'It's like living in an igloo' People are turning off their heat as prices surge
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Also, not many people realize this, but the problem isn't caused by the war. If you don't believe me then open an inflation chart of your country of choice and try to spot any change to the shape of the curve around Feb 2022.
Only one firm in the area could even quote me on one, tried to talk me out of it at every step, and gave me a quote that reinforced their sales pitch. It was literally never going to payback over a combi, which dozens of companies would be happy to install and service.
So, a fresh combi boiler sits on my wall (which is a good improvement over the old), but it also means that I don’t entertain the question again for another 15 years.
I was among the top 0.1% aware, educated, and motivated potential customers of a heat pump and it couldn’t happen.
Anything-to-air wasn’t going to work visually or for occupant comfort. I don’t want refrigeration linesets strung all over the outside, warts on a wall in each room, and after all that having less comfortable heat than hydronic. (On the plus side, it would give AC “for free” [in capital costs].)
Ground source (to water) was my first preference. I’m on a pretty small city lot and the well cost meant for an even longer payback period than an air-to-water heat pump.
Use an electric blanket, and wear an extra layer. This will use far less energy, than trying to warm up all of the air inside the home.
In Germany, inflation did hike up in March [1]. The Russo-Ukrainian war started on February 24th, so February's inflation is not that much impacted.
Sure, inflation was already high before that. But I'm pretty sure the war increased the problem.
Front month fuel certainly shot up around February.
This perspective just externalizes side effects of all sorts of unequal societal resource allotments and paints the problem contributor as the average person. It's akin to blaming climate change on your average person when the biggest contributors aren't your typical person whose biggest crimes might be driving to work, taking an occasional mass shared flight, or ordering something on Amazon. Or plastic waste on consumers not recycling. There's lots of these blame deflecting trends from industry.
In the long term, you might be correct that we need to reduce energy expenditure (although birth rates could change this picture), but I'd say we have a lot of other low hanging wasteful consumption fruit that we should fix before having people shiver to stay warm in their homes.
I can turn my thermostat and flow temps down a few degrees and expect companies to reduce unused lighting in their offices on nights and weekends.
Who's the biggest contributor then, corporations? If I order something from amazon, which causes emissions to be created because of the delivery truck, is that amazon's fault and not mine?
And that last part doesn't just mean to make things more expensive, which causes inflation and doesn't really make things more expensive. It means to reward saving energy compared to other costs.
Asking who is to blame is -- suprise! -- not solving anything.
But at the end of the day, the buyer is always right. It's easy to abdicate responsibility of production based carbon emissions to the producers, but if your buying choices actively disadvantage producers with lower carbon emissions (eg. because they cost more and you only care about costs) why would you expect producers to do anything about it?
>It means to reward saving energy compared to other costs.
Isn't there already an incentive to save energy? It's a cost, so businesses are already incentivized to save energy wherever they can. Higher prices incentivizes that even more.
The prices are how you, as an individual, gain knowledge about the energy market. Prices are high and demand out straps supply. Prices are low and supply is higher than demand.
Subsidies distort this information.
This isnt to say it's good that people can't heat their homes but it's the only way to balance these markets.
Any solution that focuses on the consumer side relief rather than improving supply will only exacerbate the situation.
That said, environmental scrupulosity is a thing. Would it be better for the environment if I didn't buy stuff from Amazon, and maybe just bought locally made goods and food? And maybe I shouldn't buy new clothes, but just continually repair what I have? And maybe I shouldn't use computers or smartphones because the raw materials are damaging to extract from the Earth?
But, to answer your question, I think we can most effectively blame an economic system that rewards continuous production and consumption, with emphasis on disposable, rather than repairable, items. Amazon helps facilitate that with free shipping and impossibly low prices. Yet, instead of asking us, as consumers, to reexamine our habits of consumption, we are asked to feel guilty about how much we recycle, or how much we drive. I could not own a car, and walk everywhere, but if I purchase nearly everything I need from Amazon, I suspect my "environmental impact" is no different from a person who drives to work everyday.
[Edit: formatting]
This feels like a non-issue to me. If you're the kind of person who's "scrupulously examining whether reusable shopping bags are better for the environment", I doubt you're going to forget that ordering stuff from amazon involves a ship traveling half way across the world.
