8 ms·

It's interesting that this article didn't talk about the CO2 emissions from heating the North. My understanding is that we would save emissions if people would

It's interesting that this article didn't talk about the CO2 emissions from heating the North. My understanding is that we would save emissions if people would move out of Boston and move to Houston because heating houses is more carbon intensive than cooling them. The temperature differential is a lot bigger when heating. There's something Puritan and not very well considered about viewing air conditioning as a new-fangled luxury while viewing heating as a necessity.

lsllc 6y ago
The north east US is the largest heating oil market in the world, we consume 85% of the heating oil in the US. Most of these oil boilers will be 80% efficient at best. It does get quite cold here in the winter! The answer is building codes that require energy efficient construction techniques, and 0% loans for retrofitting existing houses with better insulation, windows and heating (actually much of this exists via HEAT loans). Tax breaks would help here ... Previously, the only real choices were some sort of fossil fuels with natural gas being the most efficient and cheapest (although it's only available in urban and most suburban areas). These days, a heat pump is more than capable of both heating and cooling even in the depths of a New England winter (although you still need a heat source for hot water). However, you need the right sized ducting for this which can make it cost-prohibitive for a retrofit (but there's no reason why any _new_ house should NOT have a heat-pump).
- baybal2 6y ago
  This is always stunned me how USA manages to spend so much more money on heating than Russia. Then, I learned that USA has near no cogeneration, and district heating + detached house living with mostly terrible insulation. Most North American apartments are no better, with most highrises looking like radiators.
  - saas_sam 6y ago
    The US generates $65k per capita vs. Russia's $11k. That we spend more on heating probably has more to do with having more money to spend on heating. I doubt very much that Russia's buildings' insulation is much better.
    - kazen44 6y ago
      you would be quite suprised actually. especially in cities. Also, appartment buildings are far easier to heat, not to mention a lot of soviet era appartments only have communical heating available. Which basically means the heating gets turned on in oktober for entire city/appartment blocks, Some of those don't even have the option to change the temperate/flow.
    - zeroonetwothree 6y ago
      Some US apartments have shared heating. It’s pretty annoying because you have no control. I’ve had to keep my windows open in the winter because the heating was set too high.
      - Lammy 6y ago
        I keep my windows cracked in the winter despite having control (and payment responsibility, mind) of our heating. It's worth being able to think clearly all winter: https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2016/07/indoor-co2-dumb-and-dumber/ https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2016/07/indoor-co2-du...
        baybal2 6y ago
        Another thing that strikes most Russians when they go abroad is how well ventilated the buildings are, and how high is the indoor air quality. In Russia, it's most likely an inverse of venue class. Malls, public venues, indoor markets, govt buildings all like to save on ventilation.
        harpastum 6y ago
        Depending on your climate and what you mean by "windows cracked", you would be much better off with a heat recovery ventilation (HRV) system. They have the explicit purpose of pulling in outside air while only losing about 20% of the heat difference between indoor and out. With slightly open windows, you're losing a bunch of heat for very little ventilation.
        6y ago
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    My very first apartment in Boston was on the fourth floor of an old building and management controlled (and paid for) the heat. The building was so inefficient that in order to heat the lower floors to a temperature just barely above freezing my unit would regularly be 85 degrees or more with the windows wide open. I’ll never forget my first big winter storm thinking I was going to die of heat stroke because I had to shut the windows to keep the snow from blowing in. Some people on my floor would leave their window unit air conditioners in year-round to counteract the heat. It was so wasteful and almost no one in the building had a comfortable temperature in their apartment all because it was cheaper/easier for management to just keep burning a ton of oil instead of investing in a bit of insulation.
    - nhf 6y ago
      A lot of the winter overheating comes from poorly insulated pipes, unmaintained steam valves, and broken radiator controls. I lived in Boston for a few years and had the same issue in my first spot - old apartment complex, big boiler in the basement, and way too hot in the winter. Afterwards, I moved to a nicer but even older building where the landlord had bothered to retrofit a modern boiler with separate heating zones for the different apartments. Crucially, the radiators had new control valves the lines had modern insulation. It was like night and day. I think the retrofit cost over $10k, so like you said, the path of least resistance is often crappy heat.
