Electric heat pumps: A green and energy-efficient way to keep your house warm [Video]

LOS ANGELES (KABC) — American homes and businesses that burn natural gas to heat water or living space generate almost a tenth of all US emissions.

The solution for lowering that footprint can be found in technology almost a century old but getting more efficient every day: The electric heat pump.

“Heat pumps have certainly arrived,” says Friday Apaliski, communications director for the nonprofit Building Decarbonization Coalition.

Anyone with a refrigerator has a heat pump in their home. A liquid refrigerant cools the air inside and the warm air you feel on your feet. Electric heating, ventilation and air conditioning, or HVAC system can work in reverse, pumping that warm air inside during the winter and providing consistent temperatures year round.

“A heat pump is going to deliver to you the correct temperature of air all the time. So you’re not oscillating between really hot and really cold and really hot and really cold. You instead have …