Research
The Heat Pump Readiness Index
Which American homes can switch to a heat pump, measured against the houses and fuel prices that exist today.
Written by HYRE HVAC Research Desk Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
The finding
Cheap natural gas, not cold weather, is the biggest barrier to heat pumps. Our index scores each state on two things: the share of homes with ducts, and the share where a heat pump at a seasonal COP of 3.0 costs less to run than today’s fuel.
Florida ranks first at 97.3; Alaska last at 38.7. A heat pump loses to gas in 30 of 51 jurisdictions.
What does the Heat Pump Readiness Index measure?
Two things: ductwork and running cost. Almost every published take on heat pump potential is a forecast built on shipments, modeled adoption curves or policy scenarios. This is not. It measures the homes that exist today against the prices of 2024, and it has exactly two parts.
Physical readiness is the share of homes with ductwork. A ducted home can take a central heat pump in place of its furnace and air conditioner in a single job, on a like-for-like basis, at a price the market already understands.
A home without ducts needs mini-splits: a different product, a different price, and a conversation most homeowners have never had. Nationally 82.0% of homes are ducted, but the range runs from 13.0% in Hawaii to 94.8% in Kansas.
Economic readiness is the share of heating homes for which a heat pump at a seasonal COP of 3.0 costs less to run than the fuel they burn now.
This is computed per fuel against each state’s own prices (see the breakeven COP by state), never assumed.
Electricity always loses to a heat pump, because a COP of 3 beats resistance heat’s COP of 1 by definition.
Gas, oil and propane are each tested against their own delivered price and their own equipment efficiency.
The index is the mean of the two, and that weighting is a judgment, not a physical constant. Both components are published in full in the table below so anyone who disagrees can reweight them and get a different ranking. We would rather be argued with on the record than be believed on authority.
What the index deliberately excludes: incentives, installation cost, installer availability, electrical panel capacity, and carbon. Each is real and each moves faster than the housing stock does.
An index that folded in a tax credit would be obsolete the year the credit changed, and this one is built to be rebuilt annually against the same URL.
Which heating fuels does a heat pump beat on running cost?
Is cold weather the barrier to heat pumps?
No. Most coverage assumes heat pumps are a southern technology fighting their way north against physics. The data does not support that. The clearest way to see it is to plot the index against heating degree days, a standard measure of how cold a place is.
The link is weak, and cold states appear across the whole range of the index. Cold is not irrelevant; modern cold-climate heat pumps keep most of their output at 5°F. It is just not what the index measures, and not what is stopping adoption.
Compare two cold states: Maine averages 7,060 heating degree days, one of the coldest states in the union, and ranks 24th. Michigan averages 6,385, 675 degree days milder, and ranks 40th.
The reason is entirely in what they burn. Maine heats with fuel oil (48.6% of homes) and propane (16.1%), both of which a heat pump beats comfortably, so its economic readiness is 81.0%.
Michigan heats with cheap natural gas and needs a seasonal COP of 5.18 to break even, which no air-source heat pump achieves. Its economic readiness is 20.7%.
HyreHVAC analysis: the two states have opposite problems, and neither problem is temperature.
Maine is economically ready and physically unready: only 49.9% of its homes have ducts, because oil-fired hot-water heat does not need them.
Michigan is physically ready and economically unready: 87.6% of its homes are ducted and a heat pump would drop straight in, but it would raise the heating bill.
The policy implication is that these two states need entirely different interventions, and a national program that treats them alike will work in neither.
Where do ductwork and running cost disagree?
In New England, Hawaii and the gas-heated Midwest. Averaging the two parts into one index is convenient but hides something, because a state can reach the same score from opposite directions. The chart shows where the two diverge most, and that gap is the part you can act on.
Economically ready, physically unready — Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and Hawaii. These states burn expensive fuel in homes with no ducts.
The heat pump pays from day one, and the product is a mini-split, not a central system.
Hawaii is the extreme case: 94.7% economic readiness against 13.0% physical, and 94.2% of its homes do not heat at all.
Physically ready, economically unready — Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Ducted housing stock, cheap gas. The equipment fits; the arithmetic does not.
Nothing an installer does changes this, and nothing a homeowner does either.
