White Papers

Dual-Fuel HVAC White Paper

Advancing dual-fuel residential HVAC to achieve a reliable, resilient and affordable energy future.

June 3, 2025

North America’s energy system stands at a pivotal juncture, necessitating innovative and multifaceted approaches to support future resilience and reliability. Integrating natural gas and electricity can be a flexible and resilient solution to meeting the growing needs of our energy system. Dual-fuel residential heating and cooling (HVAC) systems, with their ability to optimize infrastructure utilization and balance peak loads, present a viable path forward. These systems have the potential to enhance energy efficiency, reduce demand during peak events and optimize consumer preferences for comfort and affordability.

In this paper, GTI Energy (GTI) and NEEA propose a vision to achieve the goals of reliability, resiliency and affordability using evolved versions of dual-fuel technologies and leveraging the most valuable characteristics of both systems. While this paper focuses on residential dual-fuel systems, there is a broad range of applications in both residential and commercial settings. GTI brings in-depth experience and understanding of building thermal loads to analyze how advanced controls can be integrated into dual-fuel systems, to develop a cost-effective foundation for future technological advancement. The technical work GTI explored helps provide guidance for successful control strategies to realize the maximum potential of residential dual-fuel systems. In collaboration with GTI, NEEA brings comprehensive market research findings that help explain how existing consumer and contractor behavior present barriers and opportunities to accelerate market adoption of dual-fuel systems. Together, this system-level Market Transformation approach will empower a robust energy-efficient, dual-fuel market that improves grid resilience and increases consumer comfort and savings.