I rarely see similar articles bemoaning the carbon emissions associated with heating, say, wealthy New England apartments. It's always those damn poor people in the South ruining the environment.
I don't know if that's even remotely true. Also keep in mind the vast majority of people heating their New England apartments are NOT wealthy, by the simple fact that the majority of New Englanders are not wealthy
Somewhat ironically, there is a strong correlation between the type of people who hand-wring about the environment and opposition to nuclear energy despite it being safer and more efficient than any other form of energy generation currently.
It'd be nice if people aligned their principles and policy positions with what they say, but practicing what you preach has rarely ever been in vogue.
To be pedantic, nothing is more energy efficient than electric heat.
All of the electricity that's lost due to inefficiencies in the device turns into heat anyways. Electric heat is the closest thing to 100% efficient we'll ever get.
Whether it's economical, or the best choice is a different matter, but it's certainly energy efficient.
No, this is not true, if you are referring to electrical resistance heating.
Heat pumps transfer energy from one source to another. For home heating, for instance, they are about 5 times more efficient than resistance heating.
And while heat pumps are transferring energy, there is loss due to inefficiencies. If you're trying to transfer heat from inside to outside, especially when outside is hotter than inside (like in almost every AC scenario), you need to spend energy to compress a refrigerant, cool it, move it inside (meanwhile it's gaining heat during the entire transfer process) and then use it. Also, components like the compressor and radiator fan aren't 100% efficient, and will be giving off heat.
A heat pump will consume 1/5th the electricity to maintain a given room temperature as compared to resistive heating, including all system losses outdoors.
That is how energy efficiency is defined. Energy consumed to create the outcome vs an alternative.
If you want to be obtuse, be my guest.
P.S - I should've just used "efficiency", that is the correct word, not "energy efficiency"
Honestly you are the one being obtuse. Efficiency can be measured many ways, but in the case of heating and cooling I think everyone would agree the efficiency that actually matters is energy efficiency for both economic and environmental reasons.
The nice thing about cooling, its greatest demand typically coincides with the best time to collect solar energy. Solar is perfect for offsetting the a/c, they are a great combo in sunny warm climates.
In the winter, when you're using it to heat, it collects heat underground and brings it up to be concentrated and released into your house, this concentration costs energy. Though in the grand scheme of heating your house, any heat generated inside your house isn't a loss. Due to the fact you have to have buried pipe which you pump liquids through, you'll lose some efficiency to head loss and gravity. Those loses happen outside your house too.
Ground source heating is a lot more economical as it uses far less electricity than resistance heating for the same BTU output (because it's "stealing" heat from somewhere else), but it's not more efficient. But if you ask anyone who has to heat their house in the winter, electric heat is the most expensive. It may be efficient, but electricity isn't cheap.
As for cooling, Ground Source Cooling would be more efficient than a conventional AC (as it's not compressing and then evaporating a refrigerant on a coil).
The nice thing about cooling, its greatest demand typically coincides with the best time to collect solar energy. Solar is perfect for offsetting the a/c, they are a great combo in sunny warm climates.
I hadn't ever thought about the double effect of solar panels on your roof protecting your house from heating up by absorbing the sun, and then using that power to cool your house further. That synergy makes me smile.
Bottom line 1500w heater puts 1500w into the room 100% efficient, a 1500w heat pump will put 4500w or more into the room 300% efficient or more, they both use the same amount of electricity.
Also solar helps in other ways because it makes it so less heat is absorbed into the roof of the house.
The ground temperature 30 feet down is basically stable year round and well above freezing just about anywhere on earth. This allows them to function even mid winter in cold climates while air source heat pumps much switch over to more conventional heating.
A whole apartment block could be heated with a GPU cluster.
There's no dual use for air conditioning.