Comment by bfeynman

After really looking into this for my own home, I think there is some marketing BS involved. "Efficiency" is an inflated metric, it gets to a certain temperature a heat pump is going to be the equivalent of electric heat, purely expending energy to heat things up. Additionally, they have to be constantly on and cycling so they don't break the colder it gets. A gas furnace can be fired up almost in any temperature and is still very efficient. Not to mention that efficiency doesn't really tie to how exorbitantly expensive it is to run heat pumps, you're looking at +$500-800 month in extra electricity costs in some places.