high?”
Heat pumps solve those problems brilliantly — offering comfort, air quality, health, resilience — but we keep burying those benefits under the climate imperative. Want to see the consequences? Look at the heat pump backlash in the EU and U.K. Look at the more than 20 U.S. states that “banned the bans” after cities tried prohibiting gas in new construction.
Leading with rebates. When you put incentives front and center, consumers chase free money instead of solving their actual problems. And they can also develop unrealistic price expectations.
For example, the Inflation Reduction Act’s heat pump programs offered up to $14,000 in rebates, but most customers don’t qualify for that top number, or else the funds weren’t available when needed. Contractors ended up dealing with frustrated customers who thought they’d get a heat pump for $3,000 and now face a $15,000 to $30,000 bill.
Up-front incentives that go to the homeowner, the contractor, or both also muddy the sales process. Some equipment qualifies, some doesn’t. Some incentives require permits that usually drive up the cost significantly. Many incentives require so much paperwork that the administrative costs negate the benefit. While I try to avoid absolutes, in nearly 20 years of watching, I have yet to see an up-front incentive program that doesn’t add friction to the sales process. And they can take client and contractor eyes off results and focus them instead on free money.
Short-term program design. I’ve been through three or four incentive cycles in 20 years, and a pattern keeps repeating: Programs boom and then bust. (Nate Kinsey called it “sugar crash,” a great phrase for the phenomenon.)
Canada’s Greener Homes program was supposed to last seven years but shut down in less than three because the $5,000 grant was too generous. Heat pump sales ramped beautifully, then crashed when the money ran out.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., the IRA’s HEEHRA/HEAR program offered $8,000 in point-of-sale rebates for lower-income households. It was well-intentioned, but the money covered roughly 500,000 homes — or just 0.5% of U.S. housing stock. CLASP and RAP predicted that the funds would only last a few months, which is exactly what happened in California and Colorado’s front range.
The problem isn’t that they don’t have enough money. Even with 100 times the budget, overgenerous short-term program designs lead to the same boom-bust outcome. The problem is structural.
Overpromising savings. I’ve modeled, tracked, or executed dozens of home electrification projects. And I’ve consistently seen that popular online calculators consistently predict savings two to four times higher than what actually happens — and the disappointment colors their experience of the technology. A homeowner told their system would save them $2,000 per year who actually saves $400 feels lied to, even if the savings are compounded by amazing comfort and healthier air.
I’ve been made a liar by these estimates enough times that now I just say that the costs will be comparable. Operating costs for heat pump systems are usually within $100 to $200 per year of fossil fuel systems: the price of a nice meal or two out per year. It’s a rounding error for many households. Lead with comfort and air quality, not bill savings.
The furnace isn’t the enemy
To return to the furnace example: The entire way that we think of these heating systems is backwards. Homes are already pairing heat pumps with furnaces, also known as hybrid or dual fuel systems — and are driving significant emissions savings even while retaining the fossil fuel-reliant technology.
The real impediment to decarbonization is the furnace plus one-way AC combination system — the standard setup in cold-climate homes with gas heat, especially across the Midwest. Replace that one-way AC with a heat pump and you’ve created a hybrid system that can reduce natural gas usage by between 40% and 100% depending on climate, insulation, and system design.
Part of the reason these hybrid swaps are already happening is that it feels like just a small upgrade, one that everyone involved is comfortable making. Contractors — even some of the ones that are skeptical about the progressive embrace of heat pumps — typically aren’t afraid to sell systems with furnace backup. Homeowners don’t fear being cold if the heat pump can’t keep up. Installers can use equipment they already understand.
And as a result, the Midwest and Northeast — where most heating fuel is consumed in the U.S. — get a gentler path to the energy transition. Much of the rest of the U.S., meaning the roughly 55% of the population that live in climate zones 1–4, can run heat-pump-only systems. But the Midwest and Northeast need a bridge, and hybrids are that bridge.
Consider: Nearly half of all U.S. residential natural gas — 47% — is consumed in just eleven states, all of them cold, all of them markets dominated by the furnace plus one-way AC combination. That’s where hybrids will unlock decarbonization at scale.
What the evidence shows
A system’s “switchover temperature” is the point where the thermostat is set to change from the heat pump heating to the furnace heating. Conservatively, it can be set around 40 degrees Fahrenheit; aggressively, it can be set to as low as between 10 and 20 degrees F. While heat pumps are getting better every year, traditional furnaces can still be more reliable in very cold weather, with most systems having no outdoor lower limit.
