In Maine, where winter is long and chilling, and exorbitant oil and gas prices have motivated people to switch, crews have installed tens of thousands of heat pumps, prompting the fossil fuel industry to step up its efforts to beat back the trend.
The state agency has also established a pilot program to see if heat pumps could replace furnaces in mobile and manufactured homes. Marianna Casagranda is one of 10 homeowners in the town of Freeport who signed up.
The website, which credits Carrione’s marketing firm, warns that most Maine homeowners can’t rely on heat pumps as a sole source of heating. It says that because heat pumps run on electricity that’s still made by burning natural gas they are “no greener than the furnace in your basement.” The Maine Energy Marketers Association raised questions about heat pumps’ viability by suggesting they would tax the region’s electric grid. In 2021, ISO New England, the state’s power grid operator,of rolling blackouts because of supply chain issues affecting natural gas. Yet the trade group’s president blamed the situation on the state’s promotion of heat pumps.
“We may pay the invoices for these consultants, but we do not hire them,” said Devine, adding that state groups have autonomy over their individual campaigns. But oil’s market share is falling. Whereas 74 percent of the state’s homes relied on oil to keep warm in the winter in 2010, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, that figure had fallen to 60 percent by 2021.installed through Efficiency Maine rebates, per capita. This sprawling region of pine forests and potato farms is bordered on three sides by Canada and it has endured some truly frigid cold snaps, including a record low of minus-37 degrees in Caribou in January 2009.
In a state with fewer than 600,000 occupied housing units, the agency has already given out rebates for 116,000 heat pumps, blowing past its original goal of helping residents install 100,000 units by 2025. While Stoddard said some were skeptical of the agency’s initial efforts to recruit installers and boost the market, now there is little doubt that heat pumps can function in cold climates, and his agency is experimenting with new uses.
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