Just curious, so numbers are the deciding factor for heating, not environmental impact? For example if your were wealthy would you choose lowest impact option, or would numbers still dictate your choice?
It is a good question.
Where I live, electricity costs around $0.28/kWh, but generation is typically >85% renewable (predominantly hydroelectric).
My heat pump (4.7 COP when heating) would cost $0.06 to run for every 1kWh of heat it produces, with only 0.03kWh of that electricity coming from fossil fuel sources.
Gas - which I don’t have at my house - would have pricing in the neighbourhood of $0.15/kWh. Even at 95% efficiency getting 1kWh of heat from gas would cost $0.16, using 1.05kWh of gas.
35x the fossil fuel usage and 2.5x the price, for the same quantity of heat. Some luck of living in a moderate climate where an air-source heat pump almost never loses efficiency, to be fair.
Just curious, so numbers are the deciding factor for heating, not environmental impact?
This is correct. And given the way the grids interconnect it would be hard if not impossible for me to be able to quantify environmental impact. I would assume even though there is still a lot of coal generation in-use it would still be more environmentally friendly for me to run the heat pump but I just don’t know.
For example if your were wealthy would you choose lowest impact option, or would numbers still dictate your choice?
If money was no object I would absolutely choose the lowest impact option. I would even do a solar install even though it would likely end up being a net-loss for my specific case.
Thanks for your honest answer.
I think many people believe gas is at least preferable to coal environmentally wise, but turns out in quite a few instances it’s worse. (fossil fuel companies did a good job marketing gas as cleaner for a long time)