Business
Should You Get a Heat Pump? Take Our 2-Question Quiz.
Heat pumps are the future of home heating. They’re essentially two-way air-conditioners that use electricity to heat in the winter — as well as cool in the summer — and are typically far more efficient than other systems. They reduce household greenhouse gas emissions significantly.
They may also save you money on your monthly bills if you own a home. Answer just two questions below and we’ll give you a rough estimate:
What do you heat with currently?
Where do you live?
Answer the two questions and we’ll see how much you can save. Or, keep reading.
Don’t know what a heat pump is? You may already have seen one. It looks a lot like a typical air-conditioner, with a big box that sits just outside a house; inside, you might see small boxes mounted to the wall, or a single large indoor unit, out of sight, connected to vents.
In winter, heat pumps transfer heat from outside to inside. (Even in very cold temperatures, it’s still possible to extract heat from the air outside.) In summer, they do the opposite.
Because of how efficiently they do this, heat pumps are a critical piece of the green energy transition: One estimate suggests putting a heat pump in every home could reduce U.S. emissions by 5 to 9 percent.
They’re expensive to install but often qualify for subsidies. And they can save some homeowners hundreds or thousands of dollars each year by lowering their utility bills, for both heating and cooling.
But that’s not yet true for everyone, everywhere.
Share of households that would…
These numbers, and the information in the quiz above, come from a New York Times analysis that combines data on fuel and electricity costs around the country with estimates of how much energy it takes to heat many different kinds of houses, from research done by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
More than 80 percent of U.S. households would probably see their bills go down if they installed a heat pump.
But the rest would probably end up with higher bills — mostly people who use natural gas right now, given its low cost.
Nearly all households heating with propane, fuel oil or older electric forms of heating would save money by switching to a heat pump, but only about two-thirds of those currently on natural gas would.
How you currently heat is one major factor in your potential savings; the others are where you live and how the cost of electricity compares with other fuels in your area.
For households that currently heat with expensive fuels like propane and fuel oil, a heat pump is almost always a good bet. This is why Maine, which relies on fuel oil, has become a big adopter.
And a heat pump is significantly more efficient than electric furnaces or baseboards. The savings are biggest in the parts of the country that stay colder, longer. But there’s money to be saved in the South, too, in both the mild winters and the hot summers: South Carolina and Florida have some of the current highest rates of heat pump usage.
For households that currently heat with less expensive natural gas, however, the financial picture is much more mixed. Whether you save — or lose — depends heavily on your geography. And the savings are often smaller.
In the South, electricity is relatively cheap, and temperatures are mild. That makes switching from natural gas to a heat pump an easier sell. Modern heat pumps work in very cold temperatures, but they operate at their highest efficiency during mild weather.
In colder parts of the country, heat pumps are somewhat less efficient. They also give you central cooling, which can raise prices in the summer if you relied on fans before.
But the biggest problem in the North isn’t the weather — it’s the difference between the cost of electricity and the cost of gas.
On average, a heat pump is three to four times as efficient as a natural gas furnace. That means if electricity is only twice as expensive as natural gas for the same amount of energy, a heat pump is a good deal — as is the case in Georgia. But when electricity is five times as expensive as gas, as in Michigan, it’s a much harder sell.
Ratio of electricity to natural gas cost, for the same amount of energy
These are just averages, and other factors will influence your actual financial picture. For one, prices for both electricity and gas vary a lot within states. Rates in some places can also change depending on the time of day or the season, and some utilities offer lower rates specifically for heat pump customers. We also can’t know exactly how prices will rise or fall next year — we can only make guesses based on previous years’ costs.
Your choice should also take into account how well insulated your house is; whether you have solar panels; the efficiency level of the heat pump you’re considering; and whether you keep your boiler or furnace as a backup in colder temperatures, known as a “dual fuel” setup. Many households even in colder parts of the country, with high electricity costs, could still see savings from a heat pump. These are all things our calculations can’t help you with. The only way to be certain is to ask a contractor. (Ideally more than one.)
