Yeah…kind of a funny article title, but tell me when the last time you found Bill McKibben to be wrong?
Joe Biden Could Damage Putin Badly–and He Doesn’t Have to Ask Joe Manchin
It’s widely known that switching home heating from a fossil fuel system to an electric one can remove fuel cost volatility from one’s life. Gas and oil prices can rise and fall like the tide, while electrical rates remain near constant. This is but one of the many benefits of heat pump heating. If Putin’s nonsense continues for any length of time, home heating fuel prices are likely to rise, despite the fact that the US only imports roughly 8% of its annual supply from Russia.
Those homeowners with heat pumps at work will be even happier than they already probably are. Those projected payback periods on the heat pump investment may just get shorter and shorter.
In his great article, Bill outlines a very creative way to combine the rapidly increasing pace of global heat pump adoption with a historically very effective US policy measure to take a stab at Putin’s land grab shenanigans.
New technology—affordable and workable—means Europeans can heat their homes with electricity instead of gas. And if we wanted to we could—before next winter comes—help enormously in this task. President Biden should immediately invoke the Defense Production Act to get American manufacturers to start producing electric heat pumps in quantity, so we can ship them to Europe where they can be installed in time to dramatically lessen Putin’s power. The most recent estimates from Europe I’ve seen is that the current electric grid could handle fifty million heat pumps. We’re not going to get that many over there in a year—but any large number hacks away at Putin’s power.