CONTACTS:
Morgan Edwards, morgan.edwards@wisc.edu
MADISON, Wis. – As heat pumps gain popularity in the US as an important strategy for reducing fossil fuel emissions, new research led by Morgan Edwards of UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs highlights current inequities in the technology’s use.
The newly published Joule article combines property data, sociodemographic indicators, and estimates of the effects of heat pump adoption on energy bills to find that communities of color and those with more renters are less likely to use heat pumps. The research also finds that communities of color are less likely to use heat pumps even in regions where they would help save money on energy bills.
“Household electrification is an emerging energy justice issue in the US,” Edwards says. “The story we see with heat pumps is the same one we see time and again with clean energy technologies: disadvantaged communities are at risk of being left behind.”
The research team also included UW-Madison researchers Jaime Garibay-Rodriguez, Jake Erickson, and Jing Ling Tan as well La Follette alumnus Mohammad Shayan and collaborators Xingchi Shen, Lucy Qiu, and Pengfei Liu.
Their analysis found that a 10% increase in the Black population in a census tract is associated with a 13% decrease in the odds of having a heat pump. Higher percentages of Asian, multiracial, Pacific Islander, and other non-white racial/ethnic residents in a community also lead to lower heat pump use. Additionally, a 10% increase in renter-occupied units in a tract is associated with a 4% decrease in the odds of heat pump use.
Unlike the traditional gas furnaces that contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, heat pumps use electricity to heat or cool homes. They can also be attractive options for electrifying space heating because they are much more efficient and cost effective than electric resistance heaters. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 expanded incentives for heat pumps and other clean energy technologies, yet the extent to which the policy will impact underserved communities remains uncertain.
Jaime Garibay-Rodriguez, a postdoctoral associate at UW-Madison who led the development of the energy bills model, underscored the importance of considering local context in energy justice evaluations. “We need granular empirical and engineering models to design effective policy solutions,” Garibay-Rodriguez says. “Disparities in heat pump adoption have different implications if they are in areas where heat pumps raise or lower energy bills. Our research finds that race and ethnicity have the strongest negative associations with heat pump use in regions where heat pumps would result in energy bill savings.”
“The incentives provided by the Inflation Reduction Act were a great start but clearly there is much more policy work to be done to keep electrification efforts from exacerbating the energy justice challenges facing this country,” says Edwards.
Edwards also leads the Climate Action Lab at UW-Madison, where its interdisciplinary team of researchers focus on equitable energy responses to the climate crisis. This recent study is part of a broader program on equitable electrification that is supported by a Kohl Competition Award and three grants from the Department of Energy. One recently awarded grant, led by Allison Mahvi of the College of Engineering, aims to develop a market-ready heat pump that can replace inefficient natural gas boilers in older buildings. Industry partners for this project include Trane, Slipstream, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
