Installing a heat pump at a home in Shorewood, Minn., last autumn.
Credit...Tim Gruber for The New York Times

How Times Readers Made the Switch to Heat Pumps

Hundreds of Times readers wrote to us and shared their experiences of installing heat pumps, including the good, the bad and the daunting.

by · NY Times

Last month, I shared my story of switching to a heat pump and of how doing the right thing for the planet turned out, at least in my case, to be a frustrating experience as a consumer.

Almost immediately, I was inundated with emails from readers eager to share their own experiences. So many readers responded, and with such a bounty of insights and tips, that I felt compelled to share some of what I learned.

Here’s the main takeaway: Many people love their heat pump, but there are often important details that made their experiences a success. Of the 200 or so readers who emailed me, most told me that they’re very happy they made the switch and described some interesting reasons.

Dennis Nord, who lives near Santa Barbara, Calif., was an especially early adopter: He bought a heat pump in 1987. Nearly 40 years later, he hasn’t just saved thousands of dollars, he wrote, but he cut his emissions as well.

“Either you or the people after you in that dwelling are going to benefit for a long time!” he wrote. “And in some reasonable future amount of time, the pain of that extra cost will be forgotten!”

But in many cases, readers offered specific reasons their heat pumps were a win. Some noted that their homes had solar panels, creating free electricity that made their switch to a heat pump especially rewarding financially.

“To absorb the increased cost of the heat pump, one also needs to be able to generate their own electricity,” wrote Andy Sze, who lives in Southern California. “With a properly sized solar, a good net metering contract and/or a battery, your heat pump can cost $0 to operate.”

Some argued that not all brands are equal. A dozen owners of Mitsubishi heat pumps, for example, wrote to say how happy they were with their purchase.

Still others noted that their heat pumps made sense financially because their states offered generous financial incentives. One reader suggested creative financing options: Josh Saunders, of Denver, said he financed his heat pump purchase with a low-interest loan from the Clean Energy Credit Union, which was set up in 2017 to make it easier for people to finance energy efficient appliances, rooftop solar panels and electric vehicles.

And some readers pointed out benefits that hadn’t occurred to me.

“I didn’t like having gas appliances in my house putting out toxic fumes,” wrote Allison Gannon, of Northern California. (Gas-powered furnaces emit carbon monoxide, which is poisonous and can be dangerous if not properly vented out of the home.)

But while happy owners of heat pumps made up a majority of those who wrote to me, a considerable share explained why their experiences were less than ideal.

“We installed a heat pump two years ago, and I was shocked at the price,” wrote Elaine Reddy, of Boulder, Colo., who added she was still glad she had made the switch. “I don’t love it when people make it sound like a no-brainer.”

Ricka Gerstmann, of Sumner, Wash., installed a heat pump last month and described the cost as “eye-watering.” She said that if governments wanted more people to switch, the financial incentives needed to be more generous, even for middle-class families.

An unnerving number of readers offered this warning: Get ready to be cold in the winter.

Diana Cihak, in Buffalo, N.Y., wrote that she recently installed a heat pump — only to find it doesn’t keep her home warm enough in the winter. “When it gets into the teens they stop being able to keep up. No one told me this,” she wrote. “In retrospect I very much regret it.”

Laurie Relling, of Camas, Wash., said her heat pump “keeps the house nice and cool in the summer with low energy costs.” But here’s the catch: “When the temperature dips to the 30s in the winter, the heat pump can’t keep up.” She relies on a high efficiency gas furnace as a backup.

I shared some of that feedback with Ian M. Shapiro, associate director for Building Science and Community Programs at the University of Syracuse, whose research has focused on heat pumps. He said the notion that heat pumps perform poorly in the winter was a misconception.

When people are unsatisfied with their heat pump’s ability to keep their house warm, the problem usually comes down to one of a few things, Shapiro told me: Either the heat pump isn’t big enough for the space, or it wasn’t installed properly.

Curious, I turned on my heat a few days ago, to find out for myself. I’m happy to report that the unit warmed up my home with admirable speed.

But Shapiro said another complaint about heat pumps was very valid: They’re way more expensive than they should be.

He attributed that to a shortage of skilled technicians. “We don’t have enough contractors, so the contractors are charging more than they should,” he said.

Readers from overseas made the same point: How could heat pumps in the United States be so expensive?

Gabby Morris, of Napier, New Zealand, said she paid about $4,000 for what she called a top-line heat pump. Carl Bjurstedt, of Oppdal, Norway, wrote that he paid the equivalent of about $3,200 for his heat pump, adding that he didn’t suppose wages and device costs could be that much higher in the United States.

“Somebody making a very great profit on heat pumps over there?” he asked.

THE CLIMATE FIX

A new, and potentially cheaper, way to capture carbon from the air

The problem: In addition to curbing emissions, experts say the world will need to remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year to limit global warming.

The solution: The U.S. government and big companies have been investing billions in this process, known as direct air capture, or DAC, which strips out greenhouse gases from the air and then often sequesters them underground or elsewhere. A big barrier to DAC has been cost.

But a recent $10 million agreement Google signed with Holocene, a relatively unknown start-up, has raised eyebrows. The deal is significant for two reasons. First, Google is providing Holocene with money up front for carbon removal expected to begin in the early 2030s. Second, Google has agreed to pay Holocene $100 for each ton of removed carbon dioxide, a price that is a fraction of what DAC typically costs.

Anca Timofte, Holocene’s co-founder and chief executive, said this week that Google had already started to provide some of the money, which Holocene is using to develop its demonstration plant. After the agreement was announced, she also started hearing from other potential customers, she said.

Why it might work: Direct air capture often involves using large fans and filters to remove carbon dioxide from the air. But Holocene’s technology involves capturing carbon from the air and moving it through water that includes an amino acid. The carbon dioxide then gloms onto the amino acid and is heated at a low temperature, at which point pure carbon dioxide separates from the solid and can be stored.

The company hopes its chemical process will lower costs. “The chemistry itself and fundamentals can be tweaked and optimized for the process in a way that’s not incremental,” Timofte said.

The obstacles: Other DAC companies are further along than Holocene. Climeworks, for example, has a plant in Iceland that aims to remove thousands of tons of carbon dioxide a year, and Occidental Petroleum is far along in developing Stratos, a plant in Texas that seeks to capture half a million tons of carbon dioxide annually and is supposed to be up and running in mid-2025.

“We need to be taking a number of shots on goal in terms of how we try to advance the technology,” said Michael Terrell, Google’s senior director for energy and climate.

Some environmentalists are skeptical of some forms of carbon removal out of fear they distract from cutting emissions. Fossil fuel companies are also using some of the carbon dioxide captured by these plants to get more oil out of the ground in a process called enhanced oil recovery.

What’s next: The U.S. government is backing an array of direct air capture projects with the hopes of having four “hubs” that can each remove at least one million tons of carbon dioxide a year, but those are a ways off from being completed. Holocene hopes its plant will be operational by the end of 2026, Timofte said. — Allison Prang

More climate news:

  • Heatmap News argues that Amazon’s investment in X-energy, the small nuclear reactor and fuel company, is a big step forward for the future of nuclear power.
  • The home insurance crisis won’t end after hurricane season, John Cassidy argues in The New Yorker.
  • Federal flood maps vastly underestimated the flood risk faced by properties in the parts of North Carolina devastated by Hurricane Helene, The Washington Post reports.

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