Where I am, electricity is pretty cheap, but natural gas is tremendously cheaper per jule… so we can actually pay less by using the “inefficient” fuel for our home.

Most of the push towards rapid adoption of heat pumps is happening in Europe, where geopolitical developments (to put it mildly) caused gas prices to spike last winter. The nature of the natural gas logistics means that different continents can have wildly different prices (unlike petroleum, where you can always throw it on a ship and send it from where it's cheap to where it's expensive), so a lot of European countries are seeing these debates play out against the backdrop of their own energy markets. Germany passed a law this year that would phase out new gas furnace installations, so that's why a lot of the debate is happening with a focus on German markets.

Whether (or how quickly) a transition to heat pumps pays for itself in euros will depend a lot on what happens in the future to gas and electricity prices.