On Friday, Royal River Heat Pump employees Steve Dezenzo (left) and Travis Lu put an outdoor unit in place at a Cumberland home. The number of Maine households using electric heat pumps has doubled in the past decade, but despite subsidies to expand their use, they still lag behind oil for home heating. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer
Oil remains the primary source of home heating in Maine, but electric heat pumps are being sold in a race fueled by Gov. Janet Mills and funded by federal taxpayers, state ratepayers, and other sources. being chased by
The governor has made installing electric heat pumps a centerpiece of his administration’s energy and climate policy, drawing national attention to Maine. That comes at a price. Over the past decade, Maine has spent more than $135 million in subsidies to install electric heat pumps, and at least $125 million more is planned.
“Nearly one-third of Maine’s carbon emissions come from buildings, so improving the efficiency of heating and cooling is critical to reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions,” Mills said in an Oct. 4 statement. It’s a great strategy.”
Mills believes Maynards’ dependence on kerosene has decreased significantly due to the increased use of heat pumps. The number of homes using electric heat pumps in Maine will increase to 79,160 by 2023, up from 28,040 in 2014, when the state program to encourage heat pump installations began, according to Census Bureau data. has almost tripled. According to one-year estimates from the American Community Survey, heating oil use fell from 342,185 homes to 323,666 homes, a 5.4% decrease over the same period.
Kerosene still accounts for the majority of household energy sources, accounting for 52.5% last year, down from a 62.2% share in 2014. The share of the use of electric heat pumps has more than doubled, reaching 12.8% of all energy sources in 2023.
Mills said Maine “remains highly dependent on fossil fuels,” citing census data that also tracks household use of natural gas, liquid propane gas and coal supplied by utilities. Mentioned. In 2023, wood heating was used in about 58,000 households, down by a quarter from 2014, and accounted for about 9% of home heating.
Residential solar power generation was small at 2,137 last year, up from just 451 in 2014.
Heat pumps use electricity to heat and cool buildings and often replace oil or gas furnaces, which contribute to greenhouse gases. Rather than heating a coil in a furnace, for example, the pump extracts heat from the outdoor air or underground and transfers it inside. It also cools your home by extracting heat from inside and sending it outdoors or underground.
Andrew Price, president and CEO of Competitive Energy Services, a consulting group in Portland, said the conversion to electric heat pumps is “certainly a major driver of the decline in oil use.”
“We expect electric heat pumps to continue to take significant market share from oil over the next few years,” he said in an email. “Oil-to-natural gas conversion also plays a secondary role, but this is clearly limited to urban areas where natural gas pipeline service is already available.”
Efficiency Maine, the state’s parastatal agency that promotes energy efficiency, could not provide a breakdown of how much money is spent on heat pump incentives each year, but it said it has spent several years on heat pump incentives. Provided information regarding expenditures. Executive Director Michael Stoddard said the group spent $25.6 million on heat pump incentives from 2014 to 2019. He said the program was slowly ramped up and most of the funding was spent in the last two years.
In July 2023, Mills announced that Maine met one of its climate plan’s key goals, installing 100,000 heat pumps by 2025, two years early. Maine offered rebates for the installation of 104,000 pumps. Efficiency Maine announced it spent about $61 million in heat pump installation incentives during the state’s 2020-23 fiscal year, which ended June 30.
In fiscal year 2024, Efficiency Maine spent $32.7 million toward a new goal set by Mills: installing 175,000 more heat pumps by 2027. This equates to a total of $119.3 million since 2014.
The funding did not come from state tax revenue. Efficiency Maine took advantage of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cooperative program between Maine and 10 other states to limit and reduce carbon emissions from the power sector. Federal Pandemic Relief Fund. Electricity bill payer. Settlement with the New England Clean Energy Connect Transmission Project. and proceeds from the New England Energy Auction.
On Friday, Royal River Heat Pump installation supervisor Travis Lu hangs an indoor unit at a home in Cumberland. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer
Maine Housing, the state housing authority, is also investing millions of dollars in heat pump installations through its own revenue-based program. The agency installed heat pumps in 4,236 homes from 2020 to 2024 using federal heating assistance funds and about $15.7 million from the U.S. Department of Energy, said Scott Thistle, a spokesman for MainHousing.
Efficiency Maine anticipates that Mills’ goal of installing 175,000 heat pumps over the next three years will be driven in part by consumers purchasing heat pumps without taking advantage of Efficiency Maine’s rebates.
More funding for electric heat pumps is on the way. Mills announced in July that Maine would receive between $45 million and $72 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to install electric heat pumps.
Efficiency Main said the EPA grant has not yet been received by the main recipient, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, and is still sorting out the paperwork. In Maine, a significant amount may be used for heat pump water heaters.
An additional $35 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy for heat pump installations has begun arriving in the state. The second phase will add an additional $35 million and is expected to begin arriving in early 2025. The grant money will be spent over several years.
In addition, another $10 million in federal energy grants to expand heat pumps in homes and mobile homes will be awarded in the coming months, Efficiency Main said.
Copy story link
Source link
