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Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat,

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cure, or prevent any disease. The.

1:17

One thing that's holding back the heat pump.

1:19

It's. Not the technology itself. It's that

1:22

we don't yet have enough train workers

1:24

to install heat pumps for full tilt

1:26

decarbonisation. By. Matt Simon. If.

1:31

Billionaires actually cared about saving the planet.

1:33

They'd pull their vast wealth and by

1:36

everyone, a heat pump. Instead.

1:38

Of burning, planet warming fossil fuels,

1:40

these appliances extract warmth from even

1:42

freezing outdoor air and transferred into

1:45

a building thanks to neat tricks

1:47

of physics. In. The summer

1:49

they reversed to act like an air conditioning

1:51

unit. One recent study found that if everyone

1:53

in the United States got a heat pump.

1:56

It. Slash emissions in the building sector

1:58

by thirty six to sixty. Four

2:00

percent. And. Cut overall national

2:02

emissions by five to nine percent.

2:05

Because. They're fully electric. heat pumps

2:07

run on a grid increasingly loaded

2:09

with renewable energy. Not.

2:11

The billionaires would ever have the altruism

2:13

or desire to buy us all heat

2:16

pumps mega yacht Soren going to buy

2:18

themselves after all. But if they did,

2:20

they'd be one critical a hurdle they'd

2:22

run into. The. One thing that's

2:25

holding heat pumps back from their full

2:27

potential? More generally. There. Aren't enough

2:29

trained workers yet to install them? No.

2:31

One talks about supply chain constraints

2:33

anymore. What? Is now the bottleneck

2:36

is actually the installer says fill

2:38

a printer, C O, and cofounder

2:40

of Arch, a platform that helps

2:42

aidsvax heating ventilation and air conditioning

2:44

companies manage customers. In. The

2:46

winter and in the summer. In the

2:48

peak seasons, when most people actually want

2:50

to install a system, it's actually still

2:52

a contractor constrained market. The.

2:54

Result is classic green place in

2:57

a temporary rise in the costs

2:59

associated with decarbonisation due to market

3:01

constraints, says climate economist Garnett Wagner

3:03

of the Columbia Business School in

3:05

New York. Yes, There is

3:07

a shortage of qualified contractors, he says.

3:10

But. It's a good problem to have, he

3:12

argues, and one where there's an obvious

3:14

solution on the road to decarbonizing our

3:16

civilization. It'll be costly to train

3:18

more workers in the green economy, but

3:20

that will end up paying huge dividends.

3:23

Electricians get talked about a lot

3:25

and used as sort of an

3:27

avatar for all of the jobs

3:29

that are going to be needed

3:31

to install heat pumps and decarbonise

3:33

the economy says Alexandria, her senior

3:35

research associate at Rewiring America, a

3:38

nonprofit that promotes electrification. But.

3:40

It's not just electricians, it's actually a

3:42

whole range of different jobs across the

3:44

construction trades. Qualified. Workers are

3:46

needed to determine what kind of heat

3:48

pump a home or business requires to

3:50

install the things and then to service

3:53

them. A heat pump is

3:55

fundamentally different from a gas fired

3:57

furnace, and it requires fundamentally different

3:59

training. That. Would include workers

4:01

specializing in weatherization better insulating

4:03

homes so heat pumps get

4:05

even more efficient. And. Will

4:07

need specialists to retrofit the grid so

4:10

it can smoothly transition to handle the

4:12

ebb and flow of renewable energy. Which.

4:14

Is what makes he pumps so climate friendly. And.

4:17

Will need workers in manufacturing to produce

4:19

the units themselves. And. We

4:21

need these people A sap. Heat. Pump

4:23

sales are already outpacing the sale of

4:26

gas furnaces in the Us. The Inflation

4:28

Reduction Act of Twenty Twenty Two provides

4:30

thousands of dollars in tax rebates and

4:32

credit for households to both switch to

4:34

a heat pump and pay for the

4:36

electrical upgrades that may be required to

4:38

run the appliances. Last. Year

4:40

the Biden Administration announced one hundred

4:42

Sixty Nine million dollars to supercharge

4:44

the domestic manufacturing of whole heat

4:46

pumps and their individual components. And.

4:49

In February, nine states signed a

4:51

memorandum of understanding to accelerate the

4:53

adoption of heat pumps. So.

4:55

The demand is there, as is growing

4:57

support from the federal and state governments.

5:00

What's. Lagging is the workforce at least

5:02

temporarily, and the U is nowhere near

5:04

alone. Wherever heat pump adoption is growing,

5:07

more workers need to train up to

5:09

meet demand. If you look at a

5:11

place like say, Finland were pretty much

5:13

all your heating systems are heat pumps,

5:16

This is not really an issue anymore,

5:18

says Jan Rosa, now who studies electrification

5:20

at the Regulatory Assistance Project a policy

5:22

angio for the energy community. If

5:25

he wanted to buy an electric carts and years

5:27

ago it was quite difficult, wasn't it? Now.

5:30

You can go to any show room and you

5:32

can find them. I think the same as going

5:34

to be the case with heat pumps. It's already

5:36

the case with heat pumps in more mature markets.

5:39

In. The U S though we don't have

5:41

some sort of giant national program to quickly

5:43

get more people trained in a track. It.

