This winter wasn’t “efficient” it was cold as hell because we all turned the heating as low as it could go without causing building damage[1] because the price of natural gas more than 10x’ed.
It’s not an example of a sustainable reduction in consumption.
[1] though a lot of people didn’t think things through and set the temperature too low or even turned off the gas and now have mold and other problems in their basements.
Continental Europe's got much better housing than the bits of the US which I've visited. East coast more relevant here than the West, given exactly where I went, but Boston, Providence, etc., were awful build quality, the "middle class" places around there were even worse than the "working class" Victorian terraces and post-War council houses in the UK.
My current house in Virginia is over 100 years old, and isn’t terribly well insulated and has single pane windows (although we have storm windows which help… also it’s small and is a duplex which helps).
So the places you visited (on East Coast, big old cities) are not necessarily very representative. Any place with newer housing will have better insulation. (And yes, I realize that a lot of people think newer houses are cheap crap, but overall I think building codes have improved average quality significantly, and the reason you don’t see it in some old houses is because the crap old houses were already torn down, ie sample bias.)
Also, the gas price of my dad increased from 4.8 cents per kWh to 14.2 cents per kWh as an existing customer. People who were moving at the time and were new customers had to sign contracts well above 20 cents per kWh.
So, you probably only didn't "notice any difference" if you have either deep pockets or your energy supplier has a very foresighted buying strategy for a period of more than 1.5 years. (Many utility providers don't do this because they are speculators at the same time. Few like to pay a premium for forward contracts in the far future).
I live far to the north, in an apartment, and didn't notice anything this winter, wherever I went. But I heard someone in their villa here nearby actually moved elsewhere, over the winter, because of the high cost of heating
Edit: by villa we typically mean a house that is not adjacent to another house.
I for one hope the consumer market will get an overcorrection and I can fix my contract for a few years, since I'm not convinced we've seen the last of energy price fluctuation.
Unrelated: Does your solar pv really do anything for your heatpump? What's your kwh/kwp for december-february? I don't think it'll be anywhere close to the heatpump consumtion.
> I couldn't live with that temperature in winter, where I am wearing thick pullovers and jeans.
Are you really wearing those indoors?
However, I find it SUPER SAD that... in developed countries people are living less comfortably during the winter than the middle class in Romania, a developing country.
It makes no sense. In Romania, everyone who's at least middle class sets the thermostat to 22-23 degrees and basically only wears t-shirts and shorts indoors.
So a German making €40k net per year lives worse from this point of view compared to a Romanian making €20k net per year.
The first thing when I come home is to change out of jeans and co and into more comfortable clothes.
There are few clothes more comfortable than a t-shirt and shorts.
In the US, and I assume elsewhere, the single greatest reduction is carbon emissions was achieved by switching from coal plants to natural gas plants. Thats a win in my book. No fossil fuels at any cost is a losing proposition. Incremental progress to sustainable energy is how we get to sustainability.
But I don't see them as the end goal; that's still 100% renewable to me.
But for the short term, I think that's preferable to the much bigger disaster of global warming and climate change.
I'd happily wear a jacket, if that can help with shutting down a coal power plant
Apart from that, Romania's energy consumption comes 75% from coal, oil and gas. THAT is something that does not makes sense and something that is SUPER SAD. And to walk around in shorts and t-shirt in the winter when you are heating with those sources is just plain stupid.
It's unfortunately these kind of attitudes which will make it hard to reduce climate change.
I even doubt that anything would change if everyone in the developed world switches to this extreme economy. E.g. Russia burns coal and wastes hundreds of gigawatt hours to heat the atmosphere because of how their heating systems are designed. But of course it's lot easier to force me, a person who works from home, drives a hybrid car with 52MPG on average (and I rarely do more than a couple of hundreds km per month), travels couple of times per year and who installed a heat pump and a solar PV, to live with 19 degrees than to deal with Russia. It's equally easier to force me going full vegan instead of applying seemingly working solutions to reduce meat industry emissions (toilet training, seaweed diet, artificial meat in the end).
For the same reason that if you had two jobs with the exact same conditions, but one paid twice as much as the other, you would probably pick the one that pays more. Efficiency matters. Resources are limited. Oil is a resource. The capacity to take care of offenders is another.
2. That's just dumb. Romania reduced its energy usage a ton since 1989 plus its per capita usage is super low, if someone needs to look in the mirror it's the US, Australia, Canada, Germany, China (China for the industrial pollution primarily), etc.
In my country, we say that the bedroom should not be warmer than 19, because that's bad for sleeping :-). So it's really a choice. If I go to bed and the temperature is 24.5, I open the window.
Also I don't find it less comfortable to wear more clothes in the winter than in the summer. Ok, working from home on a computer at 19 degrees is a little bit cold, so I tend to use a warm water bottle. But honestly that's really fine.
Anyways I'm happy enough with my bills, even winter bills.
Put on a jumper. Or even, let your body adjust. There's plenty of evidence that keeping your body working to stay warm when you are healthy is very good forblood sugar control, which has additional benefits.
