>Except it is still direct electrical heating which is atrociously inefficient.
Electric heating converts practically all energy into heat, making it ~100% efficient. You can make statements about cost-effectiveness compared to burning things, but not all houses can.
CHP configurations are more common in colder climates with district heating, so their "waste" heat during generation often isn't wasted at all.
Which is why I covered them in my comment about CHP, which recoups a large portion of those "losses". Either way other power sources also require logistic challenges and/or big equipment installs to use, so it isn't exactly 1:1 comparison.
I feel this is a bit disingenuous, because using the same logic burning wood is thousands of % effective, or even ∞% if the system only uses convection, making heat pumps seem like a poor choice even when they're perfectly valid.
I'm in Quebec (Eastern Canada). Most of the electricity is produced from hydraulic power (dams) up north, while cities are in the southern part of the province. Most houses are electrically heated (especially those built after 1970). Production from water turbines is very efficient. Transmission losses are about 30%, because of the distance (> 1500km). Heating itself is 100% efficient, no moving parts, no maintenance. In this context, heating with a baseboard or CPU makes no difference.
Here in Sweden, roughly 50% of all small houses (ie one household) have a heat pump. Direct electricity heating is just somewhere around 15%.
In bigger houses direct electricity just isn't a thing, most have some sort of central heating, and lots have either some combustion or heat pump solution. The latter is gaining.
Electric heating converts practically all energy into heat, making it ~100% efficient. You can make statements about cost-effectiveness compared to burning things, but not all houses can.
CHP configurations are more common in colder climates with district heating, so their "waste" heat during generation often isn't wasted at all.