The houses I've been through in the Midwestern US typically have forced-air natural-gas furnaces and cooling-only non-reversible central AC. Burning natural gas

The houses I've been through in the Midwestern US typically have forced-air natural-gas furnaces and cooling-only non-reversible central AC. Burning natural gas is way cheaper (ignoring externalities) to generate heat than even a heat pump, and can be easily scaled up to provide tons of heat on really cold winter days. Plus, modern heat pumps are high precision, complicated, expensive tech, a furnace is old tech: just a burner and a blower. My natural gas cost is $0.82/CCF or $0.028/kWh. Electric is $0.161/kWh. That means a heat pump needs to be 575% efficient to break even on energy cost (assuming my furnace is 100% efficient, it's not, a lot of heat goes out the chimney). People only get heat pumps here if they're carbon-conscious.