Why Heat Pumps are Immensely Important Right Now

I’m backtracking the debate here so feel free to ignore this. I just watched the latest Technology Connections video about heat pumps[1] where he talks about the total energy savings in replacing gas stoves with heat pumps to provide residential heating, with total energy savings up to 5 times. This goes to show my previous point about how “[w]e don’t need to replace carbon power 1:1 if we patch up the inefficiencies of our current energy use.” So to answer your concern that: > Electrifying railways and other transportation is going to increase electricity usage, not decrease it. All else being equal, yes. However we are not going to replace the energy consumption 1:1. Electrical railways have the potential to be far more efficient in the energy use. Especially if you consider the potential increase in traction allowing better track usage which will pull super inefficient cars and lorries from the road and onto the tracks. Also a minor correction: > So assuming that electricity consumption is going to decrease is a very dubious prospect. No, I don’t assume that. However I am hopeful that we can easily decrease our total energy consumption as we electrify. Meaning that if we are still pumping gas to put into our newly electrified infrastructure and consumer systems, there is a potential that we need to pump less of it for the same benefits because of how much more efficient these new electrified systems are over the old fossil fuel powered ones. 1: this video

Sure they exist. But it's more than just "swap one unit with another" which was the claim above. Heat pumps are actually pretty efficient, down to low temperatures. Have a look at link where Alec discusses that. Around Chicago you can expect to have only a few days in winter where the COP is bad: this video

So off-peak pre-cooling, did I read your comment right? That has been talked about quite a bit actually. Technology Connections made a nice YouTube video ( this video ) about it. I'm a bit surprised though that off-peak pre-cooling isn't more common or even widely incentivised, especially with the rise of smart home and IoT stuff. All I've seen is reduction (so less cooling) during peak, if I'm not remembering wrong, people were quite annoyed with that.

Article failed to mention that wind/solar storage can be usefully teamed-up with the another (renewable) energy source, the heat in the ground ... which is nearby many of our houses. Today's heat pumps can work well for many down to outdoor temperatures of about 5 degrees F (-15C). They'll bring down the cost of using the other sources. [ this video ]

>Burning something for heat is always more effective, cheaper, and produces fewer emissions compared to an electric heater... >If you’re getting electric heat from coal fired steam that’s always worse than burning the coal locally to heat something, and this is true for all emission-producing power sources. Apparently you can actually save natural gas with electric heat and a heat pump. this video