> only ~20-30% of the energy in the fuel turns into useful work, while electricity is much, much more efficient. So, we need much less of it.
Isn't a lot of energy used for heating, not work?
Isn't a lot of energy used for heating, not work?
The challenge in heating is industrial heat, which is much hotter. Can't do that with heat pumps (yet?)
Even without those, the continued decrease in solar costs means that there's a decent chance that plain old resistive heating will become viable at some point in the 2040s.
I've seen plans to run an engine in your furnace, thus creating both electric (at 20-30%, and capturing the rest as heat to the house. I've never seen this in the real world and experts who have looked as those systems said they won't enter a building that has one using that design. (it is possible to make a design they would trust, but they haven't seen any)