Supporting Energy Efficiency and Accelerating Heat Pump Retrofits for American Homes. A program to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 11 percent, while creating 265,000 cleantech jobs by reducing energy usage in single-family homes. By Zachary Berzolla, Christoph Reinhart, John Reilly, Henry Jacoby, and Cassia Schuler.
Residential buildings account for approximately 22 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The 84 million detached single-family homes in America can be retrofitted with existing but under adopted building technologies to decrease energy use and eliminate on-site greenhouse gas
emissions by 2050, reducing the residential building contribution to national emissions by 85 percent. To achieve this goal, the Federal Government should support a nationwide program to increase the rate at which homes are retrofitted with clean, efficient electric heat pump heating and cooling and building efficiency packages, from 1 percent of homes annually today to 4 percent annually by 2031.