Spotted: Shoppers are likely to become increasingly carbon-aware as climate change begins to bite. Already, one study has found that 69 per cent of global consumers feel that sustainability is more important to them than it was two years ago.
Dutch startup Greenswapp has developed an API that aggregates peer-reviewed Lifecycle Assessments (LCAs) conducted by research institutes, universities, and think tanks, to display the carbon impact of individual products.
To do this, the company uses a machine learning algorithm to automatically match a product based on its barcode or product name to one of the thousands of product types in its database. It then further analyses the factors along the product lifecycle that cause carbon emissions to differ between versions of the same product made by different suppliers. It can even differentiate between different products made by the same supplier. For processed food, the technology separates out the ingredients it has in its database, calculates the carbon footprint for each, and then adds up the total.
Greenswapp’s technology can be used by supermarkets like Waitrose in several ways. First, it can be used to inform procurement decisions through integration with procurement and inventory management software. Second, it can be integrated into PoS systems to provide customers with the option to carbon offset their purchases.
Finally, it can be used in merchandising to create ‘carbon labels’ that nudge shoppers towards higher-margin sustainable products. At CES 2024, GreenSwapp demonstrated new technology to display climate impact through electronic shelf labels and PoS displays.
Springwise has spotted other companies that are empowering customers with transparent climate data for products, including traceable climate-positive t-shirts and an ESG product rating system.
beyond net-zero: the future of architecture in luxembourg
UNStudio, in collaboration with HYP Architects, has been selected as winners of a design competition for the Kyklos building, the final piece of Luxembourg‘s Belval redevelopment project. This visionary project prioritizes sustainability, pushing boundaries by aiming for the lowest possible carbon footprint through innovative design and material selection. While net-zero operational buildings are a commendable goal, UNStudio recognizes that the majority of a building’s carbon footprint (90%) arises from the materials used, not its operation over the years. This understanding fuels their mission to create buildings with minimal embodied carbon. As the architects say: ‘Only timber is not the answer. UNStudio calculates the lowest carbon footprint for the new Kyklos building in Luxembourg…and the result is hybrid.’
In the design of Luxembourg’s Kyklos Building, the architects at UNStudio and HYP Architects have developed the Carbon Builder tool, empowering designers to analyze and optimize the carbon impact of their projects. This tool played a crucial role in the Kyklos design, leading to an impressive 80% reduction in embodied carbon compared to a standard Luxembourg office building. The building will take shape with a hybrid steel-concrete structure, carefully selected for its superior long-term carbon performance. Using 100% recycled steel and optimized concrete mixtures further minimizes the project’s environmental footprint. This approach translates to an expected embodied carbon footprint of 115kg CO2 equivalent/m2, a significant improvement compared to the 580 kg/m2 of a typical Luxembourg office building.
the final piece of Luxembourg’s Belval development aims for lowest carbon footprint with hybrid design
a Sustainable Connection: The Kyklos and its Place
The Kyklos building in Luxembourg is on track to achieve BREEAM Outstanding and WELL Platinum certifications, reflecting UNStudio’s commitment to both environmental and human well-being. This dedication ensures a healthy and sustainable environment for its occupants, aligning perfectly with the values of Belval and its residents. ‘Kyklos,’ meaning ‘circle’ in Greek, embodies its symbolic role as the final loop completing the Place des Bassins design. This central square, featuring two interconnected basins, represents the transformation of the former industrial site into a vibrant urban space. The Kyklos building, with its sustainable design, becomes the third loop, signifying the future of Belval’s development and its commitment to a greener tomorrow.
UNStudio develops an optimized, hybrid steel-concrete material for lasting impact Kyklos’ carbon footprint will be slashed by 80% compared to standard buildings the project is on track to achieve BREEAM Outstanding, WELL Platinum certifications
Spotted: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2022 mitigation of climate change report estimated that changes to individual “lifestyles and behaviour” could reduce global carbon emissions by 40 to 70 per cent by 2050. Helping to make that a reality is the One Small Step behaviour change app.
One Small Step uses proven psychology to support and encourage individual behaviour shifts that, when added together with thousands of others, equate to significant reductions in carbon emissions. The app helps users track their expenditures, travel, food choices, energy use, and waste production. And for every friend that a user helps to sign up, One Small Step also plants a tree.
After establishing a baseline for their behaviour, the app lets users track how different choices impact carbon emissions and receive personalised suggestions for ways to make their habits more eco-friendly. As users record shifts in behaviour and buying habits, the app also provides vetted alternatives for some of the most commonly used products.
