Federal report ignores cost savings of heat pumps, group says

Federal forecast fails to account for cost savings of heat pumps, group says

In recent weeks, a flurry of news articles have warned that home heating costs are set to skyrocket this winter, straining the budgets of low- and middle-income households.

NBC News reported that heating costs are headed “through the roof,” while NPR despaired that “gloom oozes from energy forecasts.” Bloomberg News, in an ominous headline, declared that “Americans will pay the most in 25 years to stay warm this winter.”

These grim predictions were based on an annual winter fuels outlook released earlier this month by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), which provides energy statistics and analyses on behalf of the federal government.

But the forecast fails to account for the cost savings that electric heat pumps are already delivering to consumers because of their efficiency, and it could discourage more consumers from taking advantage of the incentives to purchase new heat pumps in the recently passed climate law, according to experts at Rewiring America, a nonprofit group dedicated to electrification.

Heat pumps, which can both heat and cool buildings, push warm air out of homes in the summer and pull warm air into them in the winter. The devices are far more efficient than gas-burning furnaces, reducing electricity use for heating by 50 percent, according to the Energy Department. 

• When estimating the costs of heating a home with electricity, the forecast includes non-heating uses of electricity, such as lighting, appliances and electronics.
• But the forecast does not make any distinction between highly efficient electric heat pumps and extremely inefficient electric-resistance heating equipment, such as electric baseboard heaters.

“This would be like averaging the fuel cost between a fire truck and a motorcycle and assigning that to a category called ‘motor vehicles,’ ” Rewiring America spokesman Rob O’Donnell said in an email.

If this perceived flaw is corrected, Rewiring America found that U.S. households would spend an average of $596 on heating their homes with an electric heat pump this winter, rather than an average of $1,359 as the report concluded.

• For context, the forecast predicts that heating a home with natural gas this winter will cost $931 on average — a 28 percent increase from last winter because of surging fuel costs and slightly colder weather.
• Heating oil and propane will remain the most expensive sources of heating this winter at $2,354 and $1,668, respectively, the EIA said.

“Once you do a more accurate comparison between an electric heat pump and fossil fuel sources, it is just far and away a superior product,” Rewiring America CEO Ari Matusiak said in an interview.

Asked for comment, EIA spokeswoman Morgan Butterfield said the agency recognizes the constraints of the projections.

“All modeling has its limitations, and we try to clearly point out the limitations of the Winter Fuels Outlook in the report,” Butterfield said in an email. “The report identifies that there could be differences in energy bills among houses with different heating technologies — for instance, an electric heat pump compared with electric resistance heating.”

Butterfield added that the agency would “welcome all of our data users to contact us if they have questions about our data.”

An ‘electric bank account’

Although heat pumps typically cost more upfront than furnaces, they can save homeowners hundreds of dollars on their annual energy bills because of their efficiency, according to the Energy Department. 

The recently passed climate law, which President Biden signed in August, also seeks to slash the price tag of heat pumps.

• The law, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act, provides rebates of up to $8,000 for low- and moderate-income families to buy heat pumps, potentially covering the full cost of the devices for low-income households.
• It also authorizes $500 million for “enhanced” use of the Defense Production Act, which Biden invoked in June to ramp up domestic production of heat pumps and other climate-friendly technologies.

Matusiak expressed concern that the federal fuels forecast — and the ensuing media coverage — missed a huge opportunity to educate more Americans about these incentives.

“What [the climate law] has effectively done is created an electric bank account for everyone in the United States,” he said. “But that bank account is only good if people know it exists.”

Meanwhile, Vice President Harris already has two heat pumps in her official residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory, according to Leah Stokes, a climate policy expert who hosted Harris on the podcast “A Matter of Degrees” last week.

(A spokesman for Harris did not respond to a question about whether Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff installed the heat pumps, or whether the residence came with the devices. But the pair had $3.8 million worth of upgrades completed on the grounds, including the replacement of heating and air conditioning systems, government contracts show.)

Arrest of Forest Service employee sparks tension in rural Oregon

A U.S. Forest Service employee was arrested in Oregon last week after setting a prescribed burn in a national forest that spread too far and burned up a swath of private property, The Washington Post’s Joshua Partlow reports. 

The arrest of a Forest Service employee is exceedingly rare, and it has become a fresh source of tension in a part of the country with a history of animosity toward the federal government.

The sheriff’s office in Grant County in Oregon said it arrested 39-year-old Rick Snodgrass for “reckless burning” after a prescribed burn in Malheur National Forest blazed onto timber land and grazing pasture. In a statement, Grant County District Attorney Jim Carpenter said Snodgrass’s position as a federal employee “will not protect him if it is determined that he acted recklessly.”

Snodgrass could not be immediately reached for comment, but a spokesman for the Forest Service said in a statement that Snodgrass was “conducting an approved fire operation.” Several current and former Forest Service employees have come out in support of Snodgrass, saying that prescribed burns are often needed and that the arrest sends a bad message.

The arrest comes after two fires purposely lit this year in New Mexico grew into the largest wildfires in state history. Prescribed burns, which are intended to clear vegetation that can lead to worse blazes, are becoming trickier as conditions in the West become hotter and drier because of climate change. 

Appeals court upholds Biden’s social cost of carbon

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the Biden administration’s higher estimate for the social cost of carbon, a key metric that assigns a dollar value to the damage that each additional ton of greenhouse gas pollution causes society, Clark Mindock reports for Reuters.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit said the plaintiffs — 13 Republican attorneys general — could not challenge the metric based on “generalized grievances” since it has not yet been applied to federal agencies’ final rules.

The office of Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who had asked the 8th Circuit to overturn a lower court’s dismissal of the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

President Biden last year directed federal agencies to apply an interim social cost of carbon of $51 per ton — the figure used under former president Barack Obama — while his administration weighed whether to raise it to as high as $125 per ton. Under former president Donald Trump, that figure had fallen as low as $1 per ton.

Hurricane Roslyn makes landfall in Mexico as Category 3 storm

Hurricane Roslyn slammed into west-central Mexico on Sunday as a Category 3 storm, bringing damaging winds and life-threatening storm surge and killing at least two people before being downgraded to a tropical storm, Amanda Holpuch reports for the New York Times.

Nearly 100,000 people across the country lost power Sunday, while roughly 90 percent of residents in the municipalities of San Blas and Santiago Ixcuintla were displaced in shelters or staying with relatives in higher areas. The storm is expected to dissipate by early Monday.

EPA solicits public input on first-ever national green bank

The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday announced that it is soliciting public input to help shape the implementation of a first-of-its-kind Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

The $27 billion program, commonly referred to as a national green bank, was authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act. It will provide low-cost financing for clean-energy projects that reduce climate pollution, especially those in disadvantaged communities.

The EPA will hold listening sessions on the green bank on Nov. 1 and Nov. 9. The agency has also created a new webpage for information about the program.

“In designing such an ambitious program, EPA is eager to hear from stakeholders across the country, especially in low-income and disadvantaged communities, whose voices are critical to shaping the Fund and ensuring these historic resources reach people who need them most,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.

A friendly reminder from Jim Halpert: