If your home is heated by a gas furnace or a gas boiler, it’s emitting pollutants into your home and carbon pollution into our climate. When gas is burned, most of the dirty fossil fuel is converted into heat. But some is lost, with even the most efficient gas systems converting around 90 percent of the gas into heat.

Clean energy heat pumps use less energy and provide the same amount of heat. Heat pumps extract heat from outdoor air and transfer it indoors. For each unit of energy used by a heat pump, three to four units of heat are created. That means while gas is at best around 90 percent efficient, heat pumps have efficiencies of 300 percent to 400 percent.

How can a heat pump extract heat from the cold outdoor air during the winter? It works because heat flows from hot to cold. The heat pump uses a refrigerant colder than the outdoor air, so when the refrigerant is sent outdoors, it absorbs heat, even from frigid temperatures. The refrigerant is then compressed, which raises its temperature three to four times, and the heat is sent indoors. 

Heat pumps provide heating even when outdoor temperatures drop below zero degrees Fahrenheit. Heat pumps are used successfully and efficiently in climates as cold as Maine. 

Heat pumps are essentially air conditioners in reverse, and the same heat pump that warms your home in the winter can cool it in the summer with a single device, saving you money by having one system for both heating and cooling.