this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
35 points (97.3% liked)

Futurology

1888 readers
164 users here now

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I absolutely love heat pumps. They're great, massive efficiency and all that. The article says it works in 100-200 °C range which shows a lot of promise but that's not enough for a lot of use cases that are very energy intensive.

Clinker, the main CO2 emitter for cement creation and metals such as steel production require >400°C to produce as an example. If people figure out a way to clean up aluminium then we can potentially use a thermite reaction to create steel and there are already alternatives for clinker.

The real solution is a carbon tax which is going to be economically painful in the short to medium term and with the current economic situation there's not a lot of political will.

Heat pumps are a game changer for residential and low-temp industrial heat. Shit's going badly right now in the grand scheme of things but at least we're heading in the right direction.