The company’s goal is to work with 100,000 users of the app to prevent one million tonnes of carbon pollution from entering the atmosphere, as a first step in harnessing the power of community action. The company also challenges users to try to reduce their carbon footprint to two tonnes of CO2 per year, which is the UN’s 2050 goal for individuals. With the average American having a carbon footprint of over 14 tonnes, any reduction in that figure, when multiplied by millions of others doing the same, adds up to a substantial climate impact. Currently available in the USA and Australia, the company plans to expand access to the app to other countries.
There’s certainly work to be done by heavy-polluting industries to cut their emissions, but individuals also have the power to contribute to positive environmental changes. Springwise has spotted a countertop appliance that lets you compost easily in your kitchen and a platform that helps individual employees make their company more sustainable.
Spotted: Climate change has led to more frequent and severe heatwaves, and the increasing need to stay cool indoors is, in turn, speeding up global heating. Researchers have calculated that air conditioning is responsible for around 3.9 per cent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions and startup Blue Frontier Inc. has developed an ultra-efficient, sustainable air conditioning (AC) technology to tackle this climate footprint.
The company’s AC system is designed to replace the energy-intensive Packaged Rooftop Units used to cool commercial buildings. The system uses a liquid saltwater solution as a ‘desiccant’, which is a substance that removes moisture – like the silica bead packets used when shipping products to prevent damp.
First, air is passed over a thin layer of the dessicant, which absorbs moisture. The dried air is then split into two streams. The first air stream gets directed over a thin layer of water, which absorbs the air’s energy (heat) to leave it cooler. This cooler, now-humid, air cools a metal surface, before being funnelled outside. Finally, the cool metal sucks heat out of the second (still dry) air stream, which is then blown into the building. As well as cooling down the building, the system also dehumidifies it to improve indoor air quality and create a healthier indoor environment.
The dessicant will periodically need to release water and be ‘recharged’ for the system to keep working. Typically, this would require fossil-fuel-powered heating, but Blue Frontier instead uses a heat pump. This recharging can occur at night when electricity is cheaper and grid demand is lower.
Depending on weather or usage, the system reduces electricity use by 50 to 90 per cent and reduces peak electricity demand. The company points out that its AC system also enables the replacement of traditional ACs with an ‘HVAC-as-a-service’ business model that’s designed to speed up market adoption by removing the need for large capital investments.
Luckily, recognition of the huge energy footprints of heating and cooling systems is leading to a wave of innovations. These include more viable heat pumps and the use of geothermal energy.
Spotted: Hydrogen has long been touted as a clean fuel for the future. And the International Energy Agency forecasts that global hydrogen demand could reach 115 megatonnes by 2030, although this falls short of the 130 megatonnes needed by the same deadline to meet existing climate targets.
Hydrogen is promising as a fuel because it does not emit CO2 at point-of-use and has a broad range of existing and potential applications – from the power sector to transport and more. However, the way in which the element is produced determines whether or not it is a truly clean fuel.
Today, almost all the hydrogen we use is created from fossil fuels, which means that its production generates significant amounts of CO2. ‘Green hydrogen’ is an often-discussed alternative to fossil-derived hydrogen. It is produced by running an electric current through water to break the bond between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms. If this current is produced from a renewable source, then the entire process is emissions-free. Although very promising, green hydrogen has its own limitations, such as the current high cost of electrolysers needed for its production.
Now, however, US startup Monolith, has developed a new clean way of producing hydrogen. Using a process called methane pyrolysis, the company heats up traditional or renewable natural gas or biogas with renewable electricity. This process heats the gas but does not combust it, which means no CO2 is released. Instead, the bonds between the hydrogen and carbon atoms in the gas are broken, and the two elements are collected separately.
Although Monolith’s process still results in a small amount of greenhouse gas emissions for each kilogramme of hydrogen produced, these are much lower than those produced by traditional fossil-derived hydrogen processes (at 0.45 kilogrammes of CO2 equivalent per kilogramme of hydrogen, compared to 11.3 for steam methane reforming). Moreover, the company claims that the process could be made carbon negative if renewable natural gas is used as feedstock.
The key benefit of Monolith’s technology is that it is more affordable than green hydrogen production and uses seven times less energy than is required to produce hydrogen with electrolysers. The leftover carbon from methane pyrolysis can also be used to produce carbon black, a material that is used in tyres and rubber products and as an ink, black paint, or dye. This carbon black is normally produced in very carbon-intensive ways, so its recovery from Monolith’s process offers a more sustainable alternative.
As hydrogen becomes more important for the energy transition, Springwise has spotted several innovators in the archive working on its clean production, including a company producing next-generation electrolysers, researchers making hydrogen from thin air, and oil-eating bacteria that produce hydrogen from spent oil and gas wells.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a low-cost energy storage system that could be integrated into roads and building foundations to facilitate the renewable energy transition.
The research team has created a supercapacitor – a device that works like a rechargeable battery – using cement, water and carbon black, a fine black powder primarily formed of pure carbon.
The breakthrough could pave the way for energy storage to be embedded into concrete, creating the potential for roads and buildings that charge electric devices.
MIT researchers created a set of button-sized supercapacitors. Image courtesy of MIT
Unlike batteries, which rely on materials in limited supply such as lithium, the technology could be produced cheaply using materials that are readily available, according to the researchers.
They describe cement and carbon black as “two of humanity’s most ubiquitous materials”.
“You have the most-used manmade material in the world, cement, combined with carbon black, which is a well-known historical material – the Dead Sea Scrolls were written with it,” said MIT professor Admir Masic.
The research team included Masic and fellow MIT professors Franz-Josef Ulm and Yang-Shao Horn, with postdoctoral researchers Nicolas Chanut, Damian Stefaniuk and Yunguang Zhu at MIT and James Weaver at Harvard’s Wyss Institute.
“Huge need for big energy storage”
They believe the technology could accelerate a global shift to renewable energy.
Solar, wind and tidal power are all produced at variable times, which often don’t correspond with peak electricity demand. Large-scale energy storage is necessary to take advantage of these sources but is too expensive to realise using traditional batteries.
“There is a huge need for big energy storage,” said Ulm. “That’s where our technology is extremely promising because cement is ubiquitous.”
The team proved the concept works by creating a set of button-sized supercapacitors, equivalent to one-volt batteries, which were used to power an LED light.
They are now developing a 45-cubic-metre version to show the technology can be scaled up.
Calculations suggest a supercapacitor of this size could store around 10 kilowatt-hours of energy, which would be enough to meet the daily electricity usage of a typical household.
This means that a supercapacitor could potentially be incorporated into the concrete foundation of a house for little to no additional cost.
“You can go from one-millimetre-thick electrodes to one-metre-thick electrodes, and by doing so basically you can scale the energy storage capacity from lighting an LED for a few seconds to powering a whole house,” Ulm said.
The researchers suggest that embedding the technology into a concrete road could make it possible to charge electric cars while they are travelling across it, using similar technology to that used in wireless phone chargers.
Battery-powered versions of this system are already being trialled across Europe.
Carbon black key to “fascinating” composite
Supercapacitors work by storing electrical energy between two electrically conductive plates. They are able to deliver charge much more rapidly than batteries but most do not offer as much energy storage.
The amount of energy they are able to store depends on the total surface area of the two plates, which are separated by a thin insulation layer.
The version developed here has an extremely high internal surface area, which greatly improves its effectiveness. This is due to the chemical makeup of the material formed when carbon black is introduced to a concrete mixture and left to cure.
“The material is fascinating,” said Masic. “The carbon black is self-assembling into a connected conductive wire.”
According to Masic, the amount of carbon black needed is very small – as little as three per cent.
The more is added, the greater the storage capacity of the supercapacitor. But this also reduces the structural strength of the concrete, which could be a problem in load-bearing applications.
The “sweet spot” is believed to be around 10 per cent.
The composite material could also be utilised within a heating system, the team suggested. Full details of their findings are due to be published in an upcoming edition of science journal PNAS.
Other attempts at creating large-scale, low-cost energy storage systems include Polar Night Energy’s “sand battery”, which is already servicing around 10,000 people in the Finnish town of Kankaanpää.
Spotted: The UK’s hospitality sector is responsible for around 15 per cent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. One company tackling this issue is Skoot, a multi-faceted platform with a variety of solutions that help businesses, communities, and individuals cut their carbon footprintsm by enabling them to identify, offset, and avoid carbon emissions. The company’s Eco-Contribution tool focuses on restaurants and hospitality businesses.