How long you’re going to stay in your house is important too: Heat pumps have high upfront costs, sometimes twice as much as that of a new gas furnace. Many states and utilities offer rebates to help: Massachusetts homeowners can get $10,000. (Republicans in Congress ended a federal tax credit that gave $2,000 or more toward a heat pump installation, though heat pumps installed this year still qualify.)
And if you already have central air for cooling, a heat pump is more likely to make financial sense. Installing one may be more expensive than replacing your furnace — or your central air-conditioning — but it can be cheaper than replacing both.
Despite their price tags, heat pumps have outsold furnaces for three years running, according to data from the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute.
Heating units sold in the U.S.
Meanwhile, summers are getting hotter. If you don’t have central air yet, you might want it at some point.
And if you’re thinking about climate change in addition to your finances, switching to a heat pump will cut most houses’ carbon emissions significantly.
Median household emissions reduction from installing a heat pump
In some very cold places, the emission reductions are huge: The median house in Minnesota could emit around five fewer tons of carbon each year by switching to a high-efficiency heat pump, according to modeled data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That’s a greater reduction than if you went car-free for a year (if you drive a gas car). And it’s around one-third of the average U.S. resident’s greenhouse gas emissions in a year.
Paradoxically, some of the places where a heat pump could slash emissions the most — including parts of the Northeast and Midwest — are the places where it could be a financial detriment right now. Still, for some, paying a little extra to reduce their carbon footprint might be worth it.
About the data
Cost calculations use a 2024 dataset from ResStock, a model of the U.S. housing stock by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). ResStock contains estimates of the amount of energy it would take to heat and cool houses with an original heating source and with a heat pump. Houses that currently have a heat pump were excluded.
The dataset includes homes that did not have central cooling before the heat pump, which raises costs after the transition. It also relies on weather data collected from 1991 to 2005.
For electricity and natural gas prices, the Upshot used 2023 state-level sales, revenue and customer data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and prior NREL research to calculate the cost per unit of energy. For propane and heating oil, the Upshot used EIA data from 2023 on state-by-state prices, or a national average if data was missing.
The Upshot assigned a basic Energy Star heat pump (SEER2 15.2, HSPF2 7.8) to houses in warmer climates and a higher-efficiency cold climate heat pump (SEER2 19, HSP2 9.8) to colder areas. Both have supplemental electric heating.
For county-level results, the Upshot used county-only data when there were at least 50 houses using that fuel in that county, and state-level medians when there were fewer.
Business
Commentary: Trump wants to let companies make fewer disclosures, thus keeping investors in the dark
Trump’s SEC is considering eliminating the mandate for quarterly corporate financial reports, but even some big investors call it a lousy idea.
This being the “information age,” it would be understandable if investors sometimes feel inundated with too much information to wade through about the stocks in their mutual fund portfolios.
The Securities and Exchange Commission, bowing like a puppy to the urgings of President Trump, is considering exactly the wrong solution to this supposed burden. It’s proposing to allow public companies to give their investors less information, as though that’s a good thing.
On May 8, the SEC proposed rescinding its mandate that public companies report financial results on a quarterly schedule. Instead, it suggests, semiannual and annual reports should suffice.
This takes an already-unlevel playing field where Main Street investors are already disadvantaged, and makes it more unlevel.
— Dennis Kelleher, Better Markets
The SEC left its proposal open for public comment for 60 days, meaning the window closed Monday. By then, the agency had received more than 68,000 comments, according to a tracker posted online by accounting professor Tzachi Zach of Ohio State.
Almost 99.9% of the comments were negative. Several organizations of institutional investors and auditing professionals, as well as a tsunami of individual investors, expressed opposition.
A similar initiative the SEC aired in 2018, during Trump’s first term, received an overwhelmingly negative response and was eventually dropped.
