Across hospitals, airports, schools and other multi-use facilities, expectations around energy performance and decarbonization continue to rise. Owners and operators face mounting pressure to reduce emissions, meet regulatory mandates and deliver resilient systems, all without compromising comfort or reliability. Heat pump technologies have emerged as one of the most viable pathways to meeting these goals at scale, delivering reliable heating and cooling while improving efficiency and reducing carbon emissions compared to traditional boilers. 

Why heat pumps now?

The urgency is clear. Buildings account for nearly 40% of global carbon emissions, and institutional facilities such as airports, hospitals and schools are among the most energy-intensive. Regulatory frameworks are tightening, and stakeholders are increasingly demand climate leadership. Heat pumps offer a route to electrification, enabling facilities to move away from fossil fuels without sacrificing performance.

Unlike combustion-based systems, heat pumps transfer heat rather than generate it. This simple principle unlocks dramatic efficiency gains and positions heat pumps as a cornerstone of sustainable infrastructure. For environments with continuous operational loads, like in hospitals and airports, heat pumps can help balance simultaneous heating and cooling demands, effectively stabilizing system performance and reducing energy use. Their ability to modulate in real-time to heating and cooling needs ensures equipment is not over- or under-performing, improving both comfort and lifecycle efficiency.

Heat pumps deliver measurable benefits:

• Energy efficiency. By moving heat instead of creating it, heat pumps achieve efficiencies of 300% or more compared to boilers.  While balancing simultaneous heating and cooling loads, efficiencies of up to 700% can be achieved.
• Lifecycle savings. Lower energy use translates to reduced operating costs, offsetting initial investment over time.

At Portland International Airport, a groundwater heat pump, set to be operational in 2026, will provide 90% fossil fuel-free heating, resulting in high-efficiency thermal comfort while minimizing carbon output. Large transportation hubs and other facilities that operate 24/7 can often take advantage of balancing simultaneously heating and cooling loads and see a quick payback on the capital costs of implementing heat pumps. 

Hospitals, too, stand to benefit. Heat pumps can recover energy (heat) from sterilization processes, IT cooling and food preparation and repurpose it for pre-heating ventilation or domestic water, turning waste heat into a resource. Recovering and reusing even a fraction of the energy from these high-energy-use building results in huge savings.

Barriers to adoption

Despite these advantages, challenges remain for the mass adoption of heat pump technology. Financially, high upfront capital costs mean that even with attractive lifecycle economics, the initial investment for commercial heat-pump systems remains a barrier for many building owners.

As with any new technology, a lack of market knowledge and technical familiarity can bar a project team from considering a heat pump. Many facility managers, developers and mechanical contractors lack an understanding of modern heat-pump capabilities and fear potential maintenance challenges.

Addressing these barriers requires education, financing strategies, and collaboration across design and construction teams. Performance modeling and lifecycle cost analysis can help owners see the long-term value, while training programs build confidence among operators. It is also a good sign that many heat pump manufacturers have entered the market in recent years, offering new products and increasing competition, which ultimately will drive innovation and reduce costs.

Matching technology to needs

Not all heat pumps are created equal — and not every building is a fit for the same system. The success of a heat pump system depends heavily on a facility’s operational profile, climate zone and available heat-exchange sources. Urban density adds another layer: air-source heat pumps require significant exterior space, often on rooftops or building sites. Geothermal, or ground source, heat pumps can be a way to increase output capacity without the need for a large outdoor area, but they often require deep vertical wells which can increase construction costs.

Key considerations:

• Hospitals. These require highly reliable, year-round systems. Water-source or geothermal heat pumps often provide the stable water temperatures needed for critical spaces.
• Airports. With their large, open volumes and variable occupancy, they benefit from air-source heat pumps with modular capacity or hybrid systems that flex with rapid load changes.
• Schools. Their predictable schedules make air-source heat pumps ideal, delivering significant energy and emissions reductions.
• Mixed-use or district applications. Water-loop systems or centralized heat pumps can serve multiple buildings efficiently.

Understanding these drivers ensures each facility receives the technology configuration aligned with its performance, resilience and sustainability goals.

A scalable, future-proof solution

Heat pumps significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by minimizing or eliminating reliance on combustion-based heating, immediately advancing institutional sustainability goals. Schools, airports and healthcare campuses increasingly incorporate heat pumps to meet tightening decarbonization requirements while improving indoor environmental quality. By integrating heat pumps, organizations future-proof their infrastructure against ongoing regulatory change and position themselves as leaders in environmental stewardship.

The Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Oregon, recently installed a heat pump in one of its central plants. The new equipment will capture heat from adjacent buildings and use it to heat a 170,000-square-foot patient care building, reducing energy and carbon and moving them closer to meeting their long-term sustainability and carbon phase-out goals.

The scalability of heat-pump technology means it can be applied across facility portfolios, not just in new construction but as part of phased modernization strategies.

A resilient path forward

The transition to heat pump technology is underway across some of the country’s most energy-intensive facilities, like hospitals and airports, demonstrating that this approach is both operationally feasible and economically sound. As adoption accelerates, there is a very real-world future reality in which heat pumps could be used in every building in the country, transforming how we heat and cool the built environment while enabling dramatic, nationwide emissions reductions.

The takeaway? Heat pumps aren’t just a technical upgrade; they’re a strategic investment in resilience, sustainability and leadership. For organizations ready to act, the future is clear — and it’s electric.