      - milesvp 6y ago
        This. There was a great video posted on HN a couple years ago, by one of the few guys around who tunes up these old radiator systems. Apparently a lot of them were quite genius in design, but years of neglect make them not work very well. Was a fascinating video to hear him talk about common problems, and the amount of troubleshooting and problem solving involved with making these radiator systems work as designed again. Dan Holohan, for those interested. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18430512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18430512
        elliekelly 6y ago
- gruez 6y ago
  >but there's no reason why any _new_ house should NOT have a heat-pump Are heatpumps always more economical than gas/oil? I know that natural gas almost always beats electrical resistive heaters in terms of cost, even though resistive heaters are more efficient than natural gas. Heatpumps are supposed to be more efficient than resistive heaters, but in areas with expensive electricity it still might be more expensive.
  - csours 6y ago
    >"even though resistive heaters are more efficient than natural gas." You have to be careful about what you measure. Resistive heaters are 100% efficient by definition, but you have to look at the whole chain. The energy has to be converted from X (coal, natural gas, isotopes decay) to electricity and transmitted to your home. Only the last step is 100% efficient. You lose a lot of energy in generation and transmission of electricity.
  - cmurphycode 6y ago
    I was curious about this a while ago and did some napkin math. Natural gas is roughly $15 for 1 million BTU. There are 3412 BTU in a kwhr, so if you heated resistively, you'd need 293 kwhr to get 1 million BTU. In my area, which I feel has pretty high electricity cost, we pay $.24 per kwhr, so that'd be $70. Therefore, you need a 70/15 (4.666) COP for your heat pump to match natural gas by price. My understanding is that that would be an unusually high number for cold weather conditions.
    - lsllc 6y ago
      The State of NH Office of Strategic Initiatives has a nice Fuel Price comparison page that they keep up to date (and are adjusted according to cost per MMBTU): https://www.nh.gov/osi/energy/energy-nh/fuel-prices/index.htm https://www.nh.gov/osi/energy/energy-nh/fuel-prices/index.ht... You can see that as of June 2, measured at $ per MMBTU (million BTU): Natural Gas $8.31 Oil $17.62 Propane $32.93 Wood pellets $21.92 Resistive electric $48.84 Air src heat pump $18.74 The fossil fuels are all measured assuming 80% heating efficiency, whereas for propane or natural gas you might well have a high efficiency unit up to 97% which gains you a bit more savings. These prices may vary depending on location and also I think natural gas isn't that common in NH as it's a mostly rural state.
- saeranv 6y ago
  The effectiviness of heat pumps is insane. I worked in an architectural firm, and had an epiphany one day that every single one of our highest energy performing projects used some sort of (air/ground/water) source heat pump. We had a 100% glass building that was better performing then buildings designed to PassiveHouse standards because the former incorporated a GSHP.
- sethammons 6y ago
  I lived in the Southern California mountains. For those who are unaware, yes, that means snow. Winter temps down to the low 20s(f). In summer, it seldom got over 90s. It was the house I grew up in, and I purchased it from my dad. Because it was an FHA loan, we had to have a heating/cooling unit installed, so we had a heat pump added. Aside from being absolutely hideous, the unit was utter shit. The "heat" was mostly cold air in winter. The pump would turn on, and ducts' air was cold (being outside and all), cooling off the house MORE when it was already freezing. Eventually some lukewarm air would come in until the unit got too hot and would turn off, again pushing colder air back into the house. And in summer, the cool air was nowhere sufficient to cool the house. Your only bet would be to keep it on all day with all drapes closed, lights off, do not cook, and don't move around too much. To contrast this, we generally used a wood stove to heat the house. A few logs would keep the house nearly uncomfortably warm for hours. In the summer, we ran an evaporative/swamp cooler. As long as there were no thunderstorms, the house was very pleasant. I cannot be convinced that heat pumps are the way to go.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    It sounds like you had some kind of compliance system that was low-quality or not big enough for your needs. Heat pumps and air conditioners are the same technology, you just make the hot side the inside instead of the outside. They're how your freezer works, but in reverse. Their main limitation is that they aren't effective in extreme cold. To pump heat there needs to be some to begin with. But most populated areas don't get that cold too often and they can be backed up by resistive heaters for the couple of nights a year when it is.
