With Heat From Heat Pumps, US Energy Requirements Could Plummet By 50%
Electrification and heat pumps radically reduce the requirement to build new wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, and geothermal primary energy sources.
Recently I had one of those embarrassing aha moments, one where something is so obvious that it not occurring to me much sooner made me cringe. Still, better late than never. And what was the epiphany? Well, that actually useful energy we have to make will drop drastically when we apply heat pumps everywhere possible in commercial, residential, and industrial heating.
This discussion has to start with Sankey energy flow diagrams. I shared a bunch of them from different organizations and countries a few weeks ago in an extended piece where I considered the requirements for an energy futures simulator. For this discussion I’ll start with the LLNL US energy flows diagram.
These numbers are in quads, which is to say quadrillion British Thermal Units (BTU) equivalents. The LLNL methodology converts everything into common units, which is a painful and usually thankless exercise, so I’m glad they have done it.
