...AND CHEAPER...:

Since heat pumps are essentially air conditioners that work both to heat and cool homes rather than just cool them, it's relatively simple to install them in place of existing one-way AC systems. And because increasingly harsh heat waves are driving demand for air conditioning in places that haven't needed it before -- and making cooling not just a comfort but a public-health necessity in hotter climates -- the time for rules to encourage homeowners to install bidirectional heat pumps instead of ACs is now, advocates say.

"There's a really big uptick in AC sales as people are adding air conditioners to deal with extreme heat," said Ted Tiffany, senior technical lead with the nonprofit Building Decarbonization Coalition. ​"We want to make sure consumers, developers, government agencies are making the investment in heat pumps, or two-way air conditioners, whatever you want to call them -- especially with incentives coming out."

Those incentives include billions of dollars of home and building efficiency and electrification tax credits and grants from the Inflation Reduction Act. States and cities are adding their own incentives, as well as setting policies to encourage the switch from fossil fuels to electric heating.

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