Trump cancels Biden’s heat pump crisis

It isn’t easy figuring out the single most ridiculous Biden administration climate policy, but its declaration that electric heat pumps are critical to the nation under the Defense Production Act may deserve the prize. Fortunately, President Donald Trump just announced that he is revoking this silly decision. Next, he should work to eliminate all the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) handouts for heat pumps.

Heat pumps are the electric vehicles of home appliances. Both are grossly overhyped by environmental activists for their claimed climate benefits, and both are undeserving of the taxpayer-funded favoritism provided by the Biden administration and the previous Congress.

In simple terms, a heat pump is an air conditioner that can work in reverse and bring heat into your home in the winter. That may sound more efficient than having a central air conditioner for cooling and a separate natural gas furnace for heating, and for some homeowners it is.  

However, while a heat pump’s cooling capacity is comparable to that of a standalone air conditioner, its heating capacity is definitely not on par with a gas furnace. Thus, many heat pump owners would still need to rely heavily on a backup source of heat – usually electric resistance heat – to get through the winter, especially in northern states. Keep in mind, natural gas is several times cheaper than electricity on a per unit energy basis, thus sticking with a separate natural gas furnace rather than going all-electric with a heat pump may be the more economical wintertime option.

High upfront costs are also an issue. Even those who can afford a heat pump should consider such factors as whether they’ll be in their homes for enough years to earn back their initial investment in the form of energy savings. 

For these and other reasons, heat pumps have their place in the market but are definitely not for every homeowner. So why do environmental organizations routinely use words like “magic” and “miracle” to describe them? And why did the Biden administration go to such extreme lengths for heat pumps – not only declaring them “essential to the national defense” under the Defense Production Act, but also providing massive giveaways under the IRA to carry out this agenda? This includes homeowner rebates up to $8,000 for the purchase of an electric heat pump, cash grants to heat pump manufacturers stretching into the tens of millions each and totaling $250 million, and billions more for activist groups that advocate for heat pumps and other politically-favored appliances. The reason is the same one that explains the irrational exuberance over electric vehicles – heat pumps have gotten caught up in climate policy craziness.

Climate activists and their allies in government are pushing hard to abolish natural gas – a hydrocarbon – and electrify all energy use. The same folks who want to force us out of gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles and into electric ones would like to engineer a similar transition away from natural gas for home appliances. This explains, for example, the Biden administration’s equally-nutty attempts to target gas stoves in favor of electric versions, supported by hundreds of millions of activist dollars behind such efforts. In their imagination, electricity generation will soon be dominated by wind and solar and thus be environmentally more acceptable than natural gas.  

In truth, the environmental case for heat pumps is every bit as mixed as the economic one, though that has not slowed the activists obsessed with electrification. But from a homeowner standpoint, giving up on natural gas and switching to an electric heat pump is often not the wise move.

Thankfully, the misuse of the Defense Production Act for heat pumps is now over. Next, the Trump administration should focus on preventing any further IRA handouts for them.