Heat pumps, EV chargers and more: U.S. unveils $4.3 billion in local climate funds

Washington Post ^ | 07/22/2204 | Sarah Raza

[ChicagoConservative27]

A woman at work said, we need heat pumps installed in every home for climate change!! I rolled my eyes.

[eyeamok]

Long past time to abolish the Dept of Energy

[Seruzawa]

This is just election year pandering. No one will see any of the money except a few NGOs. And they will only get a portion. The rest will be skimmed by politicians and bureaucrats.

[antidemoncrat]

“The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday announced an investment of $4.3 billion into community-driven projects in an effort to ramp up local climate action across the country.”

The Government is very smart in figuring out how to tax more and more money out of its citizens but then they become very stupid when it comes to spending that money.

[piasa]

Getting small towns hooked on the Fed drug of choice- money. This is just another way of extending federal control over local municipalities. Once they accept federal monies, they will never turn them down, not even when the feds start stripping them of their powers and assumes their authority and power over everything in their area.

[kaktuskid]

Heat pumps don’t work in extremely cold weather.

[z3n]

A woman at work said, we need heat pumps installed in every home for climate change!! I rolled my eyes.

~~~~

I guess I'm not surprised when your average NPC doesn't understand why heatpumps aren't an energy miricle, but I would think that people who make decision about policy and law should be moderately well informed.

Heat pumps are terrible in extreme conditions. The hotter it is outside, the hard it is to cool inside, and the opposite is also true. The colder it is inside, the harder it is to heat inside.

That is because when you need air conditioning inside, you need to blow hot air (from the outside air) through a coil that is outside!
When you need heat inside, you have to blow already freezing air through a coil outside in order to add heat to it so you can transfer heat back inside... Which makes no friggin sense!

A gas furnace or anything that makes heat through combustion in more efficient by leaps and bounds!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

“$4.3 BILLION for community-driven projects”

I would wager a lot of money that “communities” would much prefer that money be spent on housing, food, and healthcare, not pissed down the toilet to make liberals feel good.

[dhs12345]

Until they don’t work in weather extremes.

[Tell It Right]

Heat pumps don’t work in extremely cold weather.

Agreed. My variable-speed heat pump is great at saving on energy costs for mostly warm Alabama. But I have to use my main furnace when the temp gets below about 40F.

[Honorary Serb]

We don’t need electric vehicles—or their chargers!

A consulting firm in our neighborhood installed several EV chargers in their parking lot shortly after biden took office. They remain almost entirely unused!

[dhs12345]

BTW, it is going to take trillions to move the economy over to all electric. This is a dirty little secrete.

It is like buying a car and finding out after the fact that the car didn’t have an engine? Engine? That will be extra. Oh, do you need tires too? Extra.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

“This month, the Energy Department unveiled $1.7 billion for retooling 11 auto factories to make electric vehicles and their components.”

That, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with government. The EV market is saturated, unsold EVs are piled up on dealer lots, many EV owners say their next car will be ICE powered, EV manufacturers are slowing or abandoning EVs, they are converting their EV factories back to ICE production…so what does the government do?

Announces another program to piss away OUR money.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Our great grandkids will pay for this crap.

[dhs12345]

Secret. Lol. A little e on the end can change the whole meaning.

[z3n]

Until they don’t work in weather extremes.

~~~

Imagine running water through pipes from the outside of your house to the inside, and blowing air through radiators on both sides.
Well, if it was hot outside, then the water would be hot and you’d be blowing heat through the radiator inside your house, which is the exact opposite of what you want when it’s hot outside. You want cold air.

So, someone discovered that there is a way to compress and expand gasses in order to use physics for transferring heat energy, and if you used gases that were more efficient at holding heat energy than water or regular air (mostly nitrogen) then you can actually overcome the problem of not being able to remove heat from your transfer medium when it’s hot outside.

But there is only one problem with this. You have to use a lot of energy up in order to accomplish this expansion and compression of your medium.

What is worse, the more extreme temperature is outside, the harder it is to transfer heat energy out of the medium, which means you have to use EVEN MORE mechanical energy (which in this case is paid for with electricity) in order to accomplish that.

[woodbutcher1963]

This is similar to my wife trying to talk me into installing a mini split AC unit in our 1972 southern NH home.

You know, for the 1-2 months a year that we use AC.
It was going to save us so much money. Much more than the two window units that we own. One of which we got for free.

What a deal. Only $7500 to get one installed that would power two units. Which means based on the extra $100/month the current units add to our monthly electric bill. It will only take 37 years to pay itself off. What a great Return On Investment.

[steve86]

“That is because when you need air conditioning inside, you need to blow hot air (from the outside air) through a coil that is outside!”

???No different from the outside condenser unit of any traditional air conditioner.

[SpaceBar]

Government doesn’t ‘invest’, it spends... your money.

[dhs12345]

The carnot cycle.... both forward and reverse.

However, it might be used to supplement the primary system thereby reducing the energy demand when a heat pump is operating within its optimal temperature range.

Also, apparently there is a problem with ice build up.