Another, rather scary scenario has caught Lowes’ attention. The Atlantic Meridional Circulation (AMC) is a system of ocean currents that helps distribute warm water from the southernmost areas of the Earth to the north. This has a major impact on the climate of North America and Europe, keeping these regions much warmer and wetter than they might otherwise be. The problem is that with global climate change, the AMC could collapse in just a few decades. Multiple studies have explored this possibility recently, including one published last yearwhich suggested that the AMOC collapse could begin to unfold as early as 2025, although that particular analysis indicated it might not actually begin until late in the century.
In such a scenario, the average temperature in Europe It could fall up to 8 degrees Celsius and, in North America, by as much as 3 degrees Celsius, according to a 2022 analysis by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That may not sound like much, but it would mean the coldest days could get significantly colder.
“It would be a very serious problem,” says Lowes. “It would have an impact.” It could mean that some heat pump installations designed for minimum outside temperatures of, say, -10 degrees Celsius would no longer be sufficient. “We may need to think about bigger heat pumps,” says Lowes. However, he adds that if the AMOC really did collapse, there would be much more serious problems to contend with in a country like the UK, where extreme cold is rare. Pipes frozen to the ground and roads becoming impassable during blizzards would likely present bigger headaches.
AMOC collapse aside, it’s worth noting that climate change is generally expected to make winters warmer, but the coldest days — in California, for example — will likely remain just as cold, says Duncan Callaway, a professor of energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley. “Extreme heat events are going to be more challenging,” he argues, emphasizing that cooling technologies will be in high demand. Air-to-air heat pumps differ from many competing technologies in that they can provide both heating and cooling.
It’s difficult to predict the exact shape that climate change will take in the coming years, but the general trends are fairly clear, including expectations that we will see greater variability and more extreme weather. This could have a knock-on effect on heat pumps as power grids begin to rely increasingly on renewable energy such as solar and wind.
For example, during brief periods of favorable weather, power surpluses may occur more frequently on grids. Grid operators must balance power generation with consumption to avoid blackouts, but heat pumps could be a useful tool here, says Johanna Mathieu, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan. “If we had more heat pumps, we could do that job better,” she says, explaining that in principle, heat pumps can be remotely controlled to use a little more energy than they otherwise would, which can help balance the grid. Mathieu and her colleagues have recently launched a project to do just that in about 100 Texas homes, though the results have not yet been published.
On a large scale, this could one day help grid operators manage surpluses, and homeowners could even receive payments or discounts on their electricity bills as an incentive for participating in load-balancing initiatives. Experiments of this kind, focusing on other household appliances such as washing machines and water heaters, They have already occurred on a large scale in the United Kingdom and other countries.One obstacle is that there is a wide range of thermostat and heat pump technologies, all with different software, and the infrastructure to control thousands of heat pumps remotely has not yet been implemented, Mathieu notes.
Despite the impact that high winds or extreme temperatures can have, climate change is unlikely to stop heat pumps from operating, Callaway insists; it is more a question of system design and what eventualities are anticipated. But it is worth thinking about climate change scenarios now, Bangheri stresses. Having some extra capacity or backup technologies could mean that a decarbonised heating system does not become vulnerable.