With Skoot, businesses can first calculate their own net emissions. Then, the Eco-Contribution solution allows restaurants and venues to counteract the emissions generated from every meal or bill – taking into account food miles and other contributors – by planting trees. The company estimates that each tree can remove 6 kilogrammes of CO2 per diner and, over the course of its lifetime, could trap up to 1 tonne of CO2.
Not only does Skoot’s hospitality tool help to reduce an establishment’s overall carbon footprint, at no additional cost to the business, but it also empowers customers to be greener when they’re eating out. Upon receiving a bill, diners can choose to pay the optional Eco-Contribution – as set by the restaurant – and offset emissions from the meal. Depending on the restaurant’s preference, this Eco-Contribution can either be applied per table or per person.
The tool can be easily integrated across any existing till system, and to make it even easier to implement, Oracle Simphony and Micros users are able to download the Eco-Contribution app directly from the Oracle marketplace onto their POS (point of sale) system and integrate the solution remotely.
Skoot has now planted over 800,000 trees, and countered over 4,000 tonnes of CO2. The company’s aim is to expand the environmental support it offers, broaden its collection of sustainability projects, and grow operations to new countries – having already confirmed its first clients in America and South Africa.
Springwise has also spotted other innovations in the archive that help offset carbon footprints, like one platform that helps employees make tangible company-wide eco-friendly changes or another that makes it easier to track and manage carbon offsets.
Spotted: Pesticides and fertilisers are widely used in food production. But while they can have important benefits, they are expensive, and their use creates numerous environmental problems impacting human health, biodiversity, and water and soil ecosystems. Now, startup Pluton Biosciences is identifying microbial solutions that could provide chemical-free crop protection and enhancement.
Pluton is working to identify novel microbes with commercial applications using its proprietary Micromining Innovation Engine. Pluton has already discovered multiple previously unknown bacteria that can protect against several agriculturally relevant plant pests, including the fall armyworm. The active anti-pest molecule has been isolated and is being developed into a natural pesticide.
The company is also developing a microbial cover crop that captures and sequesters carbon and nitrogen in the soil – providing soil enhancement as well as carbon sequestration. The company claims that applying the microbial spray at planting and harvest could scrub nearly two tonnes of carbon from the air per acre of farmland each year, while also replenishing nutrients in the soil.
Microbial solutions are not only good for crops and the environment, they are also a potentially valuable market, and investors agree. In 2021, Pluton raised $6.6 million (around €6 million) in a seed round and more recently it completed a series A round for $16.5 million (around €15.2 million).
Nature can be very effective at solving problems, a fact that has not escaped the notice of those searching for more sustainable ways to grow crops. In the archive, Springwise has spotted a number of innovations in this space, including a maggot-based fertiliser and nature-inspired insecticides that protect biodiversity.
At the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen, Allbirds has unveiled a woolly sock-style trainer with a bioplastic sole that effectively adds zero emissions to the atmosphere over the course of its life, the shoe brand claims.
The minimal all-grey Moonshot sneaker features an upper made using wool from a regenerative farm in New Zealand, which uses sustainable land management practices to capture more carbon than it emits.
This on-farm carbon storage offset any other emissions generated over the product’s lifecycle, Allbirds claims, making it the “world’s first net-zero carbon shoe”.
“Regenerative wool was a critical pillar of helping us reimagine how products are designed and made through the lens of carbon reduction,” co-founder Tim Brown told Dezeen.
“To me, the currently untapped opportunity for naturally derived, net-zero products is the future of fashion.”
Allbirds races to reduce trainers’ footprint
Set to launch commercially next spring, the product follows in the footsteps of the Futurecraft.Footprint trainer, which at 2.94 kilograms CO2e was reportedly the lowest-carbon trainer ever made when Allbirds and Adidas launched it in 2021.
Back then, the team focused mainly on simplifying the construction of trainers, which have an average footprint of 13.6 kilograms CO2e, and reducing the number of separate components from 65 to just seven.
This same principle was also applied to the Moonshot, which features no laces or eyelets and integrates its insole directly into the knitted upper.
Moonshot was unveiled at the Global Fashion Summit
But this time, the key advance came in the form of materials – primarily the merino wool upper sourced from Lake Hawea Station, a certified net-zero farm in New Zealand.
Through regenerative practices such as replanting native trees and vegetation, as well as maintaining soil carbon through rotational grazing, the farm says it sequesters almost twice as much carbon as it emits.
However, these carbon benefits of sustainable land management are generally not considered in a material’s lifecycle assessment (LCA).