It moves when the price ratio moves, or when an incentive such as a heat pump rebate is large enough to bridge it.
New York is unready on both counts: 55.3% ducted and 37.6% economic, which is why it ranks 50th despite being one of the most aggressive electrification policy environments in the country. That gap between political ambition and stock readiness is, we would argue, the most important single number on this page.
How does every state rank on heat pump readiness?
| Rank | State | Index | Physical | Economic | HDD65 | Breakeven COP | Gas beaten? | Heat pumps today |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Florida | 97.3 | 94.7% | 100.0% | 405 | 1.61 | Yes | 32.4% |
| 2 | North Carolina | 97.0 | 93.9% | 100.0% | 2,843 | 2.49 | Yes | 38.7% |
| 3 | South Carolina | 96.8 | 93.6% | 100.0% | 2,154 | 2.43 | Yes | 41.7% |
| 4 | Utah | 96.6 | 93.2% | 100.0% | 5,368 | 2.68 | Yes | 1.9% |
| 5 | Kentucky | 96.5 | 93.0% | 100.0% | 4,088 | 2.71 | Yes | 22.9% |
| 6 | Arizona | 96.3 | 92.6% | 100.0% | 1,396 | 2.10 | Yes | 26.4% |
| 7 | Georgia | 96.2 | 92.4% | 100.0% | 2,260 | 2.24 | Yes | 27.3% |
| 8 | Mississippi | 96.0 | 92.1% | 100.0% | 1,881 | 2.51 | Yes | 29.6% |
| 9 | Virginia | 96.0 | 91.9% | 100.0% | 3,624 | 2.70 | Yes | 28.7% |
| 10 | Missouri | 95.2 | 90.3% | 100.0% | 4,507 | 2.21 | Yes | 10.5% |
| 11 | Texas | 95.2 | 90.4% | 100.0% | 1,522 | 2.40 | Yes | 19.8% |
| 12 | Oklahoma | 94.8 | 89.7% | 100.0% | 3,265 | 2.53 | Yes | 12.2% |
| 13 | Alabama | 94.5 | 89.0% | 100.0% | 2,102 | 2.35 | Yes | 39.2% |
| 14 | Louisiana | 94.2 | 88.4% | 100.0% | 1,222 | 2.07 | Yes | 21.1% |
| 15 | Nevada | 94.2 | 88.3% | 100.0% | 2,864 | 2.32 | Yes | 7.6% |
| 16 | Arkansas | 92.4 | 84.8% | 100.0% | 3,154 | 2.21 | Yes | 19.7% |
| 17 | West Virginia | 89.8 | 79.6% | 100.0% | 4,751 | 2.85 | Yes | 20.2% |
| 18 | Wyoming | 88.0 | 76.0% | 100.0% | 7,465 | 2.91 | Yes | 1.0% |
| 19 | Oregon | 84.0 | 68.0% | 100.0% | 4,637 | 2.70 | Yes | 14.6% |
| 20 | Washington | 79.4 | 58.8% | 100.0% | 4,793 | 2.70 | Yes | 13.1% |
| 21 | Tennessee | 78.8 | 92.7% | 64.8% | 3,369 | 3.34 | No | 35.5% |
| 22 | Delaware | 75.2 | 92.5% | 58.0% | 4,053 | 3.24 | No | 21.6% |
| 23 | Maryland | 70.6 | 91.2% | 50.0% | 3,958 | 3.19 | No | 19.7% |
| 24 | Maine | 65.5 | 49.9% | 81.0% | 7,060 | 3.70 | No | 4.4% |
| 25 | Connecticut | 65.1 | 66.7% | 63.5% | 5,189 | 4.93 | No | 1.7% |
| 26 | Vermont | 64.4 | 53.1% | 75.7% | 7,277 | 3.65 | No | 1.8% |
| 27 | Indiana | 64.2 | 94.2% | 34.1% | 5,186 | 4.49 | No | 6.8% |
| 28 | New Hampshire | 63.5 | 57.9% | 69.1% | 6,551 | 3.61 | No | 2.4% |
| 29 | North Dakota | 62.7 | 72.0% | 53.4% | 8,601 | 3.70 | No | 1.5% |
| 30 | South Dakota | 62.5 | 84.4% | 40.6% | 7,231 | 3.98 | No | 4.8% |
| 31 | Nebraska | 61.4 | 94.1% | 28.8% | 6,051 | 3.13 | No | 6.4% |
| 32 | Kansas | 61.1 | 94.8% | 27.4% | 4,707 | 3.11 | No | 6.0% |
| 33 | Ohio | 60.8 | 87.5% | 34.1% | 5,223 | 3.35 | No | 5.7% |
| 34 | Iowa | 60.2 | 91.6% | 28.9% | 6,527 | 3.75 | No | 4.6% |
