According to Canary Media, the everything company that once sold books has seen the light while the rest of us are in darkness. See, “Amazon bets on what could be a game-changing heat pump”. And, it burbles, “The tech giant signed a multiyear contract with Transaera, a startup with MIT roots, for next-gen heat pumps that will help reduce energy costs and emissions.” Now we at CDN are not simply and inflexibly hostile to new power technologies. On the contrary, we think it would be very cool if some of them worked, including heat pumps which, like solar, offer the tantalizing promise of more decentralized and empowering power, freeing people from centralized government grids while working with nature not against it. The trouble is that, as with Tantalus, it always seems to hover just out of reach.
In this regard Canary seem to have missed the key point even while quoting in their story:
“‘At Amazon, we seek technologies that support our Climate Pledge goal,’ Asad Jafry, the company’s director of global energy, sustainability, and automation, said in a statement.”
Riiight. Support our Climate Pledge goal. Not support our let’s-save-money goal. So it’s basically big gleaming PR.
Now of course Canary believes otherwise, insisting that the savings will rain down like water:
“Roughly 40% of energy used in U.S. commercial buildings – including big-box stores, schools, grocery shops, offices, hospitals, and hotels – goes to heating and cooling them. Typically performing those functions are packaged heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning units on rooftops. Think big white boxes on flat roofs. The majority of those units in use today are gas-fired. Even though heat pumps are two to four times as efficient as gas systems, less than 15 percent of the 6 million or so commercial buildings in the country used the electric option in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.”
Now hold on. Times are tough. Budgets are strained. Firms are contemplating layoffs. Are we really to believe that they could cut their heating and cooling costs by half, or three quarters, and their total building energy use by 20-30%, just by installing these marvels and yet don’t bother? Something doesn’t add up.
It’s not just this one technology or firm. As Stuart Muir of Resource Works recently observed:
“In May 2021, the International Energy Agency published its Net Zero by 2050 roadmap. The central finding: beyond projects already committed, no new oil and gas fields should be approved for development. The IEA reiterated this position in 2023. Its executive director, Fatih Birol, was celebrated in environmental circles as an ‘unexpected hero of the climate fight.’ That finding became the most consequential energy policy statement of the decade. It was cited in Parliament, in courtrooms, in regulatory proceedings, and in the lending committees of every major bank. It provided the intellectual scaffolding for pipeline cancellations, the withdrawal of project financing, and the regulatory paralysis that has kept Canadian resource development in a holding pattern for years.”
Yes, and what’s new? Well, just about everything. As he added, “On Thursday, Birol addressed a policy conference at Toronto’s Fairmont Royal York” and urged Canada to seize the “golden opportunity” furnished by the Iran War, Canada’s energy endowments and industry and our global reputation. But “Canada doesn’t have the luxury to be slow.” As Muir then commented:
“Asked what he has told the Canadian government, Birol was direct: develop the resources and secure new export destinations. The agency that told the world to stop investing in oil has now told Canada to start. This is a reversal of historic proportions.”
Right. And it focuses squarely on what works not what sounds good.
Likewise, Gina Pappano of InvestNow wrote in the Financial Post:
“Since 2022, my organization, InvestNow, has submitted shareholder proposals to the Big Five Canadian banks to resist these prosperity-destroying campaigns aimed at shutting down Canada’s oil and gas sector. We’ve asked them to commit to the Canadian oil and gas sector, rethink ‘Net Zero by 2050,’ study and report on net zero’s costs and quit the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ). Our consistent goal has been to prevent the banks from becoming complicit in schemes that undermine Canada’s energy sector and, by extension, the broader Canadian economy.”
Yes, and what’s new? Well, again, a great deal:
“Our labours have recently begun to see fruit. Beyond the banks’ new-found reticence on ideological questions, there’s the fact that after these AGMs, both RBC and Scotiabank announced they were abandoning their net-zero pledges for financed emissions.”
And why? Because instead of floating on a cloud of what they assumed was automatic prosperity, they’ve hit hard times and need to do things that actually are efficient. And Net Zero ain’t it.
Now the Canary Media story continues that the Department of Energy back in Biden’s glory days “launched a public-private partnership to bring next-generation heat pumps to market by 2027.” But instead of admitting that it means this whole thing is not a commercial success or indeed even for sale this year, they go ORANGE MAN BAD:
“Despite the Trump administration’s war on efficiency, the program looks to be on track. And Transaera is one of the participants.”
His war on efficiency? What a mean fool. But what they just said is that these marvellous cash-saving machina will be available in 2027 thanks to subsidies, not that they are available now thanks to the market. So there it hangs, just out of reach.
The story adds that:
“Noah Gabriel, project manager at the decarbonization nonprofit New Buildings Institute, called Amazon’s news ‘excellent.’ ‘Awareness of these technologies is still pretty low,’ said Gabriel. ‘Anything that’s expanding from pilot to scaling is going to be really helpful for the market.’”
Which is a marvellous exercise in having it both ways. First, the issue is “awareness”, the usual governments-are-smart-companies-are-stupid line we thought had gone out of fashion around the same time as sideburns, bellbottoms and platform shoes. Second, what we should really be aware of is that we’re still talking pilots not “scaling”, as in they can make it look good but not work commercially. And third, what’s going to be “helpful for the market” is if there were a market not just hype.
Speaking of which, another zealot (“Ankit Kalanki, who leads global initiatives to turbocharge cooling tech for clean energy think tank RMI and has worked with Transaera in the past”) says it will work great once it works:
“Transaera’s heat pump could be ‘a huge game-changer,’ Kalanki said. The more efficient electric tech gets, the more easily society can transition to 100% carbon-free energy on fewer solar, wind, and battery plants.”
Yeah. And the more wheels granny has, the more easily she’ll run on trolley tracks.
Again, we’re not saying it never works, let alone that we hope it never works. If heat pumps were more efficient than furnaces and AC units we’d install one and feel smug about the native flowers and bunnies into the bargain.
As so often, the trouble is that “if”.