The tide of opposition coming from individual investors shouldn’t be surprising. “Taking away basic quarterly information means investors are blind for six months at a time,” says Dennis Kelleher, co-founder and chief executive of the investor advocacy nonprofit Better Markets.
That’s especially true for small investors, though perhaps not so much for major institutions, insiders or deep-pocketed individuals. “If you’re a big dog, you’ll get the information anyway,” Kelleher told me. “And insiders, who are trading in their own stock all the time, will have the information. This takes an already-unlevel playing field where Main Street investors are already disadvantaged, and makes it more unlevel.”
Trump set off the latest initiative with a social media post on Sept. 15, advocating the move to a six-month reporting schedule. It read, in part, “This will save money, and allow managers to focus on properly running their companies. Did you ever hear the statement that, ‘China has a 50 to 100 year view on management of a company, whereas we run our companies on a quarterly basis???’ Not good!!!”
As was usual with Trump, his argument was a string of uninformed and irrelevant non sequiturs.
It’s doubtful that eliminating quarterly reports will save much, if any, money. Most 10-Qs are cookie cutter documents disclosing financial figures already embedded in corporate records.
The idea that managers would become empowered to “focus on properly running their companies” if only they were relieved of the burden of preparing a report every three months is just malarkey: Any CEOs who feel the impulse to drop everything and involve themselves in what is essentially an automated process can’t be very good at their jobs.
As for China’s “50 to 100 year view on management of a company,” what would that even mean, even if it were true? China doesn’t operate on a 50 to 100 year corporate horizon, but rather on a string of five-year plans. The most recent of these was adopted by the government in March, covers the period up to 2030, and is its 15th in a row.
Despite the flaws in Trump’s arguments, Trump’s SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, a former corporate lawyer and securities industry consultant, fell into line. Within a few days of Trump’s post, he showed up on CNBC to minimize the potential effect of the change. Private companies rely on semiannual reports, after all, he noted, although the idea of taking private companies as models for publicly traded corporations might not strike experienced investors as the wisest thing.
Atkins cited an enduring chestnut, for which there’s no evidence, that quarterly reporting is responsible for “short-term thinking” in corporate suites (though he admitted that his evidence was “anecdotal”). And he suggested that small investors have ample access to corporate information even without quarterly reports — why, he said, they can just tune in to CNBC!
“To propose change in what our rules are now would be a good way forward,” he said. “So I welcome the president’s putting this up for discussion.”
Something more insidious undergirds the SEC’s proposal than its immediate effect on corporate behavior. The agency rationalizes its proposal as seeking “a tradeoff between reducing regulatory burdens … and promoting efficient financial markets through timely disclosure.”
The problem here, Kelleher points out, is that “reducing regulatory burdens” isn’t part of the SEC’s mission in any way, shape or form. It’s a regulatory agency, and its mission since its founding in 1934 has been to protect investors, not to make things fluffier for stock issuers.
The history of financial disclosure in the U.S. shows a long-term trend favoring more disclosure, not less. In the 1880s, quarterly reporting by railroads and other transportation companies were common.
Early on, pressure for more frequent disclosure came not from government regulators, who barely existed before 1934, but from investors. The reporting of quarterly earnings, notes corporate finance expert Owen Lamont of Acadian Asset Management, was “a bottom-up historical phenomenon reflecting voluntary arrangements between firms and investors, not a top-down phenomenon imposed by law.”
By 1931, according to financial historians, 63% of New York Stock Exchange-listed firms were publishing their quarterly earnings. The Big Board mandated that frequency for most listed companies in 1939. The SEC mandated semiannual reports in 1955 and quarterly reports, as Atkins said, in 1970.
The evidence in favor of dropping the quarterly reports is uniformly thin. Some advocates cite a 2018 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett that was headlined “Short-Termism Is Harming the Economy.”