CLASP and RAP modeled 54 million homes across all 48 contiguous states using census-tract-level temperature and energy data. Their finding: Even with deliberately conservative assumptions — a minimum-efficiency heat pump handing off to the furnace at 41°F — hybrids would displace 36% of gas use nationally, cut annual emissions by 67 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, and save consumers $13.6 billion per year in heating costs.
Another definition: The “coefficient of performance,” or COP, measures how much heat a heat pump can put out compared to how much energy the system requires to run. Because heat pumps move heat from cold outdoor air into warm indoor air, rather than making heat like a toaster, they are between 200% and 400% efficient. Those translate to a COP of 2 to 4. Heat pumps are most efficient at higher temperatures, and lose efficiency in colder temperatures where the heat is harder to extract.
In the original paper, I argued that 41 degrees Fahrenheit is the right switchover temperature because it’s where most thermostats are already configured. It’s a temperature that keeps heat pump COPs high, and is unlikely to cause consumer complaints — critical for a program designed to reach tens of millions of homes without friction.
Of course, hybrids could replace gas use at an even higher rate. The point of the original study was to prove the case with safe assumptions nobody could argue with. And even so, the numbers are compelling.
For propane homes, the average household would save $545 per year. For electric resistance homes —16 million of them across the U.S., a group that is disproportionately low-income — savings would average $555 per year, a 55% bill reduction. For gas homes, savings fluctuate with fuel prices, which is why I say comparable and focus on what actually sells the system: comfort, air quality, and resilience.
NREL’s separate ResStock analysis of 550,000 homes, published in Joule, confirms the broader picture: Heat pump adoption reduces greenhouse gas emissions in every state, and prices for wholesale heat pumps are only $200 to $500 more than equivalently sized air conditioners.
Results from the field
These numbers assume the heat pump shuts off at 41 degrees F and hands everything to the furnace. But that’s not what necessarily happens in practice. I typically run heat pumps down to 15–25 degrees F before switching to furnace backup, as long as the economics come anywhere close to working. That makes a huge difference. And the field data proves it.
Steven Rogers of The Energy Conservatory has a basic single-stage heat pump paired with a furnace on his Minneapolis-area home. It reduced his gas use by 62%. That’s in one of the coldest cities in America, with the least effective type of heat pump on the market. Only about 20% of the heating season in Minneapolis yields temperatures cold enough to need a cold climate heat pump — so a basic unit can still handle the majority of the load, with a furnace acting as a back-up.
Meanwhile, Dr. Joseph Ortiz of Kent State University swapped his one-way AC for a three-season cold climate heat pump on his 1990s Cleveland-area home; he reports 70% gas savings and 87% emissions reduction.
These aren’t outliers. In my own work, 60%–80% fuel use reductions in cold climates are common, and I’ve seen as high as 85%–90% with some clients. CLASP’s modeling says 36% nationally with conservative assumptions; the field consistently shows 60%–90% when you let a heat pump do what it’s designed to do. The model is the floor, not the ceiling.
My hybrid customers consistently prefer heat pump heat to furnace heat. Once contractors and homeowners feel heat pumps working reliably even through January — and even in Cleveland or Minneapolis — the fear of relying on heat pumps to keep warm evaporates. I’ve watched this happen time and again, including with my formerly heat-pump-hating friend and HVAC installation expert Jim Bergmann, who loves them now.
With hybrids, we have two choices in cold-climate markets: 0% fuel use reduction with a traditional AC and furnace, or 40%–90% reduction with a two-way AC and a furnace. Full electrification becomes a much easier sell in 10 to 20 years when that equipment is replaced again. In the meantime, massive reductions in fuel usage occur that wouldn’t have been possible under business as usual.
When it comes to home decarbonization strategies, the perfect is the enemy of the good. And hybrids are really good.
Next: The playbook: What actually needs to happen at the legislative, technical, and industry level to finish the job.
Nate Adams, also known as “the House Whisperer,” removed his first client gas meter in 2014 and in the years since has taught numerous HVAC contractors how to do the same. He is a longtime electrification advocate, and on the advisory board for ACHR News. He and his wife Rachel create electrified immersive vacation rentals near the New River Gorge National Park, and own 11 heat pumps personally. The opinions represented in this contributed article are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the views of Latitude Media or any of its staff.