“Frequently, the way that the carbon intensity of wool is looked at is just acknowledging the emissions, so completely disregarding any of the removals happening on farm,” said Allbirds sustainability manager Aileen Lerch. “And we think that that is a huge missing opportunity.”
That’s because it prevents brands, designers and architects, who are increasingly making use of biomaterials to reduce the footprint of their projects, from reliably calculating and certifying any emissions savings.
With the Moonshot project, Allbirds hopes to offer a template for how these carbon benefits could be considered within LCAs, using Lake Hawea Station’s overall carbon footprint as a basis.
From this, the Allbirds extrapolated a product-level footprint for the wool, which the company has so far failed to disclose, using its own carbon calculator.
Carbon sequestered on the wool farm offsets emissions elsewhere in the lifecycle, Allbirds claims
As a result, there is a degree of uncertainty around the actual footprint of the trainer because it cannot currently be verified by a third party according to official international standards.
But Allbirds head of sustainability Hana Kajimura argues that this is a risk worth taking to help push the discussion forward and incentivise a shift towards regenerative agriculture.
“It’s about progress, not perfection,” she said. “We could spend decades debating the finer points of carbon sequestration, or we can innovate today with a common sense approach.”
Plastics still play a role for performance
Regenerative wool also cannot yet fully contend with the performance of synthetic fibres, meaning that to create the Moonshot upper, it had to be blended with some recycled nylon and polyester for durability and stretch.
For the midsole, Allbirds managed to amp up the bioplastic content from 18 per cent in 2021’s Futurecraft.Footprint trainer to 70 per cent in the Moonshot, using a process called supercritical foaming.
This involves injecting gas into the midsole, making it more durable and lightweight while reducing the need for emissions-intensive synthetic additives.
“In the industry right now, most midsoles have no bio content or quite a minimal one,” Lerch explained. “So it’s really a large step change in what’s possible because of this supercritical foaming process.”
Stuck to the front of the sneaker is a bioplastic smiley face badge by California company Mango Materials, which is made using captured methane emissions from a wastewater treatment facility that is then digested by bacteria and turned into a biopolyester called PHA.
The shoe itself will be vacuum-packed in bioplastic polyethylene to save space and weight during transport, which Allbirds plans to conduct via electric trucks and biofuel-powered container ships.
There is no “perfect solution” for end of life
Another area that will need further development is the end of life, meaning how the shoe’s packaging and its various plastic and bioplastic composite components can be responsibly disposed of given that they are notoriously hard – if not impossible – to recycle.
“We don’t yet have a perfect solution of what will happen at its end of life,” Lerch said. “We don’t want to make a promise of: send it back, don’t worry, buy your next shoe and move on.”
“We acknowledge though, that the answer isn’t just to keep making more products that end up in landfill or incinerated. So we’re continuously looking at what those solutions can be.”
The sock trainers feature a minimal wool-heavy design
In a bid to overcome challenges like this and encourage collaboration across the industry, Allbirds is open-sourcing the toolkit it used to create Moonshot and encouraging other companies to adapt, expand and improve on it.
“It is also about ushering in a new age of ‘hyper-collaboration’ across brands and industries to share best practice, build scale for all parts of the supply chain, to reward growers and lower costs,” Brown said.
Allbirds became the first fashion brand to provide carbon labelling for all of its products in 2020.
Since then, the company has committed itself to reducing the carbon footprint of its products to below one kilogram and its overall footprint to “near zero” by 2030.
According to the The International Energy Association, “Heat pumps, powered by low-emissions electricity, are the central technology in the global transition to secure and sustainable heating.” Why? As rooftop solar panels, community solar, and utility-scale renewable energy expand, the incredible efficiency of heat pumps will free us from fossil fuels and help propel the way to zero carbon.
Heat pumps have been around for decades in the form of air conditioners and refrigerators, so the technology is mature and already cost competitive. The Inflation Reduction Act will bring tax credits, 30% off the cost of installation, bringing the technology within reach of even more families and property owners.
And best of all, heat pumps provide better comfort, using a more constant flow of heat compared to the on/off blast of a 3000° natural gas furnace. Heat pumps run smoothly, without temperature swings, and they filter and move more air through the house.
Whole house heat pumps
Similar to a furnace or central AC system, whole house heat pumps pump heat throughout your home via ductwork. For homes with existing ducts, this can be an easy change out of a fossil fuel –burning furnace for a heat pump.
