this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2025
34 points (100.0% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
6244 readers
281 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Shutting down the Inflation Reduction Act smells like lobbying from the fracking industry. Everyone but natural gas merchants benefits. Taxpayers lower their energy bills. The Federal government becomes more energy secure. Electric utilities see their profit margins increase as the delta between Summer and Winter seasonal loads normalizes, allowing for enhanced optimization of real estate holdings related to having spare capacity on hand to cover load spikes (the extra capacity is a source of constant expense, but only occasionally runs & generates revenue).
Even if the electricity used to run the heat pump comes from a gas burning generator, it will still use less gas compared to burning it in a furnace in someone's home. Heat pumps don't create heat, they just move it to and from the outdoors, so they're able to reach efficiencies over 500%. They're still over 100% efficiency even after accounting for the -40% hit taken at the electrical utility's gas generator and the -5% hit taken over the electrical transmission lines. Comparatively, the best furnaces are only 95% efficient.