>But, to answer your question, I think we can most effectively blame an economic system that rewards continuous production and consumption, with emphasis on disposable, rather than repairable, items.
But is the economic system actually incentivizing disposable stuff in particular, or is it incentivizing producing what consumers want? The fact that amazon is strewn with "reusable" variants of everything imaginable (eg. reusable straws, reusable bags, reusable k-cups) makes me think it's the latter.
> Amazon helps facilitate that with free shipping and impossibly low prices.
Maybe the prices are indication of something? For something like straws, it might actually be better to manufacture 1 gram worth of plastic and ship it across the world, than it is to wash/sanitize a reusable straw which also involve labor and resources (eg. hot water).
>we are asked to feel guilty about how much we recycle, or how much we drive. I could not own a car, and walk everywhere, but if I purchase nearly everything I need from Amazon, I suspect my "environmental impact" is no different from a person who drives to work everyday.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. If you don't own a car, then presumably you're not driving to work. If you don't driving to work, that's one less thing that's contributing to environmental impact. Of course, if you're ordering stuff from amazon rather than going to a store, that loss might be offset by your amazon deliveries, but I suspect that you're still coming out ahead. The fact that the alternatives have environmental impact as well shouldn't come as a surprise either. After all, maintaining a first world standard of living is going to have some environmental impact associated with it, and it's unreasonable to expect otherwise.
> Who's the biggest contributor then, corporations?
> Who's the biggest contributor then, corporations? If I order something from amazon, which causes emissions to be created because of the delivery truck, is that amazon's fault and not mine?
It's even a harder question than that. Sure, Amazon is the one responsible for scheduling the emissions... but when you take into account the overall emissions of a purchase then it gets more interesting.
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https://ctl.mit.edu/sites/default/files/library/public/Dimit...
> Results are shown for the buying process of a toy, for customers living in an urban area. Figure 1 shows the carbon footprint of online and traditional shopping, when only the purchase step and the appropriate return rate are considered. The Cybernaut tends to have a lower environmental impact than the Traditional Shopper, as long as he does not use speed delivery.
> ...
> The Cybernaut’s carbon footprint is almost two times smaller than a Traditional Shopper. In fact the main component of the Traditional shopper is the customer transportation, whereas Cybernaut‘s emissions are linked to a parcel carrier, who uses an optimized delivery process. The freight transportation has a bigger impact for the Cybernaut since the item is packaged individually, which increases packaging weight and volume, and the linehaul distance of online warehouse is bigger than a traditional one. The packaging is the main component of the Cybernaut’s carbon footprint.
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The box that you get from Amazon is the largest part of the carbon footprint for the online shopper, but it is still much less than the traditional shopper driving to buy an item in a store. The difference between an individual driving to the store and parcel delivery is akin to similar arguments for solo commuters vs taking public transportation - the bulk transportation of items or people is better.
I'm confused, it's not?
That's not how it works. It takes time for price increases to propagate through the supply chain. Utilities usually contract their gas months ahead, so if the prices for natural gas increased in February due to the war, the increase in consumer prices wouldn't have happened until months later.
Again, I recommend just opening it and looking at it.
Because every chart I’ve looked at shows both a big jump in heating oil future prices, and more importantly, volatility starting at the end of February.
That is completely consistent with what you would expect, the war roiled energy markets and consumers are now paying the price.
People are freezing and you consider this good? Why?
> You may hate this post but the reality is that it's the only way forward, subsides will only increase the price without doing anything about the problem.
Which one?
Food, shelter, education and other basic needs are supposed to be taken care of in developed countries (by definition) in the 21st century. Just leaving it up to the market means that poorer people won't have these needs fulfilled, and we can't pretend that it's just fine and so be it.
Maybe energy prices should be proportional to your wealth, like fines in some countries.
Public education in particular sees very bad outcomes for poor students. It is time to privatize.
The idea to make energy cost proportional to wealth is also bizarre. The first problem with it is how will you determine wealth? The second problem is how will you determine need? The goal is to provide according to need while taking according to ability, right?
This has been tried many times in many ways and inevitably results in more inequality and a lower standard of living than allowing market forces to balance supply and demand based on economic signals.
You're conflating markets with inequalities and implilying a causal relationship when the market is simply the scale in the middle attempting to balance consumption with economic contribution.
It's almost ironic that markets are the way in which you can achieve this Marxist ideal.
