Not true, heat pumps are widely used as primary heat sources in environments as cold or colder than NY, like in Montreal and other parts of Canada. The take that heat pump tech only works in very moderate temperatures is stale at this point.
1. Ground source heat pump -- which can work pretty much anywhere people live, but costs a lot more and people don't necessarily know about them.
2. Failover to resistive heating when it gets too cold outside. It's fine to do this in Montreal, because electricity is relatively inexpensive there. It's fine to do this in New York City, or even somewhere a little cooler like Boston, because you're doing it for max like 2 days a year even in an outlier year. Not sure if it's fine to do this in Buffalo.
As the owner of a 5 year old heat pump in a milder climate in Indiana, I can tell you this:
* When it is under 10°F, my heat pump switches to emergency heat... forced air electric and is very expensive to run. * Often the temperature swings are pretty wild... 40-50 degrees and that also can force emergency heat.
Oh, and since the electric company is usually using gas to generate the electricity, isn't the environmental impact somewhat of a wash?
Interesting reading: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-least-dependen...
However you need to look more at the average scenario to draw a complete picture. When your heat pump isn't in emergency heating then it's more efficient to burn the gas for electricity to power that heat pump than it is to burn the gas for heat (moving heat is substantially cheaper than making heat). So how often is your heat pump in regular heating vs. emergency heat? And then is it in emergency heating often enough to justify having a secondary piece of infrastructure to get gas to your house where you then also need a gas furnace which is more expensive than some resistive heat strips are?
This is something that can be improved.
