this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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Why do I feel like every time politicians do the right thing, it's the home budgets of regular people who pay for it?
Regular people are paying for it when a hurricane destroys their city. Think of switching to clean energy as an investment, if having a planet to live on doesn't do it for you. edit: typo
Heat pumps don't really work in extreme cold. My office has only electric heat and it runs constantly when it's really cold, never getting up to a comfortable temp. My home stays warm with gas heat and the furnace runs far less.
So in Montreal everything runs off of electric heat and it gets super cold out and it's pretty warm indoors with the heating running on super low. Maybe you guys just don't know how to use electric heating properly.
Your comment made me curious because I know I have read about heat pumps not operating well in cold temperatures. So I looked it up a little, apparently there are cold climate heat pumps and they aren't installed in most places in the US. Where I live, heat pumps work okay a lot of the year, but we do get cold snaps where they just can't keep up. Apparently you actually have a better heat pump it would seem.
Yupp, they work fine in Norway and it gets cold enough here.
Had spells of -30 °C this winter.
You'd be hard pressed finding a any home here heated with gas. Its all electric or wood fired.
Funnily enough, most of our heating is done using baseboard heaters, or resistance heating. Newer constructions have heat pump/air conditioning combos but I don't know exactly how widespread they are, my parents have one and it's definitely more efficient than the baseboard heaters, but not by a huge margin.
I don't know if you know his channel, but Technology Connections did a couple of videos on heat pumps that were pretty eye opening, I imagine as much for Americans who have been hit hard by gas and oil lobbying, as for me as a Canadian who hasn't ever really seen anything other than electric heating.
Yeah older heat pumps can't stand >5°C temps (at least my 20yo one), newer ones seems to be way better even in cold temp.
This is about blocking export terminals. Building them raises domestic prices. So it has a financial benefit for Americans who use gas for heat and has a climate benefit.