Carbon and energy cost impacts of electrification of space heating with heat pumps in the US

Walker, Iain S.; Less, Brennan; Casquero-Modrego, Núria

doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2022.111910

Cited by 26 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Notably, the programs reviewed do not include singlemeasure upgrades, such as the rebating of heat pump installation, for which there are numerous programs across the US (see recent heating electrification review by Cohn and Esram [10]). Overall, savings fall in the range of 30-40% for whole-home upgrades, which exceed those commonly reported for low-income weatherization, but they are not as substantial as those documented by Less and Walker [2,11] for extensive deep energy retrofits. Project costs reported by these programs ranged from USD 10,000 to USD 20,000 in most instances, but more ambitious programs with higher average savings reported costs as high as USD 50,000 per home.…”

Section: Energy Upgrade Trends and Programs In The Uscontrasting

confidence: 52%

Home Energy Upgrades as a Pathway to Home Decarbonization in the US: A Literature Review

2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This work aims to characterize how home energy upgrade projects and programs in the US have evolved over the past decade. It also identifies what changes are needed to drive expansion of the US energy retrofit market in such a way that addresses carbon emissions from buildings, improves resilience and upgrades the housing stock. This review focuses on whole-home energy upgrades, targeting deep energy retrofit savings of >30%. The topics we cover include trends in home electrification, US and European home energy upgrade programs, energy upgrade measure costs, business economics, and health effects. Key changes in project design noted in this review include: (1) the electrification of dwellings with rapidly improving heat pump systems and low-cost solar photovoltaic technology; and (2) a shift away from high-cost building envelope strategies and towards more traditional home performance/weatherization envelope upgrades. Promising program design strategies covered include: (1) end-use electrification programs; (2) novel financing approaches; (3) the use of carbon-based program and project metrics; and (4) “one-stop shop” programs. Based on the existing market barriers, we suggest that the industry should adopt new project performance metrics. Additionally, market drivers are needed to spur widespread energy upgrades in the US housing stock. Costs must be reduced, and projects designed to appeal to homeowners and contractors.

show abstract

Section: Energy Upgrade Trends and Programs In The Uscontrasting

confidence: 52%

Home Energy Upgrades as a Pathway to Home Decarbonization in the US: A Literature Review

2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This is based on prices and HP performance in Iowa, but as shown in Section 1, is broadly applicable for the Midwestern US. A recent state‐specific assessment has been reported by Walker et al 16 The breakeven sCOP, which can be calculated solely from natural gas prices, natural gas furnace efficiency, and electricity prices is a simple metric that can be used to compare available HP performance to the performance required for operational cost break‐even. Our analysis shows that the sCOP required for a HP to breakeven with a high efficiency NG furnace in Iowa has increased from 2.3 (in 2007) to 4.5 (in 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, our focus is on the difference in operation between state‐of‐the‐art systems and a majority of modern high efficiency NG furnaces operate with 95% AFUE. Walker et al 16 specifically report sensitivity to furnace AFUE.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…4 Waite has shown that wide adoption of electric HPs in northern regions would move peak electric demand periods from summer to winter while creating a scenario with high peak demand corresponding to a few days each winter with the coldest temperatures. 3 A number of recent assessments have explored and quantified heat pump adoption benefits and disbenefits with increasing granularity, 14 looking at social benefits beyond GHG mitigation, regional and housing-stock specific cases, 15 variation with furnace efficiency, 16 and how these are likely to evolve over time. 17 Meanwhile, a 2021 National Academy report Accelerating Decarbonization, recommends that all new construction in climate zones 5 and warmer have BTC through HPs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Can heat‐pumps provide routes to decarbonization of building thermal control in the US Midwest?

Doak

Stanier

Anthony

et al. 2022

Energy Science & Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Climate change mitigation demands rapid decarbonization; in cold regions such as the US Midwest, building thermal control (BTC) presents a potential for significant cuts in emissions by combining renewable energy with heat pumps. Trends in natural gas and electricity pricing over the period 2007-2020 have significantly upended economic feasibility of this decarbonization approach. Heat pump-based BTC has moved from being cost advantageous in operations but higher GHG emitting (in 2007), to the exact oppositehigher cost but lower emitting (in 2020). Due to energy price fluctuations, the coefficient of performance required of a heat pump to breakeven on operational cost with high efficiency natural gas heating has doubled, changing from 2.25 to 4.5 over the period 2007-2019. The value of 4.5 is infeasible for all available cold-climate heat pump systems. Thus, while electrification via both air-source and ground-source heat pumps is a commonly identified component of decarbonization plans in the region, actual implementation has declined. Improvements in heat pump performance, overcoming adoption barriers, and adopting policies that buffer longterm climate solutions against short-term price fluctuations are all needed. In part due to continuing decreases in carbon intensity of electricity, heat pump climate benefits can be substantial over project life cycles; however, there is no current policy mechanism to enable this benefit to be considered relative to short-run economic considerations.

show abstract

“…A similar analysis for the U.S. disaggregated energy consumption by census tract to estimate how an increase in heat pump adoption would impact peak electricity demand, using three different U.S. Department of Energy heat pump performance targets that vary with temperature (Waite and Modi 2020). Others have used breakeven analysis to identify a fixed COP at which heat pumps would reduce each U.S. state's emissions or energy costs, explicitly ignoring how heat pump performance varies with temperature due to differences between heat pump models (Walker et al 2022). In each case, there was relatively little differentiation or specification of the type of air source heat pump chosen, which can have significant impacts on overall electricity consumption.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a high-resolution top-down model to estimate actual household-level heat pump electricity consumption

Bischocho

Rezqalla

Farha

et al. 2023

Environ. Res.: Infrastruct. Sustain.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Heat pumps can play an important part in decarbonizing the residential sector due to their use of electricity instead of fossil fuels, and their high efficiency, which often exceeds 100%. However, heat pump performance and energy savings vary with climate and individual household energy usage. Recent studies have used geospatial models to estimate potential heat pump energy consumption across the United States. Yet most studies use generic and oversimplified heat pump models. We contribute to this field with a geospatial model based on manufacturer data and measured test data for 16 different R410A, high efficiency, variable speed compressor heat pumps. Using linear regression, we estimate a market average of coefficient of performance with respect to ambient temperature. From this, we can identify the variation in efficiency with temperature across this technology class. We also use linear regression to estimate demand for heating and cooling as a function of ambient temperature and household characteristics. We compare the performance of both the predicted energy demand and heat pump efficiency against measured data from a heat pump-equipped house in West Lafayette, Indiana, and find that the model predicts daily heat pump electricity consumption with 27.8% relative error, comparable to other building simulation models. By incorporating high-resolution geospatial data inputs, such top-down models can still maintain a large scope across technologies and diverse climates while increasing spatial and temporal resolution.

show abstract

Carbon and energy cost impacts of electrification of space heating with heat pumps in the US

Cited by 26 publications

References 20 publications

Home Energy Upgrades as a Pathway to Home Decarbonization in the US: A Literature Review

Home Energy Upgrades as a Pathway to Home Decarbonization in the US: A Literature Review

Can heat‐pumps provide routes to decarbonization of building thermal control in the US Midwest?

Development of a high-resolution top-down model to estimate actual household-level heat pump electricity consumption

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About