Couple of points about this: First, the target of Dimon and Buffett wasn’t quarterly financial reporting, but quarterly earnings guidance — that is, the practice of some top executives who project their earnings into the future. (This guidance usually comes at the same time they issue their SEC disclosures.)
It’s guidance, they wrote, that is “a major driver” of short-termism in corporate behavior. That’s because management is giving itself a target it feels obligated to meet, even if factors outside its control interfere with the quest.
Furthermore, Dimon and Buffett wrote, “Our views on quarterly earnings forecasts should not be misconstrued as opposition to quarterly and annual reporting.” They called transparency about financial and operating results “an essential aspect of U.S. public markets … so that the public, including shareholders and other stakeholders, can reliably assess real progress.”
Individual investors may be unmoved by the SEC’s proposal because — let’s be candid — how many of them read quarterly earnings reports, anyway? But that’s unimportant, Kelleher says, because other market participants are reading them. “So that information is in the marketplace, and that’s what actually enables price discovery, so stock prices roughly reflect what’s going on at a company, most of the time.”
More to the point, the quarterly reports reflect the highest-quality, detailed information, the information the SEC requires executives to disclose on pain of facing a civil lawsuit from the agency or even criminal liability for faking data. “Main Street investors, whether they read quarterly reports or not, are the real beneficiaries,” Kelleher says.
That’s so. The bottom line is that quarterly financial reporting helps investors. It doesn’t promote short-term behavior and its costs, modest as they are, don’t outweigh its benefits.
Over the decades, scandal-ridden corporations have hidden fraudulent behavior in the interstices between mandated disclosures—think Enron, WorldCom and Tyco, among others. Why give any corporation, even an honest one, the opportunity to disclose less?
The luxury shopping center in Pacific Palisades will reopen next month after more than $100 million in renovations forced by the January 2025 wildfire that devastated the Los Angeles neighborhood.
Palisades Village will reopen Aug. 15, owner Rick Caruso announced Wednesday. The outdoor center survived the blaze that destroyed homes and other businesses but needed refurbishment to eliminate contaminants that the fire could have spread.
Crews are putting finishing touches on mall buildings after tearing them down to the studs, treating the wood and rebuilding the walls, Caruso said.
“Everybody’s working, and stores are moving their products in,” he said. “It’s a really cool feeling that people have really locked arms and are working together.”
An electrician installs lighting for a restaurant at Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village on Thursday. The shopping center is scheduled to reopen mid-August.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Pacific Palisades resident Allison Polhill, who is rebuilding the home of 30 years that her family lost in the blaze, said she is “thrilled” at the prospect of returning to the mall she used to frequent. Its comeback is a boost for the community, she said.
“Every single step that we make to reopen our commercial corridors is going to bring more people back into the Palisades,” said Polhill, who expects to move back into her home at the end of August.
A total of 6,822 structures were destroyed in the Palisades fire, including more than 5,500 residences and 100 commercial businesses, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Caruso previously attributed the mall’s survival to the hard work of private firefighters and the fire-resistant materials used in the mall’s construction.
The $200-million shopping and dining center opened in 2018 with a movie theater and a roster of upmarket tenants, including Erewhon, which may be the only grocer in the heart of the fire-ravaged neighborhood when it opens.
Caruso’s company was able to fill the mall with tenants despite the long shutdown.
Palisades Village is 99% leased, with the majority of tenants returning, said Jackie Levy, chief financial and revenue officer. Nearly one-third of the shops and restaurants are new to the property.
A firefighter carries a hose back to his rig while walking through a destroyed home from the Palisades fire in Pacific Palisades on Jan. 7, 2025.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Last year, Pacific Palisades-based fashion designer Elyse Walker said she would reopen her eponymous store in Palisades Village after losing her 25-year flagship location on Antioch Street to the inferno.
Other neighborhood shops destroyed in the fire that are reopening at the mall include K Bakery and Loomey’s Toys, which caters to children up to age 12 and used to be across the street from Palisades Elementary Charter School.
