Cheddar News anchor Shannon LaNier visited Westchester County, New York for a closer look at how some families are saving on energy by installing heat pumps.
Many experts consider electrically-powered heat pumps a green alternative to gas heat. They have both air conditioning and heating functionality and work by pulling air from the outside. They also happen to be relatively quiet.
"How much could someone save on their energy source here? I mean, it's gonna be different for every house, but ultimately, if you have the system sized appropriately and use the correct eligible technology, you can see some good savings based on the efficiency," said Watson Milliston, energy efficiency specialist at Con Edison.
Just don't forget to insulate your homes, he added, otherwise those efficiency gains go to waste.
"You want to weatherize your house and just trap all that heat that you're paying good money to keep," he said.
The world population grew by 75 million people over the past year and on New Year's Day, it was estimated to stand at more than 8 billion people, according to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday.
UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow. Wisconsin-La Crosse fired Gow on Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023, after learning Gow and his wife have been producing and appearing in pornographic videos. Gow maintains the firing violated his free speech rights.
The U.S. military is now putting independent lawyers in charge of its investigations of sexual assault and other major crimes, what Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has called the "most important reform" to the military justice system in recent history.
A decades-old law bans Medicare from paying for weight loss drugs. Now, drugmakers and a wide-ranging bipartisan coalition of lawmakers are gearing up to push for that to change next year.
Barring a court order, in March Texas police will start being able to arrest people they suspect have entered the U.S. illegally, but increases in border crossings since a 2021 law authorizing some arrests shows the limits of that approach in the face of desperation that causes people to risk everything and travel thousands of miles to the U.S.
Mexico began clearing tents, both occupied and unoccupied, from the encampment in the border city of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, starting Tuesday.
