alt Hacker NewsWe do have quite a similar discussion here in Germany.
Back in the day, everyone used fossil fuels to heat their homes. Back in those days, AC was frowned upon as inefficient, wasteful and decadent. Something only Americans did. The greens despised them for ecological reasons. The right despised them for moral reasons.
Then the public came to know about climate change and it was decided that people should transition to using heat pumps for heating their homes. Because heat pumps are efficient, green and a necessary sacrifice of money you have to do to combat climate change.
Now with this year's heat wave, suddenly there was a discussion even among the greens about having AC in buildings as a necessary adaptation to rising temperatures. And demands by the right to get rid of the AC stigma and deploy AC everywhere. And back in the corner, there were experts laughing out loud, because a heat pump is just an "evil" AC running in reverse. Has been all along. The only problem is that usually heat pumps were deployed in such a way that you couldn't use them to cool in the summer...
Which imho goes to show that the public urgently needs more scientific and technical literacy.
> because a heat pump is just an "evil" AC running in reverse
I keep hearing that, and then I keep hearing people tell me that you can't just put an heat pump, run it in "reverse" and "pretend" to have AC. That seems to be a case where the theory is here, but in practice the applicances are just optimized for one part, or the other.
(Also, heating is often done by heating water in radiators, and cooling by cooling the air.
It may seems stupid, but I still can fathom whether the same applicance can do both ! Or, if I want to do the right thing, and replace both my no-very-old gas boiler AND my pretty-old AC, can I put a single heat pump ?)