| 35 | Pennsylvania | 59.4 | 72.4% | 46.4% | 5,140 | 3.77 | No | 8.4% |
| 36 | District of Columbia | 59.2 | 75.2% | 43.2% | 3,639 | 3.10 | No | 15.0% |
| 37 | Idaho | 57.5 | 80.3% | 34.8% | 6,048 | 3.91 | No | 2.8% |
| 38 | Massachusetts | 55.2 | 65.2% | 45.3% | 5,628 | 3.87 | No | 3.7% |
| 39 | Minnesota | 55.1 | 79.6% | 30.6% | 7,737 | 4.19 | No | 2.0% |
| 40 | Michigan | 54.2 | 87.6% | 20.7% | 6,385 | 5.18 | No | 1.9% |
| 41 | Wisconsin | 54.2 | 82.4% | 26.1% | 7,198 | 4.89 | No | 1.3% |
| 42 | Hawaii | 53.9 | 13.0% | 94.7% | 7 | 2.53 | Yes | 0.2% |
| 43 | Montana | 53.3 | 69.8% | 36.7% | 7,309 | 4.45 | No | 2.5% |
| 44 | Rhode Island | 53.1 | 60.1% | 46.2% | 5,287 | 3.82 | No | 2.8% |
| 45 | Illinois | 52.4 | 84.2% | 20.5% | 5,595 | 4.12 | No | 2.4% |
| 46 | Colorado | 51.6 | 81.9% | 21.3% | 5,777 | 4.07 | No | 1.3% |
| 47 | New Jersey | 50.1 | 76.0% | 24.2% | 4,516 | 4.23 | No | 2.9% |
| 48 | New Mexico | 48.9 | 78.7% | 19.2% | 4,097 | 4.53 | No | 4.8% |
| 49 | California | 48.5 | 73.7% | 23.3% | 1,654 | 4.82 | No | 4.2% |
| 50 | New York | 46.5 | 55.3% | 37.6% | 5,117 | 4.25 | No | 4.2% |
| 51 | Alaska | 38.7 | 36.9% | 40.4% | 10,948 | 6.11 | No | 0.2% |
The Heat Pump Readiness Index, 2024. Physical readiness is the share of homes with ductwork. Economic readiness is the share of heating homes whose current fuel costs more than a heat pump at a seasonal COP of 3.0.
"Heat pumps today" is the share of homes already heating with one, from RECS 2020. It is shown for context and is not a component of the index.
How is the index built?
EIA Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2020 public use microdata, 123,529,025 households represented. Ductwork is inferred from the presence of a central furnace, central heat pump or central air conditioner as main or secondary equipment. RECS has no direct "has ducts" variable, and this is the closest defensible proxy. Heating fuel is the FUELHEAT variable.
Average residential prices by state for 2024. Electricity from Form EIA-861, validated against EIA’s published state series across 357 state-years to within 0.005 cents per kilowatt-hour. Gas from EIA Natural Gas Navigator series N3010.
EIA weekly residential heating oil and propane prices, averaged over 2024 monthly observations. EIA publishes these by PADD region rather than by state, so each state takes its region’s price. This is a real approximation and is listed again under limitations.
1 kWh = 3,412 Btu. Natural gas 1.037 MMBtu per Mcf. Fuel oil 138,500 Btu per gallon, propane 91,452 Btu per gallon, all EIA’s own heat content factors. Furnace efficiencies: 95% gas, 85% oil, 95% propane. Heat pump seasonal COP of 3.0.
It is a realistic whole-season figure for a competent ducted installation in a mixed climate, not a nameplate rating at 47°F. Rating-point COPs are substantially higher and using one here would have flattered the result everywhere. A reader who wants a different assumption can read the breakeven COP column and apply their own.
