The U.S. and much of the rest of the developed world are devising and implementing decarbonization policies that will transition away from using fossil fuels for space heating purposes. The reason for this shift is to reduce the carbon emissions and associated combustion-related air pollution that are produced by heating equipment.
To enforce this transition, many cities across the U.S. have proposed or enacted regulations that would ban the use of fossil fuels in new homes and buildings. In most cases, this would result in all-electric heat pumps (HPs) being installed in new construction projects rather than gas-fired heating equipment. The problem is that while current HPs work well in temperate climates such as the Pacific Northwest and much of California, their performance often declines in colder areas such as the Northeast and Upper Midwest.