Warmth pumps have been round for many years, however the know-how has been experiencing a transparent second within the solar lately, with world gross sales rising by double digits in each 2021 and 2022, in response to the Worldwide Power Company (IEA). Warmth pumps have been featured on MIT Expertise Evaluation’s 2024 listing of 10 Breakthrough Applied sciences.
Gross sales fell by practically 17% in 2023 within the US, one of many know-how’s largest markets, in response to new knowledge from the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute. The slowdown comes after practically a decade of fixed development. The AHRI knowledge isn’t complete, however the group contains producers accounting for about 90% of the models offered within the US yearly.
Nevertheless, the decline seemingly says much less about warmth pumps than it does about the entire HVAC sector, since fuel furnaces and air conditioners noticed even steeper drops. Fuel furnace gross sales declined much more than warmth pumps did in 2023, so warmth pumps truly made up a barely bigger proportion of gross sales this yr than in 2022.
The broad slowdown displays broader client pessimism amid larger rates of interest and inflation, says Yannick Monschauer, an analyst on the IEA, through electronic mail.
“We’ve additionally been observing slowing warmth pump gross sales in different components of the world for 2023,” Monschauer provides. In Europe, a rush to affect, pushed by the vitality disaster and rising pure fuel costs, has slowed.