C026 -- Comparing the Economics and Emissions Impact of Residential Heat Pump Conversions versus Increasing Bioblends in Liquid Fueled Heating Appliances

What does the energy transition really mean as we consider options from 2023 to 2050? Decarbonizing our electricity generation with less coal and greater amounts of renewables, such as wind and solar, every sector of our economies can benefit as our economies should be viewed holistically. The impact to every sector, such as buildings, industry, power grids as well as transportation, should be considered when fuel switching, so should other factors not limited to, resiliency, infrastructure, technology readiness, critical materials, and energy density that can help determine how to optimize options. Yet, few have considered the practical ramifications of this transition. While pursuing the “Electrify Everything” goal to the maximum possible is important, what other practical carbon reduction tools exist that are available now that could be implemented to their optimum efficacy? The “Electrify Everything” movement has overshadowed and even stifled technologies and strategies available today that, if widely adopted throughout the economy, can simultaneously drive significant emissions reductions in the near term while investing in future strategies that can keep us on a path to greater decarbonization in the next 27 years. The urgent need to decarbonize energy should require, for each energy consuming sector, the development of multiple solution sets and then let them compete in the marketplace based on emission impact. One such sector is existing oil heated homes which is a logical place to decarbonize. “Electrify Everything” proponents argue this is a simple choice, eliminate oil as a heating fuel and replace these systems with electric heat pumps. In fact, several East Coast and West Coast states are using electric ratepayer dollars to incentivize this idea as the only decarbonization solution. Liquid fuel heating proponents say that decarbonizing their fuel with biodiesel and potentially other biofuels is a more cost effective and efficient path forward. To understand these two pathways, the National Oilheat Research Alliance (NORA) created an open-source multi-variant model to examine converting existing oil-heated homes to electric heat pumps versus increasing bioblending. This paper reviews the development of this multi-variant model and examines one use-case result of this comparison.