IMPACT: Heating and cooling of residential and commercial building space requires more than 13,000 terawatt-hours of energy and is estimated to increase to more than 18,000 terawatt-hours by 2050. This energy use comes from on-site fuel combustion and electricity-based systems—from gas furnaces to air-conditioning units. High-efficiency heat pumps reduce fuel consumption to zero and use less electricity to generate heating and cooling. Current adoption is low at .02 percent of the market, but we estimate rapid growth as costs continue to decrease by up to 25 percent by 2050. For a cost of $119
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