Heat Pumps

The report identifies heating oil as a significant economic and environmental drain on the Northeast U.S., costing the region over $14 billion annually. It compares natural gas and heat pumps as alternatives, concluding that heat pumps offer superior long-term economic savings and emissions reductions, particularly when paired with a renewable grid. The author identifies high upfront costs, lack of technical knowledge, and retrofit difficulties as primary barriers and suggests incentives, third-party financing, and leasing as solutions to scale the market.

• Heating oil is a major economic burden in the Northeast U.S., costing residents and businesses more than $14 billion per year in fuel alone.
• Rural households in the Northeast are disproportionately affected by oil heating; 55% of rural households use fuel oil or propane, compared to 25% of urban households.
• Replacing all oil heating in the region with heat pumps could result in annual fuel cost savings between $5.5 billion and $6.0 billion.
• Heat pumps provide significantly higher greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions than natural gas; replacing all oil with natural gas reduces heating emissions by 9%, while heat pumps paired with a renewable grid could reduce them by 47%.
• Air-source heat pumps are identified as the ideal technology for retrofits, while ground-source systems are better suited for new construction.
• The transition to heat pumps faces three primary barriers: high initial capital costs, a lack of awareness and qualified installers, and the physical difficulty of retrofitting existing buildings.
• Converting half of the region's oil customers to heat pumps over 20 years could generate $20 billion in cumulative net present value savings.

APA

Matley, R. (2013). Heat Pumps. RMI. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2013-05_HeatPumps.pdf

Chicago

Matley, Ryan. Heat Pumps. RMI, 2013. https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2013-05_HeatPumps.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Matley |first1=Ryan |title=Heat Pumps |publisher=RMI |date=March 2013 |url=https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2013-05_HeatPumps.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{matley2013heat, author = {Matley, Ryan}, title = {{Heat Pumps}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2013}, month = mar, url = {https://rmi.org/app/uploads/2017/05/RMI_Document_Repository_Public-Reprts_2013-05_HeatPumps.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }