6 ms·

You’re ignoring one critical difference between these two scenarios. Humans, and all human related activities, produce heat as a waste product. It’s much easier

You’re ignoring one critical difference between these two scenarios. Humans, and all human related activities, produce heat as a waste product. It’s much easier, and consumes less additional energy, to heat an occupied space, than to cool it. Thanks to the fact that your average human produces 80W of heat just to stay alive. So every human in your cold space is 80W fewer watts of energy you need to produce to heat the space. But in a hot space, it’s an extra 80W that needs to be removed. Add to that all of the appliances in a home. It’s not unusual for a home to be drawing 100W of electricity just keep stuff powered on in standby, and that’s another 100W of “free” heating. All of this is before we get to big ticket items, like hobs, ovens, water heaters etc. So cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space. Simply because all the waste energy created by people living in the space reduces the total heating requirement of the space, but equally increases the cooling requirement of that same space. All of this is ignoring the fact that it’s easy to create a tiny personal heated environment around an individual (it’s called a woolly jumper). But practically impossible to create a cool individual environment around a person. So in cold spaces you don’t have to heat everything up to same temperature for the space to be perfectly liveable, but when cooling a space, you have to cool everything, regardless of if it’ll impact the comfort of the occupants.

mbesto 2y ago
I also point out that Phoenix's "summer" last longer than Berlin's winter: https://weatherspark.com/y/75981/Average-Weather-in-Berlin-Germany-Year-Round https://weatherspark.com/y/75981/Average-Weather-in-Berlin-G... https://weatherspark.com/y/2460/Average-Weather-in-Phoenix-Arizona-United-States-Year-Round https://weatherspark.com/y/2460/Average-Weather-in-Phoenix-A...
- dsr_ 2y ago
  The figure you are looking for is heating/cooling degree-days. For each day, use the average high and the average low. Subtract the desired maximum dwelling temperature from the average high: if the result is positive, add it to the cooling degree-days total. Subtract the average low from the from the minimum dwelling temperature: if the result is positive, add it to the heating degree-days total. Over a year, that gives you comparable figures on how much you will need to cool or heat the space. Many agencies calculate this for specific areas. Here, for example, are the current season numbers for Boston: https://www.massenergymarketers.org/resources/degree-days/boston/ https://www.massenergymarketers.org/resources/degree-days/bo... Generic regional numbers for the US: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/units-and-calculators/degree-days.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/units-and-calculators/de...
nixusg 2y ago
Solar power works very well in summer and can be used for cooling.
szvsw 2y ago
A lot of what you said is intuitively/directionally correct, but misses a lot of important physics related to heat transfer in buildings and operational questions of space heating equipment. This is your most accurate/relevant point: > All of this is ignoring the fact that it’s easy to create a tiny personal heated environment around an individual (it’s called a woolly jumper). Whereas this is plainly wrong: > It’s much easier, and consumes less additional energy, to heat an occupied space, than to cool it. And then the following is correct but the marginal reduction in load is minimal except in relatively crowded spaces (or spaces with very high equipment power densities): > Thanks to the fact that your average human produces 80W of heat just to stay alive. The truth is it is generally easier to cool not heat when you take into account the necessary energy input to achieve the desired action on the psychrometric chart, assuming by “ease” you mean energy (or emissions) used, given that you are operating over a large volume of air - which does align with your point about the jumper to be fair! Generally speaking, an A/C uses approx. 1 unit of electricity for every 3 units of cooling that it produces since it uses heat transfer rather than heat generation (simplified ELI5). It is only spending energy to move heat, not make it. On the other hand, a boiler or furnace or resistance heat system generally uses around 1 unit of input energy for every 0.8-0.9 units of heating energy produced. Heat pumps achieve similar to coefficients of performance as A/Cs, because they are effectively just A/Cs operating in reverse. Your point about a jumper is great, but there are local cooling strategies as well (tho not as effective), eg using a fan or an adiabatic cooling device (eg a mister in a hot dry climate). > So cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space. Once you move to cost, it now also depends on your fuel prices, not just your demand and system type. For instance, in America, nat gas is so cheap, that even with its inefficiencies relative to a heat pump, if electricity is expensive heating might still be cheaper than cooling per unit of thermal demand (this is true for instance in MA, since electricity is often 3x the price of NG). On the other hand, if elec is less than 3x the cost of nat gas, then cooling is probably cheaper than heating per unit of demand, assuming you use natural gas for your heating system.
- avianlyric 2y ago
  Everyone seems to be making the same mistake here. As you say: > Generally speaking, an A/C uses approx. 1 unit of electricity for every 3 units of cooling that it produces since it uses heat transfer rather than heat generation You know you can use a heatpump to heat a space as well right? Then you get to move 3 units of heat into the space, plus you also get to use that extra unit energy used to power the heatpump, because the heatpump turns the unit of energy into waste heat! (After all energy can’t be destroyed, so it has to go somewhere).
overflow897 2y ago
"cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space" Man I wish this was true but it definitely isn't in anyplace that gets significantly cold. Heat pumps are super super efficient at cooling but they get less efficient at heating the colder it gets. Humans and appliances create a pretty negligible amount of heat.
- mcny 2y ago
  > "cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space" Man I wish this was true but it definitely isn't in anyplace that gets significantly cold. Heat pumps are super super efficient at cooling but they get less efficient at heating the colder it gets. Humans and appliances create a pretty negligible amount of heat. I thought any place that is significantly cold can still dig underground and at some point you can get enough heat to run your heat pump?
  - schmidtleonard 2y ago
    Right, but that's expensive too (initial outlay and maintenance) and needs to win a lot of efficiency before it pays off.
  - scottLobster 2y ago
    Yeah, if you have a bare minimum of 30k burning a hole in your pocket and enough open land to drill the well with the correct geology, and the larger your house the bigger/more wells you need as you're drawing from the Earth's relatively constant temperature. So the only way to get more heat is to get more surface area for the coolant. Some people on reddit are reporting quotes of 125k for larger (>3000 sq ft) houses. As someone who lives in a 4-season environment that can get down into the single digits F on occasion in the winter (forecast to be there for a couple of days next week), and has an air-source heat pump, I just suck it up and eat the $400-$500/month heating costs for the auxiliary (electric resistive) heat in Dec/Jan/Feb. If someone gifts me a ground-sourced heat pump I'll gladly accept, but I've got kids to raise so setting aside money for one is a long way off.
- yetihehe 2y ago
megaman821 2y ago
It is true that heat is easier to generate. Berlin is considered mild while Phoenix is considered very hot. They just happen to have the same temperature deltas. On the whole, the world spends many, many times more energy heating living spaces than cooling them. The coldest cities people live in just have much larger room temperature deltas than the hottest.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
  I'm reading this discussion while smh. Looking at a high temperature of -10F on Sunday!
icehawk 2y ago
> So cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space. Simply because all the waste energy created by people living in the space reduces the total heating requirement of the space, but equally increases the cooling requirement of that same space. This simply is not true for a furnace or electric resistive heat. My furnace produces 0.9W of heat for every 1W of energy input. More efficient ones do 0.98, the best you get with electric resistive heat is 1W. On the other hand my air conditioner moves 3.5W of heat outside for every 1W of energy input.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
  My AC works in both directions, in winter it moves more cold outside than the power it consumes. Not sure what the factor is exactly, but I think same as for cooling.
  - datadrivenangel 2y ago
    Thermodynamics unfortunately disagree. As your temperature deltas get smaller efficiency goes down.
    - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
      "Thermodynamics" is singular :) As for the numbers, my AC's manual shows COP of 3.71 for heating and 3.13 for cooling. So you are spot on, in winter temperature deltas are larger, and efficiency goes up.
      - leguminous 2y ago
        Those high COPs are probably for relatively small temperature deltas. Heat pumps get _less_ efficient when the temperature deltas are larger. See page 18 of the manual linked below for an example. As the temperature gets lower, the heating COP gets lower. The same should be the case with cooling (higher outdoor temperatures lead to lower COPs), but the data is not presented in the same way. https://backend.daikincomfort.com/docs/default-source/product-documents/residential/specifications/ss-dh6vs-r32.pdf https://backend.daikincomfort.com/docs/default-source/produc...
leguminous 2y ago
This is a good point that I had not considered, and I will add a few additional thoughts: * In cold weather, solar heat gain can work in your favor as well. Much of the effect will depend on the orientation, shading, and properties of your windows, though. On the other hand, as another commenter pointed out, more sun in southern, cooling-dominated climate can also mean more, cheaper electricity. * If you have a heat pump water heater, it will actually _cool_ your space significantly. The heat is transferred from your home to your water and mostly goes down the drain with it. * At 65F (18.3C), most people I know would already be wearing a jumper/sweater. That's why I chose a lower target temperature for Berlin. The best source I could find[1] indicates that in November-December of 2022 (in the context of rising energy prices due to Russia's war with Ukraine), Germans actually kept their houses at 19.4C, on average. * Maybe I'm moving the goalposts a bit, but I chose Berlin mostly because the numbers worked out conveniently. As someone who grew up in the American upper midwest, I wouldn't consider Berlin to be particularly cold. Phoenix, on the other hand, is the hottest city in the country and its summers are some of the hottest in the world. In general, the hottest cities are still closer to what we'd consider room temperature than the coldest are. [1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/80-percent-german-households-lowered-heating-winter-report https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/80-percent-german-house... (original report is on German)
- bee_rider 2y ago
  There’s some element of comfort vs necessity here, I think… really, people could be keeping their houses at, like… 55F and they’d be totally fine. They just need to get acclimated to it. On the other hand, depending on the humidity, heats over like 85F start becoming a health risk for some activities.
  - happyopossum 2y ago
    As someone acclimated to warmer weather, I disagree. People work outside in 85, 90, 95° weather without health problems all the time. Hydrate and your body will acclimate.
    - 2y ago
triceratops 2y ago
> So cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space Nope. That's precisely wrong. Tl;dr heating normally uses less efficient technology than cooling and has to work across a higher temperature difference. In Alberta or Minnesota, where the delta in the winter can be as high as 60 degrees centigrade (-40 outside, +20 inside) but only 20 degrees centigrade at most in the summer (+45 outside, +25 inside), heating is far more costly. Even accounting for waste heat from appliances. Most heating is done with furnaces, not heat pumps. Air conditioners are heat pumps and are 3x as efficient as a furnace. There are also less energy intensive cooling methods - shading, fans, swamp coolers - commonly used in the developing world and continental Europe. On the other hand in a place with warm winters and hot summers, such as south east Asia, obviously cooling is more expensive because heating is unnecessary. The highest temperature ever recorded is around 60 degrees centrigrade, a mere 23 degrees above the human body. The low temperature record is like -90, 127 degrees below body temperature. Needing to heat large deltas is way more common than needing to cool high deltas. And cooling is done with heat pumps, which are more efficient than the technologies used most commonly for heating (resistive or combustion). > when cooling a space, you have to cool everything, regardless of if it’ll impact the comfort of the occupants. Keep the house at 25 degrees centigrade and run a ceiling fan. 23 if you're a multi-millionaire. You'll be far more comfortable outdoors if your house is closer to the outside temperature. The North American need to have sub-arctic temperatures in every air conditioned space in the summertime is bizarre (don't even get me started on ice water).
- avianlyric 2y ago
  > Nope. That's precisely wrong. Tl;dr heating normally uses less efficient technology than cooling and has to work across a higher temperature difference. That’s moving the goal posts. You can always use a heatpump to heat a space. Any space you want to keep comfortable will always be easier if the outside is cooler than your target temperature. Everything in that space is going to produce heat as a natural consequence of expending energy into any form. It’s always possible to add insulation to minimise the amount of energy you loose into the surrounding environment, and you can always modulate how much additional energy you let escape using a simple opening in that insulation. On the other hand, if the external space is hotter, then you must always expend additional energy to move waste heat energy accumulating in the space into the high energy space outside. There is no passive manner that can allow you to cool a space surrounded by a hotter space, you’re always fighting against the temperature gradient. And if you want your living, heat producing, organisms to keep living, then you need to get rid of the heat they produce.
loandbehold 2y ago
Cooling takes less energy per BTU moved vs heating. In AC/heat pumps that's represented by SEER rating for cooling and HSPF rating for heating (heat pumps). Modern ACs have SEER ratings for 20+ and HSPF ratings for 8+. What it means is that on average, spending 1 BTU equivalent of electrical energy cools down the house by 20 BTU. Similarly for heat pump it means spending 1 BTU of electricity heats up the house by 8 BTU. Electric resistive heating is equivalent of HSPF 1. Also in sunny climates it's easy to use solar energy for cooling making it carbon net-zero. Cold places typically burn natural gas for heating, it's much harder to make heating carbon net-zero.
- avianlyric 2y ago
  You can use a heatpump for heating as well. Then not only do you get all the energy moved by the heat pump to warm a space. But you can also use the waste heat created by the heatpump for heating as well. In a cooling scenario, all waste heat is just that, waste. But in a heating scenario, waste heat isn’t waste, it’s additional heat you can use, and reduces the total amount of energy you need to inject into the system.

mbesto 2y ago

I also point out that Phoenix's "summer" last longer than Berlin's winter: https://weatherspark.com/y/75981/Average-Weather-in-Berlin-Germany-Year-Round https://weatherspark.com/y/75981/Average-Weather-in-Berlin-G... https://weatherspark.com/y/2460/Average-Weather-in-Phoenix-Arizona-United-States-Year-Round https://weatherspark.com/y/2460/Average-Weather-in-Phoenix-A...

dsr_ 2y ago
The figure you are looking for is heating/cooling degree-days. For each day, use the average high and the average low. Subtract the desired maximum dwelling temperature from the average high: if the result is positive, add it to the cooling degree-days total. Subtract the average low from the from the minimum dwelling temperature: if the result is positive, add it to the heating degree-days total. Over a year, that gives you comparable figures on how much you will need to cool or heat the space. Many agencies calculate this for specific areas. Here, for example, are the current season numbers for Boston: https://www.massenergymarketers.org/resources/degree-days/boston/ https://www.massenergymarketers.org/resources/degree-days/bo... Generic regional numbers for the US: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/units-and-calculators/degree-days.php https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/units-and-calculators/de...

nixusg 2y ago

Solar power works very well in summer and can be used for cooling.

szvsw 2y ago

A lot of what you said is intuitively/directionally correct, but misses a lot of important physics related to heat transfer in buildings and operational questions of space heating equipment. This is your most accurate/relevant point: > All of this is ignoring the fact that it’s easy to create a tiny personal heated environment around an individual (it’s called a woolly jumper). Whereas this is plainly wrong: > It’s much easier, and consumes less additional energy, to heat an occupied space, than to cool it. And then the following is correct but the marginal reduction in load is minimal except in relatively crowded spaces (or spaces with very high equipment power densities): > Thanks to the fact that your average human produces 80W of heat just to stay alive. The truth is it is generally easier to cool not heat when you take into account the necessary energy input to achieve the desired action on the psychrometric chart, assuming by “ease” you mean energy (or emissions) used, given that you are operating over a large volume of air - which does align with your point about the jumper to be fair! Generally speaking, an A/C uses approx. 1 unit of electricity for every 3 units of cooling that it produces since it uses heat transfer rather than heat generation (simplified ELI5). It is only spending energy to move heat, not make it. On the other hand, a boiler or furnace or resistance heat system generally uses around 1 unit of input energy for every 0.8-0.9 units of heating energy produced. Heat pumps achieve similar to coefficients of performance as A/Cs, because they are effectively just A/Cs operating in reverse. Your point about a jumper is great, but there are local cooling strategies as well (tho not as effective), eg using a fan or an adiabatic cooling device (eg a mister in a hot dry climate). > So cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space. Once you move to cost, it now also depends on your fuel prices, not just your demand and system type. For instance, in America, nat gas is so cheap, that even with its inefficiencies relative to a heat pump, if electricity is expensive heating might still be cheaper than cooling per unit of thermal demand (this is true for instance in MA, since electricity is often 3x the price of NG). On the other hand, if elec is less than 3x the cost of nat gas, then cooling is probably cheaper than heating per unit of demand, assuming you use natural gas for your heating system.

avianlyric 2y ago
Everyone seems to be making the same mistake here. As you say: > Generally speaking, an A/C uses approx. 1 unit of electricity for every 3 units of cooling that it produces since it uses heat transfer rather than heat generation You know you can use a heatpump to heat a space as well right? Then you get to move 3 units of heat into the space, plus you also get to use that extra unit energy used to power the heatpump, because the heatpump turns the unit of energy into waste heat! (After all energy can’t be destroyed, so it has to go somewhere).

overflow897 2y ago

"cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space" Man I wish this was true but it definitely isn't in anyplace that gets significantly cold. Heat pumps are super super efficient at cooling but they get less efficient at heating the colder it gets. Humans and appliances create a pretty negligible amount of heat.

mcny 2y ago
> "cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space" Man I wish this was true but it definitely isn't in anyplace that gets significantly cold. Heat pumps are super super efficient at cooling but they get less efficient at heating the colder it gets. Humans and appliances create a pretty negligible amount of heat. I thought any place that is significantly cold can still dig underground and at some point you can get enough heat to run your heat pump?
- schmidtleonard 2y ago
  Right, but that's expensive too (initial outlay and maintenance) and needs to win a lot of efficiency before it pays off.
- scottLobster 2y ago
  Yeah, if you have a bare minimum of 30k burning a hole in your pocket and enough open land to drill the well with the correct geology, and the larger your house the bigger/more wells you need as you're drawing from the Earth's relatively constant temperature. So the only way to get more heat is to get more surface area for the coolant. Some people on reddit are reporting quotes of 125k for larger (>3000 sq ft) houses. As someone who lives in a 4-season environment that can get down into the single digits F on occasion in the winter (forecast to be there for a couple of days next week), and has an air-source heat pump, I just suck it up and eat the $400-$500/month heating costs for the auxiliary (electric resistive) heat in Dec/Jan/Feb. If someone gifts me a ground-sourced heat pump I'll gladly accept, but I've got kids to raise so setting aside money for one is a long way off.
yetihehe 2y ago

megaman821 2y ago

It is true that heat is easier to generate. Berlin is considered mild while Phoenix is considered very hot. They just happen to have the same temperature deltas. On the whole, the world spends many, many times more energy heating living spaces than cooling them. The coldest cities people live in just have much larger room temperature deltas than the hottest.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
I'm reading this discussion while smh. Looking at a high temperature of -10F on Sunday!

icehawk 2y ago

> So cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space. Simply because all the waste energy created by people living in the space reduces the total heating requirement of the space, but equally increases the cooling requirement of that same space. This simply is not true for a furnace or electric resistive heat. My furnace produces 0.9W of heat for every 1W of energy input. More efficient ones do 0.98, the best you get with electric resistive heat is 1W. On the other hand my air conditioner moves 3.5W of heat outside for every 1W of energy input.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
My AC works in both directions, in winter it moves more cold outside than the power it consumes. Not sure what the factor is exactly, but I think same as for cooling.
- datadrivenangel 2y ago
  Thermodynamics unfortunately disagree. As your temperature deltas get smaller efficiency goes down.
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
    "Thermodynamics" is singular :) As for the numbers, my AC's manual shows COP of 3.71 for heating and 3.13 for cooling. So you are spot on, in winter temperature deltas are larger, and efficiency goes up.
    - leguminous 2y ago
      Those high COPs are probably for relatively small temperature deltas. Heat pumps get _less_ efficient when the temperature deltas are larger. See page 18 of the manual linked below for an example. As the temperature gets lower, the heating COP gets lower. The same should be the case with cooling (higher outdoor temperatures lead to lower COPs), but the data is not presented in the same way. https://backend.daikincomfort.com/docs/default-source/product-documents/residential/specifications/ss-dh6vs-r32.pdf https://backend.daikincomfort.com/docs/default-source/produc...

leguminous 2y ago

This is a good point that I had not considered, and I will add a few additional thoughts: * In cold weather, solar heat gain can work in your favor as well. Much of the effect will depend on the orientation, shading, and properties of your windows, though. On the other hand, as another commenter pointed out, more sun in southern, cooling-dominated climate can also mean more, cheaper electricity. * If you have a heat pump water heater, it will actually _cool_ your space significantly. The heat is transferred from your home to your water and mostly goes down the drain with it. * At 65F (18.3C), most people I know would already be wearing a jumper/sweater. That's why I chose a lower target temperature for Berlin. The best source I could find[1] indicates that in November-December of 2022 (in the context of rising energy prices due to Russia's war with Ukraine), Germans actually kept their houses at 19.4C, on average. * Maybe I'm moving the goalposts a bit, but I chose Berlin mostly because the numbers worked out conveniently. As someone who grew up in the American upper midwest, I wouldn't consider Berlin to be particularly cold. Phoenix, on the other hand, is the hottest city in the country and its summers are some of the hottest in the world. In general, the hottest cities are still closer to what we'd consider room temperature than the coldest are. [1] https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/80-percent-german-households-lowered-heating-winter-report https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/80-percent-german-house... (original report is on German)

bee_rider 2y ago
There’s some element of comfort vs necessity here, I think… really, people could be keeping their houses at, like… 55F and they’d be totally fine. They just need to get acclimated to it. On the other hand, depending on the humidity, heats over like 85F start becoming a health risk for some activities.
- happyopossum 2y ago
  As someone acclimated to warmer weather, I disagree. People work outside in 85, 90, 95° weather without health problems all the time. Hydrate and your body will acclimate.
  - 2y ago

triceratops 2y ago

> So cooling a living space is always more costly than heating a living space Nope. That's precisely wrong. Tl;dr heating normally uses less efficient technology than cooling and has to work across a higher temperature difference. In Alberta or Minnesota, where the delta in the winter can be as high as 60 degrees centigrade (-40 outside, +20 inside) but only 20 degrees centigrade at most in the summer (+45 outside, +25 inside), heating is far more costly. Even accounting for waste heat from appliances. Most heating is done with furnaces, not heat pumps. Air conditioners are heat pumps and are 3x as efficient as a furnace. There are also less energy intensive cooling methods - shading, fans, swamp coolers - commonly used in the developing world and continental Europe. On the other hand in a place with warm winters and hot summers, such as south east Asia, obviously cooling is more expensive because heating is unnecessary. The highest temperature ever recorded is around 60 degrees centrigrade, a mere 23 degrees above the human body. The low temperature record is like -90, 127 degrees below body temperature. Needing to heat large deltas is way more common than needing to cool high deltas. And cooling is done with heat pumps, which are more efficient than the technologies used most commonly for heating (resistive or combustion). > when cooling a space, you have to cool everything, regardless of if it’ll impact the comfort of the occupants. Keep the house at 25 degrees centigrade and run a ceiling fan. 23 if you're a multi-millionaire. You'll be far more comfortable outdoors if your house is closer to the outside temperature. The North American need to have sub-arctic temperatures in every air conditioned space in the summertime is bizarre (don't even get me started on ice water).

avianlyric 2y ago
> Nope. That's precisely wrong. Tl;dr heating normally uses less efficient technology than cooling and has to work across a higher temperature difference. That’s moving the goal posts. You can always use a heatpump to heat a space. Any space you want to keep comfortable will always be easier if the outside is cooler than your target temperature. Everything in that space is going to produce heat as a natural consequence of expending energy into any form. It’s always possible to add insulation to minimise the amount of energy you loose into the surrounding environment, and you can always modulate how much additional energy you let escape using a simple opening in that insulation. On the other hand, if the external space is hotter, then you must always expend additional energy to move waste heat energy accumulating in the space into the high energy space outside. There is no passive manner that can allow you to cool a space surrounded by a hotter space, you’re always fighting against the temperature gradient. And if you want your living, heat producing, organisms to keep living, then you need to get rid of the heat they produce.

loandbehold 2y ago

Cooling takes less energy per BTU moved vs heating. In AC/heat pumps that's represented by SEER rating for cooling and HSPF rating for heating (heat pumps). Modern ACs have SEER ratings for 20+ and HSPF ratings for 8+. What it means is that on average, spending 1 BTU equivalent of electrical energy cools down the house by 20 BTU. Similarly for heat pump it means spending 1 BTU of electricity heats up the house by 8 BTU. Electric resistive heating is equivalent of HSPF 1. Also in sunny climates it's easy to use solar energy for cooling making it carbon net-zero. Cold places typically burn natural gas for heating, it's much harder to make heating carbon net-zero.

avianlyric 2y ago
You can use a heatpump for heating as well. Then not only do you get all the energy moved by the heat pump to warm a space. But you can also use the waste heat created by the heatpump for heating as well. In a cooling scenario, all waste heat is just that, waste. But in a heating scenario, waste heat isn’t waste, it’s additional heat you can use, and reduces the total amount of energy you need to inject into the system.