Heat Pumps Really Bring the Heat During Those Cold Dark Winter Months, Study Says

A ground source heat pump sits outside a home built inside the Energy House 2 research facility at Salford University on January 24, 2023 in Salford, England.

Heating and cooling homes can be expensive, but thankfully, there are heat pumps. And these electric home coolers and heaters are efficient home systems even in extremely cold temperatures, new research has found.

In a recently published report in the energy research journal Joule, a team of researchers from Oxford University and the Regulatory Assistance Project outline how incredibly efficient heat pumps are at warming up homes, even in the depths of the most bitterly cold weather.

Read more

• Alabama fans handle loss to Texas in predictably bigoted fashion

• NFL lawsuit bombshell: 'If the Black players don’t like it here, they should go back to Africa and see how bad it is'

• Devs React To Unity's Newly Announced Fee For Game Installs: ‘Not To Be Trusted’ [UPDATE]

• Colorado's Pool Party Karen Gave This Pathetic Excuse For Her Racist Behavior That Was Caught On Camera

• Amber Heard Spent Two Months Designing Overwatch Mercy Cosplay For Ex Elon Musk

Officials throughout the U.S. are pushing for building codes that include the use of heat pumps in new homes and new commercial buildings depending on the size of the building. This May, New York Governor Kathy Hochul passed the state budget for the coming year, which included a policy known as the All Electric Buildings Act. This made New York state the first in the country to ban gas hook-ups in new buildings. This also means that new construction projects throughout the state would have to be electric, as in no gas-powered appliances including furnaces.

“Last year, more heat pumps were sold than natural gas furnaces in the U.S. for the first time,” Jan Rosenow, the director of European programs for the Regulatory Assistance Project, told CleanTechnica. “Incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act will help continue this trend but even more sales are needed to meet the American climate targets.

In April 2022, the Washington State Building Code Council voted on the building codes that mandated heat pumps in new developments with four or more stories. But there have been some setbacks. Just this year, state building code officials voted to delay the first statewide mandate for electric heat pumps in new buildings.

Want more climate and environment stories? Check out Earther’s guides to decarbonizing your home, divesting from fossil fuels, packing a disaster go bag, and overcoming climate dread. And don’t miss our coverage of the latest IPCC climate report, the future of carbon dioxide removal, and the un-greenwashed facts on bioplastics and plastic recycling.

More from Gizmodo

• Watch The World’s Fastest Accelerating Electric Car Hit 62 MPH In Under A Second

• 14 Classic Science Fiction Ships Recreated In Starfield

• Square Enix Loses Stock Value, Development Process Under Fire

• VinFast Is Mostly Selling Cars To Itself

• 'She Had Limited Value': Officer Caught Laughing About Grad Student Killed By A Cop Doing 74 In A 25

Sign up for Gizmodo's Newsletter. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.