Heat pumps beat coal in the chicken house — and cut the heating bill by about 44%

Keeping 21,000 young chickens warm through a cold Turkish winter usually means burning coal. On a working farm in Sakarya, Turkey, researchers put a different option to a real-world test: they heated one of three identical chicken houses with an air-source heat pump — a device that pulls warmth from outdoor air — and measured everything across a full production cycle, then checked their computer models against the real numbers. The heat-pump house stayed at the right temperature for the birds, and its yearly heating cost came to $8,692 against $15,506 for coal — a saving of about 44%. The team now wants to pair the pumps with rooftop solar and heat recovery to push the savings further.

SDG 7 · Affordable and clean energy — Mechanism: tech innovation