>Don't Americans use electric heat pumps / air-conditioning units for cooling and heating In the northeastern US where I live, it gets down below 0 C for a goo

>Don't Americans use electric heat pumps / air-conditioning units for cooling and heating In the northeastern US where I live, it gets down below 0 C for a good portion of the winter and usually once or twice to around -18 C. While certainly there are apartments, maybe houses, with electric heat and heat pumps, my experience has been that electric heat is expensive and undesirable and a heat pump is a useless gimmick that doesn't work in actual cold weather (although maybe a newer system would be better). It seems like the cheaper apartments in terms of rent have electric heat, which is more expensive. I think natural gas (I use around 140 therms at peak in the winter, which I think is about equivalent to 400 m^3) is typical if you live reasonably close to the city/inner suburbs, and if you don't have gas, you may well burn fuel oil, which is essentially diesel fuel that's delivered in trucks and stored in tanks. In some parts of the US, where coal is produced, I think people use that for heating, but it's less common overall because it isn't cost effective to ship a long way. Last month I used about 500 kWh which is higher than you but not hugely. I wonder if your climate is as cold as where I live though, or if you are using as much gas for a significantly more temperate region.