What are the most efficient home heating options?
The most efficient home heating option is to make sure your home is as well insulated and air-sealed as possible to prevent heat escape, and to use as efficient, cheap, or low-carbon a source of energy as possible. Let’s assume you already know how important proper sealing and insulation is, and that you’re going to take care of that no matter what. What are the most efficient home heating choices, in terms of new systems you can install? Here are the main choices, from most efficient home heating system, to least efficient: • Solar heating • Geothermal heating • Wood heating • Heat pump (non-geothermal) • Natural gas heating • Oil heating • Electric heating Note that when we talk about the most efficient home heating choices, we could be talking about efficiency from the point of view of financial cost, environmental cost (greenhouse gas emissions plus other pollutants), or the efficiency of conversion of the original energy source into heat inside your home. For financial cost we can
