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Oregon has made heat pumps the default appliance for cooling new homes.
Last month, the state Building Code Division’s Residential and Manufactured Structures Board voted 7–1 to adopt energy-efficiency standards that encourage builders equipping new homes with air conditioning to use dual-purpose heat pumps instead of conventional central ACs.
The rules could ultimately boost statewide adoption of electric heat pumps, a tech that provides not only cooling but emissions-free heating, too. Heat pumps are 200% to 400% as efficient as conventional gas furnaces, and using them to heat homes is often cheaper than using fossil-fueled appliances.
“The code update is an upgrade in both comfort and affordability,” Eleanor Ponomareff, city council president of Talent, Oregon, said in a statement. “The increased energy savings for new construction will benefit every Oregonian who moves into one of these new homes for years to come.”
Oregon has ushered in the new rules as the Trump administration and Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives try to undo or undermine efficiency efforts meant to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and lower energy costs for Americans.
In January, the U.S. Department of Justice sued to block two California cities’ bans on gas hookups in new construction. Last week, the House passed a bill that would limit the Department of Energy’s authority to set energy conservation standards for household appliances. The chamber then green-lit another bill to repeal programs created under the Biden administration to spur broader adoption of heat pumps and energy-saving measures.
Meanwhile, momentum for state and local building standards that embrace electrification with heat pumps is growing across the U.S., according to Ted Tiffany, senior technical lead of the nonprofit Building Decarbonization Coalition. “Today, approximately 25% of the country lives in a jurisdiction that either requires or encourages zero-emission buildings,” he said.
In Oregon in particular, local climate laws and commitments helped set the stage for the new rules, according to David Heslam, executive director of the nonprofit Earth Advantage.
Under state law, standards for new residential buildings need to reduce energy use by at least 60% from the 2005 standards by 2030. Heat pumps will help the state get there, per the Oregon Department of Energy in a letter of support for the rules, which will be phased in starting this October.
In Oregon, where utility rates for more than 1.4 million customers have jumped by about 50% since 2020, the latest building code will reduce the energy use of a typical 2,500-square-foot home by 27% compared with the 2023 version of the code. That cut will result in a savings of $171 per year, the Building Code Division estimates.
To be fair, energy-slashing approaches required under the new standards are expected to increase the cost of building a new residence. But, for that typical 2,500-square-foot structure, the bill savings they generate would allow them to pay for themselves in about 15 years.
This estimate assumes that relevant costs stay fixed. If heat pumps continue to get cheaper and more efficient, or if piped gas prices continue to grow faster than electricity prices, the savings could be even greater.
Oregon building code staff pointed out before the board voted at the Feb. 18 meeting that the new rules aren’t a mandate to adopt heat pumps. They don’t require all homes to have air conditioning — and thus to put in the clean-heat tech. Developers can moreover choose to install gas furnaces with ducted AC units, so long as they meet the updated efficiency standards, which are measured by energy-use intensity.
“But it’s going to cost more to build that home [to comply with the code] because heat pumps are so much more efficient,” said Jonny Kocher, building regulations lead at think tank RMI.
Under the updated rules, heat pumps also don’t need to be sized to cover a home’s total heating demand but rather its typically smaller cooling load. A fossil-fuel furnace could still be used as a backup heating source, for instance.
With its latest building standards, Oregon joins California, Colorado, New York, and Washington in encouraging superefficient heat pumps in new homes. (New York has delayed enforcement of its all-electric buildings code while the law mandating it is in litigation.)
Energy-efficiency standards that encourage heat pumps appear to be working, Kocher noted. For example, the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance found that when Washington moved from its 2015 code to the stronger 2018 code, permits for electric space heating in single-family homes rose from 20% to a whopping 88%, with heat pumps accounting for 81% of those permits.
The three West Coast states are “building a market for heat pumps,” which could ultimately help drive costs down, Kocher said.
Still, states could push their regulations further, he noted. Most of these efficiency efforts have focused only on new construction, even though major renovations and additions also fall under building codes’ purview.
There’s one notable example that could prove instructive: When California updated its energy-efficiency standards in 2024, it was the first in the nation to include a provision that commercial building owners replace broken ACs with heat pumps. The state stopped short of extending that concept to homes, but at least 13 California cities have since adopted such rules.
Washington state could be the first to encourage ACs to be replaced with heat pumps in existing buildings when it votes on its code update later this year, according to Kocher.
Developers often don’t have an incentive to install efficient equipment in homes; they’re not the ones paying its energy bills, he noted. But building standards help redress the imbalance, reducing health- and planet-harming pollution — and saving residents money in the long run.
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