“It’s been a journey and I’m excited because I wasn’t sure that there was going to be a place to come back to,” said toy store owner Amanda Rastegar. “Hopefully we can bring some of that magic back.”
Rastegar’s home in the Palisades survived but was damaged by the fire. The family returned about eight weeks ago. Her last memory of the fire was a burning supermarket.
“I just couldn’t wrap my brain around what was happening,” she said. “By the time I left, Gelson’s was on fire.”
Among the returning tenants is Angelini Ristorante & Bar. Well-known Los Angeles chef Gino Angelini said he will be in the kitchen next month for a return of the Italian restaurant.
“We won’t do a big celebrity open,” he said. “We want to have a very soft opening and see our customers come back.”
Construction takes place at Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village on Thursday. The shopping center is scheduled to reopen mid-August.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
An elaborate celebration would not feel “correct for me,” Angelini said, because the devastation has been “very sad” for so many.
Other new tenants include local chef Nancy Silverton, who has agreed to move in with a new Italian steakhouse called Spacca Tutto. Women’s activewear retailer LESET will open its first West Coast location.
Caruso said he is optimistic that customers will return to the center, even though many Pacific Palisades residents are still dispersed. One tracking system estimated that about 30% of the Village’s customer base was impacted by the fire, he said.
“That means 70% did not get impacted, so there’s a lot of customers still left out there,” Caruso said. Historically, the center drew customers from as far away as Beverly Hills and Calabasas, as well as Malibu, Brentwood and Santa Monica.
He also hopes many will be inspired to visit the revived mall.
“I believe in the goodness of people and I believe that people are going to want to support the Palisades,” he said. “They’re going to want to be there and support the businesses that have had the courage and the heart to reopen.”
Walmart is rapidly expanding its network of electric vehicle chargers designed for customers to use while they shop.
The network could help fill gaps in EV infrastructure in states with greater need for chargers. Walmart, which has more than 5,000 locations in the U.S. and hundreds in California, says more than 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of one of its stores.
The chargers also offer an incentive for customers to choose Walmart — Walmart Plus members will receive a 10% discount off an average price of $0.46 per kilowatt-hour of energy at the company’s chargers.
Walmart chargers are already available at more than 75 locations in 17 states, with Texas boasting the most charging stations, followed by Florida and Arizona.
Matthew Nelson, Walmart’s director of energy policy, said last week on LinkedIn that the network will soon reach 29 states, including California.
“We are delivering on the promise of affordable, reliable and convenient charging,” Nelson said in his post.
According to Walmart’s website, six charging stations are coming to California soon, though the company did not offer a specific timeline.
The chargers will be installed at stores in Antelope, Brea, Fresno, Stockton, Suisun City and Vallejo.
Most charging sites in California will include eight to 16 fast-charging stalls, said Walmart spokesperson Kelsey Bohl.
The company first announced plans in April 2023 to install its own EV chargers at Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, with a goal of installing thousands of chargers by 2030. Partnering with ABB E-Mobility and Alpitronic, it added 25 new charging sites this past May and six more in June.
“Walmart is building a leading retail-integrated EV fast-charging network, focused on delivering an affordable, reliable and convenient charging experience where customers already shop,” Bohl said in an emailed statement. “Customers can charge while they shop, access stations through the Walmart app they already use, and benefit from affordable pricing.”
The charging stations already available include 612 individual charging stalls using 400-kilowatt chargers. Each stall has a dual charging cord with both Combined Charging System and North American Charging Standard connectors. The standard connectors, designed by Tesla, are smaller and lighter than the combined systems.
The primary way to pay for the chargers is through the Walmart app, but the company is also experimenting with built-in credit card readers to allow those without the app to use the stations.
Customers can check charger availability on the Walmart app. The company said the chargers will be available 24 hours a day.
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