    - rudedogg 6y ago
      > Their main limitation is that they aren't effective in extreme cold. I've researched this a lot since I want to install one and live in a cold climate. The new ones can put out a lot of heat at low temperatures. As an example, see the linked "AHRI Certificate" for the product below. It states: - 11,800 BTU/h at 47 degrees fahrenheit - 7,800 BTU/h at 17 degrees fahrenheit I feel like I've even seen some that say they put out 100% of the rated heat at like 5 degrees fahrenheit. You have to make sure you get a cold weather one, with a base pan heater. They're usually more expensive. Here's one I've looked at for reference. It costs $300 more than the less extreme temperatures one. I don't think it comes with a base pan heater, but I'm not sure: https://senville.com/12000-btu-mini-split-air-conditioner-sena-12hf/ https://senville.com/12000-btu-mini-split-air-conditioner-se...
- perl4ever 6y ago
  >These days, a heat pump is more than capable of both heating and cooling even in the depths of a New England winter Are you talking about air source or ground source? And by "the depths of a New England winter" do you mean temperatures below 50 F? I lived in an apartment for a while that had some sort of heat pump, but there was a switch for "emergency" (i.e. resistive) heat that was necessary for any warmth in the winter.
  - stan_rogers 6y ago
    It would be ground source, and a day of 50°F would feel like shorts and sandals weather that time of the year.
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      You don't have to tell me. I was looking for sources of misunderstanding. In a multifamily structure, at 50 F, in my experience, heat through shared walls probably keeps you reasonably warm without any heat of your own.
  - fyfy18 6y ago
    Modern air source heat pumps can be effective down to -25C (-13F) in heat pump mode, and will automatically switch to resistance heating if needed. I'm building a house where it can get to -35C at times (but usually above -20C in winter) and we will have an air source heat pump for hot water, heating and cooling [0]. Combined with good insulation and 10kW of solar on the roof, we should generate more electricity than we use over the year, and no need to burn any fossil fuels. My wife has insisted we have a wood burning stove for atmosphere, so that will function as a backup heat source if needed, but most likely it will generate too much heat to be used regularly. [0] https://www.daikin.eu/en_us/product-group/air-to-water-heat-pump-low-temperature/daikin_altherma_3_r.html https://www.daikin.eu/en_us/product-group/air-to-water-heat-...
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      I tend to take a dim view of the phrase "can be" because it's so weak. It's logically equivalent to "may not be" and is entirely consistent with "essentially never is". But sure, the heat pump in your future home may well be much better than whatever they were doing decades ago. I don't know if my apartment used ground heat, but I doubt it.
- Dork1234 6y ago
  Heat Pump Domestic Water Heaters are becoming very popular, plus you can combine them with a Drain Waste Heat Recovery system that would provide you with a very efficient system, that you could take long showers. This system would be a good for the environment but a hard sell compared to 90+ efficient natural gas boiler systems.
saeranv 6y ago
However, it's a lot easier to passively heat a house then to passively cool a house. We could easily upgrade building envelope standards, incorporate a heat pump, and reduce the heating-associated CO2 emissions to a fraction. If we did that, I think on net the Houston C02 emissions might be larger, since there really aren't equivalent ways to passively cool space.
- post_break 6y ago
  A lot of texas power grid is renewable however, which helps tilt the scales.
  - saeranv 6y ago
    This works both ways! You can clean the grid in the the Northeast[1], and the clean energy would go a lot further to condition your (properly energy-retrofitted) houses then a house in Houston. [1] For example in Toronto, Ontario, the electric grid is fueled from hydro (and we get passive cooling from lake water). And yet, Toronto's urbanization is so intense (and still growing) so the city still needs to reduce the energy consumption of it's buildings to manage it's peak power consumption. And I would argue this still has a huge impact on CO2 emissions given the reduction of transportation emissions associated with high density areas.
    - frandroid 6y ago
      > hydro Okay, the power company is named Toronto Hydro, but it buys electricity from whatever is available on the grid, be it hydro, gas, nuclear (Darlington wasn't built to power Ottawa...), wind (hello Chatham farmland!) or solar.