What does then? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developed_country mentions quality of life, aren't basic needs part of that?
> how will you determine wealth?
Some countries have wealth-based taxes and so have apparently answered this question, so that can be a starting point.
I don't understand your point about markets solving inequalities on their own. If energy is expensive, poor people don't have heating, rich people do. Are you saying that's just fine?
Also not sure what the Marxist ideal is, is wanting poor people to have heating a Marxist ideal? I'm honestly confused by your comment.
So you could still lower your thermostat significantly.
Plus dressing warmer could prevent this?!?
Extra clothing lowers the temp at which blood flow to the extremities reduces. There isn't some arbitrary line at which no amount of extra clothing will make no difference, else you could say the same thing about house insulation. Is blood flow going to reduce just because it's 10c outside, regardless of the inside temp?
Do you spend all your time adjusting your clothes?
I haven’t compared degree-days of last year vs this year, but by the gas meter, through yesterday we’re using 40% of (60% less) on per-day basis as compared to last year.
It was many thousands out of pocket, but if the 40% holds up, it will pay back in about five years. (Our old system was dark-comically inefficient though. For most 80-ish% cast iron boilers, it doesn’t make economic sense to replace with a [theoretical max] 95% mod-con if the old one is still reliable.)
It was also only $2550 for the boiler (much more for the trim, labor, pipes, pumps, etc., but the boiler itself was cheap). That was cheap enough that I considered buying an entire second one to just put on the shelf for the eventual need to replace it or replace major parts. I decided not to as the space required is probably more valuable than having a whole shelf in the utility room tied up for 10-15 years.
As to the other part, yes, less heat is sent up the chimney in modern designs. My boiler is getting pretty old but was sold as 80% efficient. As far as I can tell, the near drop in replacement would be 84 or 85%. Neither is a modern condensing boiler (which I'd have to figure out a new exhaust to switch and probably add active outside air exchange; tempting with the way the current one sucks all the humidity out of the house).
New boiler vents through plastic pipe and extracts so much more of the heat that the exhaust is leaving the boiler at around 150°F with the water vapor largely condensed (at least this time of year) and giving up that latent heat of vaporization to the water incoming to the boiler. Additionally, it pulls combustion air from outside instead of the basement. (If you pull combustion air from the basement an equal amount of outside air must leak into the house to replace it.)
New boiler also has a modulating gas valve and can burn in 5 steps between 25K BTU/hr and 149K BTU/hr (from memory, but close enough) to match the space heating demand. The old one was either 0 or 200K BTU/hr.
I probably went from 60% to 95% now plus the effects of not pulling millions of cubic feet of outside air in per year.
The computer controls on this one (and the ability of the boiler to not just tolerate but encourage condensation) mean I can heat my house at 32°F/0°C with 114°F/45°C supply water temps. Traditional boilers are harmed by acidic condensation so need return temps of 140°F which means supply temps of 160°F. That means hotter rads and pipes and more losses in the piping. As it gets colder, the boiler can compensate (via an outdoor sensor) and increase the flow temp so it’s just enough to heat the house. Based on 114°F flow (about 90-95°F return) being enough for 32°F, I'm virtually certain that I'll be operating in condensing mode (return under 120°F) even on the coldest nights we get here or if not, on all but one or two nights.
I have pump controls that can run the pumps for a bit after the zone and burner shuts off to put that (much smaller amount) of trapped heat into the living space rather than leaving it trapped in a massive hunk of cast iron to leak to the boiler room.
It’s a lot of small and medium effects.
The old furnace vented through a vertical chimney vent and the exhaust was so hot that touching the metal pipe would burn your hand.
The new furnace is direct vented with PVC pipes and the exhaust outside the house feels barely warm — that’s a lot of additional heat that stays in the house instead of being wasted.
Between the cost difference of propane vs natural gas, better efficiency and a programmable thermostat, we easily reduced our fuel bill $$ by 50% with no noticeable change in comfort level. I did not track the difference in therms.
A more complicate design has a big HX and various pumps and fans to drain the condensate and push out the exhaust gases. It uses a PVC flue and drain line to withstand corrosion but at the end you still have moving parts exposed to the acidic condensate and it does not have the service life of a straight metal flue design. That, combined with the higher cost of a condensing heater (because of all the additional pumps and fans and corrosion protection), calls for a careful cost analysis since you need to burn a lot of gas to justify quicker replacement and more service calls for a more expensive unit.