My house is extremely well insulated (BER A2), dunno if it qualifies as a passivhouse.
Also I'm exporting more than a megawatt per year back to grid for free, so you (as a society) may be happy.
So, I don't think I'm being unethical.
Do you take into account the energy needed to grow and transport the food you eat? To extract the material needed for objects you own? To build your car? To maintain the roads you use? I guess you obviously don't use fossil fuels at all and instead rely exclusively on the clean energy you produce?
Because if you don't, then you are still overall a consumer of energy.
But even if you were a net producer of clean energy, we as a society have a big problem of consuming too much overall. We will have to reduce that at some point (whether we want it or not). So it would be great if people started thinking about not eating meat for every meal, taking a plane every second week-end, and living in a sauna.
We as a society need to consume less energy (because we depend on fossil fuels that emit CO2), and anyway we will have less energy in the future (because... peak production of fossil fuels).
There is no price on that: we need to do less with less.
At this point I see zero reasons to conserve damn solar energy while half of the country still uses OFCH.
One way is to say "well I don't care, I won't do anything until I don't get a choice, and probably at that point it will hurt a lot".
Another is to face it, start doing things, and pushing your politicians to enforce very big plans. One problem I see is that everyone says "I would be ready to do a lot more if I knew everyone else did", but when it's time to vote, they don't.
Not being ready to go lower than 24.5 degrees (doesn't have to be 19 if that's not bearable for you) in winter does not sound like you are ready to do much, though.
As I said before, I'm living in a house insulated up to the highest standard, I have a heat pump and a solar PV, the largest PV array in the estate. I think this is something reasonable. I work remotely, I don't drive much and I drive with very good MPG, I've figured out that my car has the best MPG at 90 kmph so I drive about 90 kmph, I don't travel often, I'm carefully sorting my waste (most people throw everything into the black bin), I'm trying to buy things which last and I'm trying to repair and sell, I think if everyone does that it would make some reasonable impact.
Though I don't think that 19 or whatever degrees is something of your business.
> you are ready to do much
I'm not ready to do unreasonable (or idiotic) things. Why 24.5? Because I've figured out that it's the most optimal temperature for me.
> I'm not ready to do unreasonable (or idiotic) things. Why 24.5? Because I've figured out that it's the most optimal temperature for me.
Let's say that your case is extremely special and for you it does not make sense to not overheat, it does not make it unreasonable (or idiotic) to say that the vast majority of people should not overheat, does it?
My personal gas+electricity bill went from €180 a month to almost €600. I really think the price of energy is a huge influence in the reduction of usage.
I reduced the indoor temperature this year to see how it was, and kept ~18'C. I think I'll keep it anyway - less energy used, and it's totally doable. When I have someone over for dinner, I bring it back to 20-21'C.
Btw, what's up with Nest? I want another V3 in my new house, but they are not available anymore??
Not yet anyway. It usually starts in e.g. bathrooms.
Your choice of spelling of "mold" is consistent with your apparent lack of experience living in high humidity parts of the world :-)
And those corners will get moldy.
Oh and I don't have a house, nor a mold problem, but know enough people who do have, even though they do ventilate reasonable. Houses were build with the assumption, that they are heated.
Now you can build new houses that are better designed - but you cannot magically adjust all the existing houses.
Yes and no.
It depends on the country and areas within it and it applies mainly to houses built in the last 60-70 years or so, maybe a few more years back in cities (for heating with radiators) before that time many, many houses were (poorly) heated by fireplaces and/or stoves.
Besides, the permeability of the building materials was traditionally much better, and windows/doors were leaky, guaranteeing a much better ventilation.
At least here in Italy the heating was a luxury until well after World War II, particularly in the country and in small vilages, anecdotally my family used to have a house in a small village in central Italy where the heating until the '70's was based on the devices that can be seen here (Italian):
https://www.muet.it/storie/tutte-le-storie/item/il-riscaldam...
Particularly the kitchen and dining room was heated by the "stufa economica" that was also used to cook meals, the sitting room had a fireplace that heated also (a little) the bedroom behind it, and there was another large bedroom heated by a "stufa in terracotta", having a "prete" for each bed was needed.
The house was anyway very, very cold, particularly at night/early morning.
Well, obviously it does, but I would think most houses in europe do have to be heated and were build in the last 60-70 years and those I was refering to.
And before that, yes it was something like 2 bugs cancel each other out. Leaky windows prevents mold.
(And in general only rich people could afford to heat the whole house)
Right. That's why we have technology and other advanced things, to live like cavemen used to.
Not everybody lives at the right latitude to have 22 degrees Celsius indoors without additional heating in the winter.
That being said, as someone else said, controlling humidity is also a concern for the long-term viability of buildings.
17 at night, 19.5 during the day is as hot as our house has ever been in winter; though with a new baby I suspect that might change by 0.5 for a while.
I'm currently happy at 18, it's pretty nice if you're a bit active.
Where did i say or imply any of that?