this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

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Where Heat Pumps Win — And Where They Lose | Five findings from an extremely thorough study by the US National Renewable Energy Lab. (heatmap.news)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 59 points 8 months ago (2 children)

If your concern is lowering a bill:

Where do they work financially? Just about everywhere.

Where do t they work financially? Homes powered by natural gas where the bill is a fixed charge.

If your concern is emissions: they work everywhere.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago

The TL;DR hero.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

There are still some edge cases where a grid-powered, air-source heat pump system MAY have slightly higher carbon emissions than a high efficiency furnace RIGHT NOW. This will happen in very cold climates (which means a lower effective seasonal COP) where the grid is very dirty. That might be an argument for not immediately electrifying.

But these systems also ought to last, with proper maintenance, something like a decade. And we should expect there to be no grids dirty enough to make that same calculus happen a decade from now. If you are replacing right now anyway, there's nearly no cases where a heat pump isn't the right choice.

Any if your primary goal is reducing emissions and you can afford it, getting a heat pump system installed in parallel to a traditional furnace (and then only using the furnace on the most brutal days where the COP for the heat pump at its nadir) will still absolutely lower your overall emissions, and probably significantly.