"As one of the world's largest economies, California's actions carry significant influence that could inspire other states to similarly prioritize the deployment of heat pumps," said Satoru Akama, CEO of Daikin Comfort Technologies North America, Inc. "This collaboration is a testament to our shared commitment of expanding access to such energy-efficient heat pumps in California. We hope The California Heat Pump Partnership can serve as a future blueprint across the U.S., particularly the critical need of deploying inverter-based heat pumps, which provide energy savings, reliability, and affordability across communities."

"CEC commends Daikin for its significant commitment of resources and expertise to help the Golden State meet our decarbonization goals," said California Energy Commission (CEC) Commissioner Andrew McAllister. "Daikin's tremendous brand awareness and global reach will accelerate market growth for efficient HVAC heat pumps, improve Californians' homes, and expand our clean energy workforce."

Regulatory and marketplace barriers have thus far prevented broader market and consumer adoption of heat pumps. As the HVAC industry continues to develop innovative solutions to meet state and nationwide carbon emissions reduction goals, Daikin's new commitments will help to foster the right market conditions, industry training and consumer awareness to spur widespread heat pump deployment. The company's five commitments are as follows:

Daikin said it is committed to maximizing its local production capacity and forging a path to one million heat pump solutions in California by 2030.

Daikin will expand its California workforce and partnerships to help achieve the state's goals, including: 

• Establishing new distribution locations.
• Opening new branch training centers focused on heat pump installation training. 

Daikin will open a sustainability and innovation center and other customer experience showrooms in major cities across California. These physical locations will demonstrate the benefits of inverter heat pumps and other decarbonization technologies and solutions.

Daikin will partner with California utility companies to accelerate the transition to inverter-based heat pumps. This includes: 

• Collaborating with utility partners to increase education about the benefits of inverter technologies and their installation.
• Promoting the widespread use of inverter technologies through the creation of incentive programs.
• Developing products that help improve efficiency and reduce the cost of eventual panel upgrades when converting to heat pumps.

Daikin said it will support the new California Heat Pump Partnership and support the development of a blueprint for installing six million heat pumps by 2030. This will include the promotion of inverter-based heat pump adoption through consumer marketing, workforce and community college training, supply chain integration, and government partnerships.