The electric heat pump

Assembled from 18 blocks · 2 evidence · 14 related

1. Story
2. A refrigeration cycle run in reverse, and the most thermodynamically favourable substitution available anywhere in the energy transition. A heat pump does not make heat; it moves heat from a colder outdoor reservoir to a warmer indoor one using work, which is why the ratio of heat delivered to electricity consumed — the coefficient of performance — is greater than one. Real installed systems deliver seasonal coefficients in the range of roughly two and a half to four, meaning three or so units of heat per unit of electricity, against a condensing gas boiler that cannot exceed one and in practice returns a little under it. The efficiency falls as the temperature lift rises, which is why performance is worse in the coldest weather and why radiator-based retrofits perform less well than underfloor systems designed for lower flow temperatures — but the ceiling is the Carnot relation, not a manufacturing limit, and cold-climate machines operate satisfactorily well below freezing. Norway has the highest household penetration in Europe. The instructive thing about heat pumps is that they are the sector where the physics is entirely settled and the deployment is not: European sales fell in 2023 and then sharply again in 2024 on the European Heat Pump Association's market data, driven by electricity-to-gas price ratios, subsidy withdrawal and installer capacity rather than by any technical problem.
3. Knowledge
4. The electrified share of final energy
5. The electric heat pump
6. Connections
7. The electrified share of final energy
8. Heavy industry (steel, cement and chemicals)
9. Aviation
10. International shipping
11. The electric heat pump
12. The Paris Agreement is adopted at COP21
13. The Paris Agreement enters into force
14. The first calendar year above 1.5 °C above pre-industrial
15. United States withdrawal from the Paris Agreement takes effect
16. Evidence
17. Supports the statement that European heat pump sales fell in 2023 and again, more sharply, in 2024, across the association's tracked national markets. V55 verification basis: not retrieved in this session; the percentage falls are deliberately not stated. This is an industry association source reporting its members' own market, which is the appropriate caution to attach to it.
18. The reference source for world energy balances, final energy consumption by carrier, generation mix, technology cost trends and scenario pathways used throughout this pack. V55 verification basis: no edition was retrieved in this session — iea.org was refused by the network egress proxy — so every figure attributed to this series is stated as a magnitude with the specific gap named on the citing record, and no current-year quantity should be presented to a reader without confirmation against a named edition.