alt Hacker NewsI was thinking the same thing about cooling. I guess a high pressure heat pump can work in any environment if it compresses a gas up to a temperature that’s higher than ambient. Couple that with abundant cheap energy — sunny, oily, and gassy! — and it doesn’t seem unreasonable at all.
You can use a heat pump for any realistic output temperature but the efficiency goes down the higher the temperature difference has to be.
As long as sun and wind aren’t the main energy sources there, it might be economical but I wouldn’t exactly call it reasonable.