What flipped
Heat pumps have outsold gas furnaces every year since 2021. A heat pump is an air conditioner that also runs backwards. Instead of burning something to make heat, it moves heat that already exists, pulling it out of cold outside air and putting it in the house. In summer it does the same thing in the other direction.
Heat pumps have led every year since 2021. Over 20 years their annual sales are up 70% while gas furnace sales are down 7%.
Show the numbers
| Heat pumps | 3.6 |
| Gas furnaces | 3.2 |
In the 12 months to March 2026, manufacturers shipped 3.6 million heat pumps in the United States and 3.2 million gas furnaces, a lead of 12%. Stretch the view to 20 years and annual heat pump sales are up 70% while gas furnace sales are down 7%.
Why sales flipped
Mostly because it is 1 box doing 2 jobs. If you are buying a machine to cool the house anyway, the version that also heats it costs a little more and replaces the furnace. In 2025, 47% of all air conditioners sold in the country were heat pumps, up from 33% a decade earlier. In October, November and December of 2025 they outsold one way air conditioners for the first time.
People are buying [heat pumps] solely for heat and getting air conditioning as a benefit.
Greg Asbaty, technical services manager for the mid Atlantic at Mitsubishi Electric Trane HVAC US. The square brackets are the outlet inserting the subject. Source 4.
Why the houses have not
These 2 do not add to 100 because oil, propane and wood heat the rest. Gas was 49% in 2010, so the fall is real but slow.
Show the numbers
| Electricity | 42 |
| Natural gas | 47 |
Homes change their heating far more slowly than sales change. In 2024, 47% of American homes still heated mainly with natural gas and 42% with electricity. Gas was 49% in 2010, so it is falling, slowly. The reason is simple. Nobody replaces a working furnace. It gets swapped when it breaks, which means the sales figures of today only show up in the housing stock years later.
The federal energy statistics agency credits 3 things for the shift, heat pumps that now work in colder places, people moving south and west where less heating is needed at all, and bans on gas connections in new buildings.
The cold weather question
The old objection to heat pumps was that they stop working when it gets properly cold. That is what the newer cold climate machines were built to answer, and the engineers who study them are blunt about it.
I can heat any building in the U.S. with a heat pump, with no backup and no problems today.
Ian Shapiro, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Syracuse University. Source 4.
One caution about all of these numbers. Heat pumps are taking a growing share of a market that keeps moving. Total space heating shipments fell about 20% in 2023, and combined air conditioner and heat pump shipments were down 3.5% over the first 4 months of 2026 even as heat pumps themselves rose 1.2%. The share is going one way. The volume is not.