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This article was originally published on Jan. 24, 2025 and updated on Feb. 20, 2025 with shipment data for all of last year.
Heat pumps just keep getting hotter. The über-efficient, emissions-free appliance outsold gas furnaces in 2024 — and by a bigger margin than ever.
According to shipment data from the industry trade group Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute, Americans bought 32% more air-source heat pumps than the next-most-popular heating appliance, gas furnaces, last year. That smashes 2023’s record-setting lead of 21%.
To be sure, the data comes with a notable caveat. Heat pumps outsold gas furnaces, but that doesn’t necessarily mean more households are choosing heat pumps over gas heating; homes often need multiple heat-pump units to replace a single fossil fuel–fired appliance.
Still, heat pumps have clear momentum. In fact, the market has been gravitating in this cleaner direction over the past two decades, said Russell Unger, who leads work on decarbonizing buildings at climate think tank RMI. “There’s just been this long-term, consistent trend.”
It’s not hard to see why. Electric heat pumps have massive comfort, climate, and health benefits. They’re essentially two-way air conditioners that can both heat and cool building interiors, are routinely three to four times as efficient as fossil-fuel systems, and are one of the most effective ways an individual can reduce their planet-warming pollution. In many cases, heat pumps can also save you money.
The building sector accounts for 35% of U.S. emissions. To decarbonize the economy by 2050 — the Paris Agreement goal the U.S. signed on to before President Donald Trump withdrew from the accord last month — heat pumps need to rapidly make up 100% of heating system sales, per modeling by electrification nonprofit Rewiring America.
Asked whether heat pump growth is strong enough to hit climate targets, Unger said, “We’d like it to be faster.”
Still, “I’ll go with a little slower and durable,” he said. “If we saw [the market] jump over a really short period, I would be biting my nails.” Unger has been reassured to see “steady, reliable increases” instead. “That feels on brand for the building industry.”
Unger pointed out that consumers don’t change home heating appliances as frequently as cars, a nod to the recent growth of electric vehicle sales. Contractors are also apt to move cautiously because they want to be sure that a technology will work for their business model before committing to it.
A medley of factors are causing heat pump sales to grow, according to experts Canary Media spoke to. Firstly, consumers and contractors are gaining more familiarity with the tech and having better experiences, Unger said.
Advances in heat pump technology have made it well-suited to some of the coldest climes in the U.S. Just look to Maine; heat pumps proved so popular there that the wintry state blew past its 2025 installation goal two years ahead of schedule. Certain heat pump models can work well below -22 degrees Fahrenheit. And the tech’s performance keeps getting better.
Plus, many states and local jurisdictions are pushing hard for heat pumps.
In 2023, 25 governors signed on to install 20 million of the clean heating machines by 2030. Last year, nine states — California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island — raised the stakes by pledging that heat pumps will make up at least 65% of residential heating and cooling equipment sales by the end of the decade. California’s new energy code also encourages builders to install heat pumps instead of gas heating. And the San Francisco Bay Area will make heat pumps the de facto choice when it bars new gas furnaces starting in 2029.
Federal and local incentives are also helping people afford heat pumps. Installation costs for these systems are on average $17,000 to $30,000, depending on many factors including local climate and home insulation, per Rewiring America.
The Inflation Reduction Act, the most ambitious climate legislation in history, gave Americans state-distributed home energy rebates of up to $8,000 as well as a $2,000 federal tax credit to defray the costs of getting a heat pump. But how long these incentives might last under the Trump administration is an open question.
Thanks to steady growth in heat pump sales thus far, the U.S. is now among the top countries quickly transitioning from oil and gas heating to heat pumps, said Kevin Carbonnier, building technology market expert at the nonprofit Building Decarbonization Coalition.
What will it take to drive heat pump sales even higher in the U.S.? Stakeholders need to educate consumers and provide resources to make switching as easy and compelling as possible, said Wael Kanj, senior research associate at Rewiring America. Seeing the most recent data, “We know that we’re moving in the right direction.”
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