For several years now, heat pumps have outsold gas furnaces in the United States. Instead of burning fossil fuels to generate warmth, these appliances use electricity — ideally provided by renewable sources like wind and solar — to transfer heat from even frigid outdoor air into a home. Many states have recognized the power of these highly efficient devices for both reducing emissions and keeping people from burning toxic natural gas in their homes: In 2023, Maine hit its goal of installing 100,000 of them two years ahead of schedule, then went ahead and pledged to install 175,000 more by 2027.
Now, attention is turning toward industries that burn fossil fuels in boilers to process food, textiles, and a bevy of other goods. In addition to producing almost a quarter of the nation’s directly emitted greenhouse gases, the manufacturing sector loads the atmosphere with toxicants, including nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and PM 2.5 — particulate matter smaller than 2.5 millionths of a meter — which all cause extensive and severe health problems across the country.
The solution is the humble heat pump, albeit much larger versions than you’d get for your home. A new report from the American Lung Association finds that replacing 33,500 conventional, combustion-based boilers nationwide with this electric alternative could avoid 77,200 premature deaths, 33 million asthma attacks, and more than 200,000 new asthma cases by 2050. It would also save $1.1 trillion in health costs in that period, and prevent $351 billion in climate damages.
“A lot of people may not think about the role of industrial manufacturing in local air pollution, or in terms of climate change, but it can be a significant factor and cause real health harms,” said Will Barrett, assistant vice president for nationwide clean air policy at the American Lung Association. “By shifting to zero-emissions technologies that aren’t burning fuel — but they’re producing the same heat, steam, and boiling water that’s needed to fulfill these manufacturing needs — we can see these massive public health benefits.”
Industrial heat pumps work just like household units: By manipulating the pressure of refrigerants, they extract warmth from outdoor air and use that energy to heat something. Because heat pumps move heat instead of generating it, they’re several times more efficient than even the best gas furnaces. This report modeled the adoption of heat pumps that work in low- and medium-temperature industrial processes, like the production of beverages and paper — appliances that are already on the market.
The vast majority of the 33,500 conventional boilers burn natural gas, but some use biomass, oil, or coal — each of which generates its own cocktail of pollutants. Nitrogen oxides, for example, damage the respiratory system and aggravate conditions like asthma. Sulfur oxides also assault the lungs and react with other compounds in the atmosphere to form particulate matter. PM 2.5 can cause lung cancer and exacerbate conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. “That is a widespread and deadly pollutant that can bypass our body’s defenses — the particles are so small they can get deep into your lungs and actually pass into the bloodstream,” Barrett said. “From there, they can impact heart function, contribute to stroke, and a whole host of other consequences.”
When nitrogen oxides mix into the atmosphere, they also form ozone. “It’s a colorless, odorless, corrosive gas that sometimes we explain as having the same effect as a sunburn on the skin, but picture that in your airways,” Barrett said. “It creates inflammation, contributes to wheezing and coughing, shortness of breath, tightness of your chest, and can trigger asthma attacks.”
Worse still, warmer temperatures naturally produce more ozone, which combines with what’s produced by industrial pollution. At the same time, these operations are spewing greenhouse gases, which leads to more warming, and more ozone formation, and on and on. Add to that the fact that wildfires are worsening as the planet warms, spewing smoke that’s loaded with PM 2.5 but also forms still more ozone as it moves through the atmosphere. (Last week, scientists estimated that the massive blazes in Los Angeles in January may have killed 15 times as many people as the official tally, considering the deaths that may have been due to smoke inhalation but weren’t recognized as such.)
So industrial air pollution isn’t happening in a vacuum — it’s joining an atmosphere crowded with toxicants from many other sources. But unlike struggling to fight wildfires that are growing more intense and massive by the year, a factory can just swap a heat pump for its fossil-fuel boiler. That would bring long-term atmospheric relief, and immediate relief to the surrounding community: The lower-income neighborhoods where these operations often sit suffer from much higher burdens of pollution than more affluent neighborhoods.
All told, the report found that adopting industrial heat pumps would mean the country could avoid 13 million lost school days and 3.4 million lost work days, as clearer air results in fewer asthma attacks and other health problems. “My usual angle for heat pumps is always about the climate benefit — which is there, of course, and is a big part of the conversation,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at the Columbia Business School, who wasn’t involved in the report. “I think the big surprise, in many ways, is how big the health benefits truly are.”
Like any technology, heat pumps are getting cheaper and more efficient as adoption increases. While this modeling looked at devices for low- and medium-temperature processes, it did not include those for high-temperature processes, which are still developing. Those would cut pollution and emissions even further. “The technology is absolutely not new. But its efficacy, its uptake, its market readiness, is definitely emerging,” said Andrew Hoffmeister, a senior research analyst in the industrial program at the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, which wasn’t involved in the research. “And that’s where the momentum is building.”
Now it’s just a matter of keeping that momentum going. Several states, including New York, California, and Colorado, have provided funding for industries to adopt heat pumps, Hoffmeister said, and others could provide still more. Paired with stricter air-quality laws, that could incentivize more facilities to make the switch. “The potential of the technology can’t be understated,” Hoffmeister said. “It’s not some sexy, silver-bullet solution that’s just been developed and is going to solve everything. It’s a robust, well-documented technology.”