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, gas prices went from 0.70-0.80 eur/m3 to 3.50-4.00 eur/m3
I spoke to someone at the collections department of a utility company. They expect total carnage as people start to skip on paying their bills. Government support notwithstanding, the coming winter will be hell. People on or below the median income will be hurt by the coming 300-400€ increase in monthly costs.
If only we (most of us) didn't have a raft of responsibilities keeping us in place.
A friend, with a very conventional house, is suddenly looking at a yearly bill of over €6000. Up from €1500 last year. Many people simply don't have that kind of money, especially in a period with crazy inflation.
I could afford to pay the extra 400 euro/month. But it feels like a perverse luxury now that there are many people who can't afford it. And it's basically throwing money in the gas furnace, which I'd prefer to invest into something useful. So instead I'm sitting in a room at 16 to 17 degrees C, wearing extra layers (including thermal underwear), under a blanket, sipping a hot beverage.
Working behind a computer is still annoying though, even when standing at my desk I'm still too immobile to keep warm. 8€ usb heated gloves help a bit, but still. Otherwise it's not so bad.
Therefore, heating your torso might work better than trying to heat your hands.
Googling for electrically heated garments typically leads to some dodgy looking cheap products though. I would have a look at body warmers sold by power tool brands to go with their battery platform. E.g. I already have LXT batteries for my Makita power tools, so I'm considering buying something like the DCV202Z vest.
You want your onesies to have feet, at least that's my preference.
When I was a student in Edinburgh, I lived in an old tenement with super drafty windows and super high ceilings. Trying to heat the place was pointless. I gave up and just wore two onesies whenever I was inside.
In the winter I used to wake up and see my breath, I'm not sure how cold it got, but definitely colder than 17. I think that was the indoor temperature on a cold summer day.
We blocked and shut down nuclear power plants, we blocked shell fracking and places like Groningen gas field. Then we partnered with Russia for our energy needs. Now we are partnering with places like Qatar.
Subsidies are some of the worst solutions when the service providers are an unsupervized oligopoly.
... I see your problem right there.
I see a common pattern where I live where senior neighbours refuse to buy heat pumps even though the payback is measured in years.
* Few suitable places to install it
* Lack of qualified workers to install it
* Limited availiability of heatpumps
* Conventional heaters do not work well with heat pumps. Floor heating is preferred and also not easy or cheap to do
* Not enouch capital to finance it, despite it making economic sense.
I got one, it's great and they should replace oil and gas heating for sure. But these problems can keep people away from them.
Before installing a heat pump, your house should be insulated pretty well. Otherwise you'll never heat it up properly.
Aircon is a thing in the us, a heat pump is basically the same.
I can see this being more of an issue in Europe where Aircon wasn't already a thing.
Why don't people just spend $10k and have their problems vanish? (and don't quote me the cost of a heat pump, you have to also pay to rip out your old stuff)
They don't have $10k
Like a mini-split is 3k (without labor), for an average house you'll need two or three of them to fully heat/cool the house.
Someone who has to scrape together $1000 NOW to heat their home this winter isn't "refusing to buy a heat pump".
It's a vicious circle, trapping the poorest in a circle of poverty from which there is little escape, even in social welfare states.
Many seniors seem to thing living in their house is cheap since they pay so little per month compared to renting. But in my experience that is usually because they cut down on repair and upkeep. They should just be renting flats, and if they can't due to shortages or insane rent, that is the problem not the heating bills.
Living in a house becomes way more expensive then you are too sick or weak to do the base upkeep yourself.
In japan, people ate at tables with a thick quilt built in to cover your legs.
European sitting chairs were designed with “hoods” to trap as much heat as possible. Everyone wore long johns every day in the winter. A thick wool sweater was a requirement for life and you had blankets all over. Only the critical parts of the house with people in them were heated.
When you went to your bed, which was likely away from the fire, you would boil water and put in a bottle that you kept underneath your blankets all night.
On my old house i had total of 8kwh heaters, had to be near them and 5 minutes after turning them off it was freezing again. crazy
And stop buying Russian LNG via China, which through shipping pollutes so much that it will probably offset the energy saved by cutting consumption.
Probably we should also stop hundreds of private jets flying to climate conferences.