Right now it appears much of the planet is on fire, figuratively and literally. Wildfires are spreading across the western United States and in the Iberian peninsula in Europe, while at the same time record heat is spreading across large swaths of America and much of Europe, with temperatures in Texas rising above 100 degrees Fahrenheit with no relief in sight and seriously taxing the electric grid. Meanwhile, much of Europe is equally as hot, with parts of the United Kingdom reaching historic high temperatures of 104 degrees Fahrenheit as well as much of Spain, France, and Italy, causing thousands of deaths due to heat stroke and other heat-related conditions. Adding on to the misery is the ongoing war in Ukraine with Russia, which due to wartime conditions and punitive sanctions is cutting off supplies of oil and natural gas to much of Europe. Germany in particular has been hurt by the cutoff in fossil fuel supplies from Russia. Yet ironically, Vladimir Putin is trying to play the long game, looking forward to this winter where he can blackmail the European Union into meeting his demands for annexing Ukraine or freeze them out literally.
Meanwhile, a media brouhaha erupted when President Joe Biden met with the Saudi crown prince in order to beg them to increase oil production due to sky high gas prices here in the USA and around the world. Pundits jumped all over this as a sign of weakness on the part of the President for kowtowing to a murderous dictator who has committed numerous human rights abuses. (Where was this outrage when the former guy kowtowed to an equally murderous dictator? See Ukraine above.) In reality, this was a sign of weakness...our country’s weakness on fossil fuel dependency.
But this diary is not about the War in Ukraine or climate change in general but about practical solutions to combat climate change and fossil fuel dependency. Two of the biggest uses for fossil fuels are for transportation and heating and cooling homes. I won’t get into the whole transportation issue, but I did want to mention something about heating and cooling our homes. We would be well served to use more renewable energy, particularly solar and wind energy, but one of the biggest roadblocks to using renewable energy for thermal heating and cooling is that it doesn’t provide enough energy to reliably heat and cool our homes. That may be true for passive solar heating, but a cheaper alternative is available in the form of the heat pump.
I’m not a HVAC person or solar installer, so I’m sure some of you who are can enlighten me much further, but in simple terms a heat pump is much like a central air conditioner, except that it can be run in reverse. During the hot summer days it can be run as a central air unit, taking hot outside air and running it through a condenser that cools the air and pumps that cool air through the inside of the house, thus resulting in comfortable conditions. However, during the cool autumn and spring months and cold, frigid winter months, it works in reverse, taking the heated pockets of cold air and heating the air through the condenser and pumping the warm air through the house, giving warm comfortable feelings inside. This takes electricity to run the heat pumps, and for many years it was only possible to run heat pumps in milder winter climates, but thanks to improved technology there are heat pumps which run as efficiently as natural gas furnaces down to -5 degrees Fahrenheit with equal BTU heating. Coupled with a solar panel array on the house, a geothermal unit buried underground in the backyard, or close to a wind farm or hydroelectric generator, and the cost of running such a system goes down quite a bit.
However, heat pumps are only as efficient as the homes being heated, which means they must be well insulated in order for them to be run at maximum efficiency. In newer homes this shouldn’t be much of an issue, but this could be an issue in older homes which can be quite drafty and need to be retrofitted. However, I have researched some anecdotal stories on social media from people in Maine, Minnesota, and North Dakota who have installed heat pumps with solar arrays who said it has saved them money over their previous natural gas furnaces or propane heaters. Like I said earlier, I’m not an HVAC or renewable energy expert, but I thought this was something to consider in the wake of our planet being baked and flooded to death by overuse of fossil fuels and the petro-dictators keeping us dependent on them. (I’m looking at you Vlad the butcher, MBS, and Joe Manchin.)