The ducted, whole house heat pumps come in constant speed and variable speed. Constant speed heat pumps (also called single– or dual-stage heat pumps) run at only one or two speeds. They either run at full blast or they’re off, nothing. These often feature a lower upfront cost, but higher operational costs. And they usually require some type of backup (electric-resistance or gas) heating system, because they will struggle to work efficiently below 20° or 30°F. You’ll recognize a constant speed heat pump by the fan on the top of the outdoor unit, looking like a classic air conditioner box.
Variable speed heat pumps run at different speeds, modulating up and down to maintain the target temperature. They run a lot, but at lower energy levels and are overall more efficient. They will cost more upfront, but many work well in much colder temperatures. Thus, all cold climate heat pumps run at variable speeds.
Compared to the on/off blast of constant speed heat pumps, variable speed models run more quietly at lower speeds. You’ll see a more vertical looking outdoor unit with a fan on the side rather than the top. Variable speed units can be used with both ductless and ducted heat pump systems.
In 2021, we replaced an ancient gas furnace on one side of a Cleveland, OH, duplex. This whole-house, variable-speed heat pump provides heating and cooling under highly variable weather conditions. Because it’s used for short-term rentals, we keep it at a comfortable 72° all year. This all-electric arrangement on this side of the duplex costs far less to operate than the gas side.
Ductless system with variable speed heat pump. Image courtesy Mitsubishi.
Source: Air Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute data and Electrify Now.
Ductless heat pumps
As their name implies, ductless heat pumps don’t use ducts to distribute heat. Instead, they rely on indoor units (aka “heads”) installed in the wall, linking directly to an individual outdoor condenser; similar to a window or wall air-conditioning unit. This means that no conditioned air is escaping through leaky ducts, nor are ducts exposed to sunlight or unconditioned space. So ductless installations are most efficient.
Ductless heat pumps are logical for any space without ductwork. And they offer efficiency, economic, and environmental advantages over a central ducted heating system. All DHPs use variable speed technology. One downside is that you need to install a head on an exterior wall wherever you want heat; or provide backup electric-resistance heaters for rooms that don’t (or can’t) have a head
In our home in Portland, OR, heat pumps have kept our family warm for over a decade, since we removed our gas furnace. We also gained some square footage in our garage, which we have converted to an accessory dwelling unit.
The home came with baseboard electric heat in bedrooms and bathrooms, in addition to the central furnace. We now have two heat pump “heads” in the living room and master bedroom, and we use the backup electric-resistance heat very occasionally in the other rooms. This hybrid approach reduced our capital costs and costs us incredibly little to run. Our energy bills are only 20% of the national average!
How will they propel us to zero?
A heat pump uses refrigerant to capture heat and then moves that heat into (heating) or out of (cooling) your house. In the winter they pump heat from outside (even from cold air) to the inside, and in summer, they reverse. Here in Portland, and other places across the globe, climate change is bringing a greater need for cooling. A heat pump is, essentially, a super-efficient, reversible air-conditioner that you can use year-round.
Heat pumps are therefore key to decarbonization. As they are becoming more widely available, more contractors are becoming familiar with how to size, install, and maintain them. Of the 41% of US homes that use electricity for heating, only a quarter of those (13 million) use efficient heat pumps. But in 2021, heat pump sales surpassed gas furnaces, in the US, for the first time.
Whether it’s ducted or ductless, in Oregon or Ohio, modern ranches or old craftsman duplexes, our family has used the mighty heat pump to stay warm, save money, and do our part to solve the climate crisis. So while heat pumps might not get as much love, they rank up there with solar panels and electric vehicles as crucial technologies that will decarbonize our lives without sacrificing modern comforts. Let’s get heat pumped up and put one of these amazing machines in every home ASAP.
This article springs from an post by Naomi Cole and Joe Wachunas, first published in CleanTechnica. Their “Decarbonize Your Life,” series shares their experience, lessons learned, and recommendations for how to reduce household emissions.
The authors:
Joe Wachunas and Naomi Cole both work professionally to address climate change—Naomi in urban sustainability and energy efficiency and Joe in the electrification of buildings and transportation. A passion for debarbonization, and their commitment to walk the walk, has led them to ductless heat pumps, heat pump water heaters, induction cooking, solar in multiple forms, hang-drying laundry (including cloth diapers), no cars to electric cars and charging without a garage or driveway, a reforestation grant from the US Department of Agriculture, and more. They live in Portland, OR, with two young children.