Homes heating with wood (1.8% nationally) cannot be assessed: there is no delivered price for a cord a household may have cut itself.
Homes reporting no heating at all (4.7%) are removed entirely, because there is no incumbent running cost to beat.
Leaving them in scored Hawaii, where 94.2% of homes do not heat, as though its households had rejected heat pumps on price.
The index, every table cell and every mark on all three charts is generated by one script from the source files. Re-running the pipeline is the only way to change a number on this page.
What are the limits of the index?
Physical and economic readiness are weighted equally because we could not justify any other split, not because the evidence supports 50/50.
Both components are published; a reader who thinks ductwork matters more than price should reweight and will get a different ranking.
We would consider that a legitimate use of this page rather than a misuse of it.
Both electricity and gas prices are average revenue per unit sold, which includes fixed charges recovered volumetrically.
The rate that decides a real heating decision is the marginal one, and a household on a utility’s dedicated heat pump tariff can face something very different from its state average.
This is the largest single source of error in the economic component.
EIA does not publish these by state, so every state in a PADD region carries the same price. Within-region variation is real and is not captured. It matters most in New England, where oil is the dominant fuel and the index consequently rests on it.
RECS runs roughly every five years, so the ductwork and fuel shares predate the Inflation Reduction Act and four heating seasons. Fuel prices are 2024. Joining data of two different vintages is a compromise, and it is the reason this index describes readiness rather than adoption.
A house with ducts sized for a furnace often needs modification for a heat pump, which moves more air at a lower temperature. RECS cannot see duct condition, sizing or leakage.
Physical readiness as measured here is an upper bound on how many homes are truly drop-in ready; see ductwork installation for what a duct check involves.
A low-ranking state is not a state where heat pumps are a bad idea, and a high-ranking one is not a state where they are always right.
The index describes a stock and a price environment, not an individual house, and the running-cost case is only one input into a purchase that also involves cooling, equipment age, incentives and carbon.
Questions
What is the Heat Pump Readiness Index?
What is the biggest barrier to heat pump adoption in the US?
Why does Maine rank above Michigan when it is colder?
How many US homes already have ductwork?
Does the index account for tax credits and rebates?
Does a low ranking mean heat pumps do not work there?
Written and audited by
HYRE HVAC Research Desk
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a sales floor. We read the federal microdata file, the statute or the manufacturer data sheet ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify.
The counts below are generated from the published pages themselves, last counted September 28, 2026, and they are what we have actually published rather than what we intend to.
- 13
- studies published
- 12
- federal sources read and cited
- 8
- studies published with their full dataset as CSV
- 51
- jurisdictions reproduced against EIA’s own tables
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Federal data comes from the agency that collects it, in the file that agency publishes. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we download the source and compute the figure ourselves.
- We validate against the agency before we publish. First, we use each federal microdata file to reproduce the agency’s own published tables. Our cooling research reproduces EIA’s state estimates and standard errors for all 51 jurisdictions. That check caught a variance formula that was off by a factor of four.
- Every estimate carries its uncertainty. These are survey figures, not counts. Standard errors are computed from the replicate weights the federal file supplies and printed beside the estimate. An estimate too imprecise to publish is reported as such rather than printed.
- Nothing is typed by hand. Prose, tables and charts all read from one dataset built by script, so a number in a sentence and the same number in the table below it cannot disagree.
- We publish the data, not just the conclusion. 8 of our 13 studies offer the full computed table as a CSV download on the page, so you can check the analysis or disagree with it. A study without a row-level dataset gets no download link and claims none in its structured data.
- We correct in public. Where we have published a figure wrongly we fix the figure, rewrite any analysis that rested on it rather than patching the number underneath it, and leave a dated correction note on the page.
- We do not install or sell HVAC equipment, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favorable mention. Nobody buys a position on this site.
Data as of RECS 2020 microdata; EIA 2024 fuel prices. Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
The data behind this page
Every figure on this page is computed from one file, and that file is published here so the analysis can be checked, disagreed with, or reused.
Sources & retrieval dates
Your house, not your state
An index describes a stock. Whether a heat pump pays in one specific house comes down to your rates, your equipment and whether you have usable ducts.