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> I've been wondering for a long time why we don't have whole-house heat recovery systems.

Every house in the Nordics built after 1985 or so has this.

In theory, you can have an AC or heat pump that shares a refrigerant loop with your fridges and freezers. But the efficiency gains are extremely marginal and it adds a lot of extra trouble. Right now you can just buy a fridge or a freezer, plug it in, and it just works. You don’t have to plumb refrigerant through it. Which is good because it reduces the risk of refrigerant leaks.

I spent a while looking to see if split-unit refrigerators exist-- not really (except giant commercial room size stuff). The reason is that mostly refrigerators are so well insulated that their waste heat is extremely small making it worthless to do much of anything with it.