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The surprising climate fix that Democrats and Republicans both love

Democrats and Republicans agree on virtually nothing at this point, except the desperate need to build more housing in the United States. Depending on your viewpoint, the country needs new domiciles because it puts people to work and stimulates local economies, or because it creates affordable homes and , thus reducing homelessness. Affordability, including in housing, is now one of the in America.

Neither party, though, is talking about the secret superpower of new apartment buildings: They鈥檙e much better for the planet than constructing single-family homes. According to a new , these units are 鈥渁n almost automatic form of building decarbonization,鈥� because three-quarters of new apartments are heated electrically. That means they can run on rooftop solar panels or tap into grids humming with clean energy, instead of burning planet-warming natural gas in furnaces or boilers.

While the Trump administration and the Republican Party at large try to roll back , they鈥檙e inadvertently bolstering that progress by calling for new construction. Deep-red Montana, for instance, recently to get more multifamily housing built. 鈥淎partments are the climate solution hiding in plain sight,鈥� said Alan Durning, executive director of the nonprofit Sightline Institute, which authored the report.

examined how the construction of more apartment buildings would be a climate-friendly way to address the nation鈥檚 housing needs.

Nothing against single-family homes, but apartment buildings and condos are much more efficient for a number of reasons. For one, residents share walls, floors, and ceilings with their neighbors, surrounding them with excellent insulation. Secondly, the square footage of each unit tends to be smaller than detached homes, so there鈥檚 less air to manage. Accordingly, it takes less energy to climate-control apartment units and keep people comfortable: The typical resident of a downtown high-rise emits one-third as much greenhouse gases as a resident of a detached house in the suburbs.

Because of this inherent efficiency, apartment builders have for decades opted to install what鈥檚 called electric resistance heating, like baseboard heaters, instead of gas furnaces. That鈥檚 because wiring them up is cheaper than piping in all that methane. 鈥淚f I am building something with the intention of renting it, I really want to minimize my upfront costs,鈥� said Amanda D. Smith, senior scientist at the climate solutions nonprofit Project Drawdown, who studies the built environment but wasn鈥檛 involved in the new report. 鈥淥ften electric water heaters and electric heaters for space heating make sense from that perspective.鈥�

Economic forces, then, have long encouraged the adoption of such systems: 68% of apartments built since the early 1970s have been heated with electricity, the report notes. Half a century ago, no one was campaigning to decarbonize buildings to fight climate change 鈥� going electric was just the better option. Today, if you live in an apartment, you鈥檙e 60% more likely to be all-electric than your neighbor living in a house.

And apartments can get even greener. Heat pumps 鈥� which move warmth from outdoor air inside, instead of generating it like a gas furnace does 鈥� . Over the past few decades, the technology has gotten more powerful, capable of extracting heat . That鈥檚 helped heat pumps proliferate across even the chilliest climes: Maine installed 100,000 of the appliances of schedule, and almost use them. Heat pumps are increasingly popping up in American apartment buildings, too: While quite rare in the decades after the 1950s, heat pumps have been incorporated into 18% of these structures in the Northwest since 2010, the report notes. (Overall, heat pumps have outsold gas furnaces in the U.S. .)

While traditional electric heat pumps work like air conditioners, in that you need an outdoor unit that connects to an indoor one, new varieties are easier to incorporate into apartments and condos. One from a company called Gradient fits and plugs into a regular outlet, with installation taking less than a half hour. (Think of it like those old-school AC units jutting out of city apartment windows, only much cooler looking.) Another launching this winter into one attached to an interior wall, where it exchanges air with the outside. 鈥淢aking retrofits simpler will be a game-changer,鈥� Smith said.

If new buildings in hotter parts of the U.S. rely upon gas heating, they鈥檇 still need an air conditioning system. The beauty of a heat pump is that it can reverse in the summer to fill a home with cool air. As temperatures rise across the country, heat pumps will not only work more efficiently than space heaters and gas furnaces to warm apartments, but to provide invaluable cooling to keep people healthy. Already in the U.S., heat kills more people every year than .

Making a building鈥檚 heating fully electric encourages the adoption of another appliance critical for reducing greenhouse gas emissions: the induction stove. 鈥淚f you鈥檙e building a building and you鈥檙e heating and cooling with heat pumps, it doesn鈥檛 really make sense to hook it up to the gas system to pipe a tiny bit of gas in for people to cook on their gas stoves a couple of times a week,鈥� said Matt Casale, managing director of states and regions at the nonprofit Building Decarbonization Coalition, which wasn鈥檛 involved in the report.

All this electrification could potentially slot into a burgeoning technology known as networked geothermal. Instead of a building鈥檚 heat pump using outdoor air, . Because the earth鈥檚 temperature remains a more consistent temperature year-round than the air, these heat pumps are even more efficient at warming a space. If all of an area鈥檚 buildings 鈥� apartments or otherwise 鈥� are hooked into a networked geothermal system, there鈥檚 no need to pipe gas into the neighborhood at all. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a real community-based energy system, and you鈥檙e using energy that鈥檚 literally homegrown,鈥� Casale said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 right under your feet.鈥�

Beyond their superior energy efficiency and tendency to go electric, apartment buildings provide denser housing, fitting far more people into a footprint than a single-family home could manage. If located near daily essentials, like grocery stores, residents can walk instead of drive, further reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Ideally, robust public transportation systems can get those apartment dwellers anywhere they can鈥檛 walk to.

Building big apartment buildings of just apartments, though, just won鈥檛 cut it, said C茅cile Faraud, head of the clean construction program at C40, a global network of climate-focused mayors. These structures need mixed uses, where living spaces sit atop commercial spaces, like markets and doctors鈥� offices. 鈥淪o you can access care, you can access education, you can access your needs in terms of shopping,鈥� said Faraud, who wasn鈥檛 involved in the report. 鈥淏ut also in terms of health, so being able to exercise in parks, etc., and access to nature.鈥�

Indeed, what surrounds these apartment complexes matters, too. reduce temperatures, boost residents鈥� mental health, and provide habitats for native plant and animal species. Better yet, 鈥渁grihoods鈥� surround working farms with multifamily housing, generating (Faraud stresses that in addition to creating more housing, cities need to retrofit existing buildings to be more energy efficient, like with double-paned windows and better insulation.)

Constructing apartments, though, is often way more difficult than it should be, housing advocates say. The new report notes that 鈥渁partment buildings of at least four stories are currently allowed on less than 1% of the residential land in all but 10 Oregon cities鈥� 鈥� even in progressive Portland, that figure is 14%. 鈥淭he main thing that we need to do is relegalize apartments in a much larger area of our cities,鈥� Durning said.

Cities and states are responsible for that, not the feds. But the growing national push from both parties to get more units built will be a win-win for people and the planet. 鈥淓ven across a political landscape that鈥檚 as fractured and divided and as contentious as what we鈥檙e seeing now,鈥� Smith said, 鈥淚 think most people are willing to say: We want people to have homes.鈥�

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