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The One Thing Holding Back Heat Pumps

If billionaires actually cared about saving the planet, they’d pool their vast wealth and buy everyone a heat pump. But it’s not funding, or the technology itself, that’s preventing a full heat pump takeover.

The result is classic “greenflation,” a temporary rise in the costs associated with decarbonization due to market constraints, says climate economist Gernot Wagner of the Columbia Business School in New York. “Electricians get talked abouta lot, and used as sort of an avatar for all of the jobs that are going to be needed to install heat pumps and decarbonize the economy,” says Alexandria Herr, senior research associate at Rewiring America, a nonprofit that promotes electrification. “It would just make sense that there would be this path to learn more about heat pumps, and then there would be a whole armed force to go out and install these things,” says Ed Janowiak, manager of HVAC and refrigeration design education at the nonprofit Air Conditioning Contractors of America.

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