5:46

Would just make sense that there would be

5:48

this path to learn more about heat pumps

5:50

and then there would be a whole armed

5:53

force to go out and install these things

5:55

says Edu Know V Act Manager of a

5:57

H Back and Refrigeration Design Education at the

5:59

Nonprofit Air Conditioning Contractors Of America. There.

6:02

Is such an opportunity right now for people to

6:04

get in on the ground level? It's not take

6:06

them very long to make a decent wage at

6:09

it, and I still sit here at times with

6:11

my palms in the air as to why it

6:13

isn't just automatically happening. There.

6:15

Isn't one official pathway and the Us

6:18

for a track workers, but several trade

6:20

schools and community colleges provide H back

6:22

training. Trade. Unions offer apprenticeship said.

6:25

Many H back companies run their own

6:27

training programs to get people into the

6:29

trade. The. Most successful companies right

6:31

now are finding these people to install. They're

6:33

not necessarily hiring people that are already in

6:35

the field says you know, be act. But.

6:38

If you look at the number of

6:40

technicians that go through those programs nationally

6:42

versus the demand, it's just not there.

6:44

so we need a lot more people.

6:47

For. Veteran age back workers already

6:49

trained in fossil fuel systems like

6:51

installing guess furnaces, heat pump manufacturers

6:54

provide their own training to install

6:56

their products which is of course

6:58

in their interest. H. Back

7:00

companies also do their own heat pump

7:02

training for established workers which usually takes

7:04

two days. If. A home has

7:07

ducting. A heat pump will work

7:09

similarly to a traditional Ac unit,

7:11

so the installation is nearly identical.

7:13

But. All these workers don't just have

7:15

to be trained, but trained well. Less,

7:18

they inadvertently turn customers off of the

7:20

energy efficient appliances just as the heat

7:22

pump revolution is getting going. If

7:25

the size of the heat pump doesn't suit

7:27

the size of the home or the ducting

7:29

within, it won't be as efficient. If.

7:31

You don't have ducting. A contractor might

7:33

recommend a simpler ductless heat pump which

7:35

is set into an outside facing wall.

7:37

My. Biggest hope is that those people who

7:39

do end up installing these do get trained

7:42

wisely says you know the act. And.

7:44

They do install pieces of equipment that work the

7:46

way we want them to. And.

7:48

Added challenge is that the Us needs

7:50

a robust network of training programs all

7:53

across the country. You can't have someone

7:55

remotely install a heat pump, which means

7:57

will need not just an army of

7:59

trained workers. Properly distributed one.

8:02

Over in the Uk, the energy

8:04

supplier Octopus Energy has even built

8:07

to full scale model houses for

8:09

workers to train and one representing

8:11

modern housing stock and the other

8:13

older bricks from the nineteen sixties

8:15

or nineteen seventies. The. Company uses

8:18

the homes to train workers new to

8:20

the heating industry. It directly employs these

8:22

folks during the education process so they

8:24

get paid, but also to reschedule veterans

8:27

who have been installing fossil fuel systems.

8:30

Actually, We don't really have a skill

8:32

shortage at all. We just have a set of

8:34

people that are installing the wrong product. says.

8:36

John Cynic C. O of Octopus

8:38

Energy Services. We. Build those model

8:40

homes in order to show people how

8:43

you'd Optimizers Rollout for the mass market.

8:46

Working. In an older Uk home, for

8:48

instance, technicians need to account for much

8:50

worse insulation than in a modern home.

8:53

The. Size of the whole matters, as does the

8:55

number of occupants and kinds of windows. All.

8:57

That data goes into a calculation that octopus

8:59

used to determine the size of the heat

9:01

pump. Those. Homes are really really

9:04

helpful for our surveyors understanding of how

9:06

to go around and measure up says

9:08

Simic. Then. During a heat pump

9:10

installation in the real world a newly trained

9:13

worker would join a crew of more experience

9:15

technicians. What you get there is the opportunity

9:17

to blend your people that have been working

9:19

on this for awhile have more experience with

9:22

the people that are coming into a fresh

9:24

with slightly less experience. A

9:26

new breed of heat pumps is also making

9:28

it possible for some people to skip hiring

9:31

a trained installer entirely. The. New

9:33

York City Housing Authority, for instance, is

9:35

deploying units that slip over a window

9:37

sill and plug into the wall. One

9:39

of the company's making that type gradient

9:41

says that a resident can install one

9:43

in less than an hour, in contrast

9:45

to a team of technicians installing a

9:47

traditional heat pump in about a day.

9:50

For. An apartment dweller without ducting. This

9:52

might be an ideal option that

9:54

skips the extra step of having

9:56

a contractor analyze the space and

9:58

deploy a more complicated. The.

10:01

Other option is to just hope the heat

10:03

pump revolution unfold smoothly on it's own. Maybe.

10:06

The H Back industry will meet that

10:08

demand with American made devices installed by

10:11

newly trained workers. Finland. After

10:13

all, eventually found it's way. There.

10:15

May well be the need for large

10:17

scale retraining programs, says Wagner. Maybe.

10:20

I'm too much of a business school economist. please

10:22

excuse me for that. But frankly, one answer is

10:24

to simply get out of the way and let

10:27

the market do it's thing. Thanks.

10:30

For listening to Wired my name is

10:32

Zeke Robison and for more stories like

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