Pumped up

If you asked people to name the most impactful technology of the last 100 years, some might say the lightbulb, others the transistor, and others still the microprocessor.

Each of those has played a major role in shaping modern life, but there’s another technology that’s equally as impactful, but day in, day out, goes largely unnoticed aside from the low hum coming from your kitchen. Or more specifically, from your refrigerator.

The thing inside that makes your food cold – the humble heat pump – is a true modern marvel that doesn’t get nearly the credit it deserves. You don’t need to look any further than refrigeration to make the case. We take it for granted, but do you know what food was like before modern refrigeration? Not great.

Food-related illnesses were rife, good luck getting fresh fruit and vegetables out of season, everything had to be canned or preserved to prevent spoilage, most food ended up spoiled anyway, if you were lucky you had the privilege of constantly dragging giant blocks of ice into your icebox, and so on. In other words, food regularly killed people, was less nutritious, comparatively tasted like shit, and required exponentially more effort. Thank you heat pumps.

But refrigeration is just the tip of the iceberg. Let’s move on to the next most familiar use of heat pumps; air conditioning. Now, if you live in a cool climate you might write off this particular use case off as unnecessary or even wasteful, but air conditioning saves lives in hot climates. According to this report from the IEA, AC saved an estimated 190,000 lives from 2019-2021 alone. The fact that you can live in a climate like mine here in Sacramento without feeling like you’re living on the surface of the sun is just a nice bonus.

But wait, there’s more. Heat pumps also have the power to improve our health and play a major role in saving our sorry selves from the existential threat that is global warming by eliminating fossil fuel use and significantly increasing efficiency.

I’ll use my house as an example. It relied quite a bit on natural gas, with some low-efficiency electric appliances in the mix; gas furnace, gas stove, gas water heater, resistance heat dryer. That made it remarkably similar to the 75% of homes in the western USA that rely on natural gas, and part of the 4.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas used by residential homes in the USA each year.

Now, this is a bit of an aside, but bear with me. “Natural gas” is the greatest marketing con job ever perpetrated on society.

“Oh, it’s natural, it must be harmless”. No. You know what natural gas is? Methane. Just like what comes out of a cow’s ass. You know that prank where 13 year old boys cup their hands around a fart and then release it in someone’s face? That’s basically what people are doing with natural gas, except the fart was dealt 200 million years ago, the 13 year old boy is an energy utility company, and you’re paying them to un-cup that ancient, decrepit fart in your face.

You might be thinking, “it doesn’t go into my face, it gets burned up in my stove and my water heater”. Not quite. Like with the cupped fart, leakage is a fact of life with natural gas. Leaks happen during extraction, transport, and finally, at the point of use, directly into your face. The former contributes to global warming and local air pollution, the latter literally poisons you.

Now don’t get me wrong, burning methane is better than burning coal. But we have the technology. Yes, you guessed right, heat pumps. Up to this point, I’ve only talked about ways heat pumps cool things. But heat pumps are called “heat pumps” and not “cold makers” for a reason; they move heat from place to place. They can move heat out of a space cool it, but they can also do the reverse and move heat into a space to warm it up.

Moving heat is also the key to why heat pumps can be so efficient in heating applications. A gas furnace or resistive electrical elements can never be more than 100% efficient. The best you can do is turn 100% of that fuel source into heat. But heat pumps don’t directly turn farts or watts into heat. They use watts to run a compressor that moves heat that’s in the air or ground into your home, which lets you readily break that efficiency barrier. Why settle for 100% efficiency when you can have 300% or more?

Historically, heats pumps haven’t been used nearly as much for heating purposes, but all sorts of companies have improving that particular use case, and as of today are cranking out uber-clean, ultra-efficient alternatives to common home appliances. Going back to the example of my house:

• Gas furnace and separate air conditioner → whole house heat pump. Basically a more efficient AC that runs in reverse in the winter, capable of pulling heat out of sub-zero temperatures. Much cheaper to run in my market, zero venting risk, and it eliminated an entire HVAC system.
• Gas water heater → hybrid heat pump water heater. It has standard electric heat strips for backup; we keep it in heat-pump only mode. Again, cheaper, safer.
• Electric vented dryer → ventless heat pump washer/dryer combo. Way more efficient, and extra so because you’re not taking conditioned air from inside your home and shoving it out you dryer vent. Also, not having to switch loads rules.
• Gas range → induction range. Not a heat pump, but totally awesome. You’re cooking with magnets.

The net result of these changes are a decarbonized home that’s significantly safer, more comfortable, and cheaper to operate, which keeps my local air cleaner, and the world less toasty. Heat pumps are awesome.