      - saeranv 6y ago
        Ah I am humbled, I didn't know that.
- kortilla 6y ago
  There is no evidence this is really possible. Houston homes cooling a house 25 degrees will still be significantly less than maintaining a 100 degree difference in Minneapolis during a -30F snap. Don’t forget that there is significantly less daylight to work with in the winter for this “passive heating” too.
closeparen 6y ago
Thermodynamics isn’t against your quite so much with heating.
cumcastsucks 6y ago
sure! and canada can just fuck right off then!
mnm1 6y ago
Few places in the world get hot enough to kill you outright inside a house. Most of the north (and south in the southern hemisphere) gets cold enough during winter nights to kill without heat. I guess it's puritan now to not want to die?
- readarticle 6y ago
  It’s Puritan to view air conditioning as a new-fangled luxury, while viewing heating as a necessity. 50,000-70,000+ people died in Europe in 2003 due to heat. “Gets hot/cold enough” eyeballing notwithstanding.
Shivetya 6y ago
well don't forget that petrol vehicles tend to run rich until they get to a good operating temperature and you can see these spikes. in some cases it can be worse in winter than summer. as others will point out, moving is not an option but improving energy sources and how its expended are the "well duh" means to manage it. the issue there of course is the scale is beyond what most can conceive and even some who think they understand the scale undershoot by a lot; akin to why some people wonder that it is so difficult to deliver high speed internet to everyone.
fulafel 6y ago
Heating energy is highly dependent on insulation and energy source. In northern cities with CHP powered district heating & heat recovery ventilation, it's fairly good. This in addition to the nature of thermodynamics which makes cooling quite energy-inefficient to start with. (Of course cooling could also be done with energy efficient city district cooling like they do in some places...)

lsllc 6y ago

The north east US is the largest heating oil market in the world, we consume 85% of the heating oil in the US. Most of these oil boilers will be 80% efficient at best. It does get quite cold here in the winter! The answer is building codes that require energy efficient construction techniques, and 0% loans for retrofitting existing houses with better insulation, windows and heating (actually much of this exists via HEAT loans). Tax breaks would help here ... Previously, the only real choices were some sort of fossil fuels with natural gas being the most efficient and cheapest (although it's only available in urban and most suburban areas). These days, a heat pump is more than capable of both heating and cooling even in the depths of a New England winter (although you still need a heat source for hot water). However, you need the right sized ducting for this which can make it cost-prohibitive for a retrofit (but there's no reason why any _new_ house should NOT have a heat-pump).

baybal2 6y ago
This is always stunned me how USA manages to spend so much more money on heating than Russia. Then, I learned that USA has near no cogeneration, and district heating + detached house living with mostly terrible insulation. Most North American apartments are no better, with most highrises looking like radiators.
- saas_sam 6y ago
  The US generates $65k per capita vs. Russia's $11k. That we spend more on heating probably has more to do with having more money to spend on heating. I doubt very much that Russia's buildings' insulation is much better.
  - kazen44 6y ago
    you would be quite suprised actually. especially in cities. Also, appartment buildings are far easier to heat, not to mention a lot of soviet era appartments only have communical heating available. Which basically means the heating gets turned on in oktober for entire city/appartment blocks, Some of those don't even have the option to change the temperate/flow.
  - zeroonetwothree 6y ago
    Some US apartments have shared heating. It’s pretty annoying because you have no control. I’ve had to keep my windows open in the winter because the heating was set too high.
    - Lammy 6y ago
      I keep my windows cracked in the winter despite having control (and payment responsibility, mind) of our heating. It's worth being able to think clearly all winter: https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2016/07/indoor-co2-dumb-and-dumber/ https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2016/07/indoor-co2-du...
      - baybal2 6y ago
        Another thing that strikes most Russians when they go abroad is how well ventilated the buildings are, and how high is the indoor air quality. In Russia, it's most likely an inverse of venue class. Malls, public venues, indoor markets, govt buildings all like to save on ventilation.
      - harpastum 6y ago
        Depending on your climate and what you mean by "windows cracked", you would be much better off with a heat recovery ventilation (HRV) system. They have the explicit purpose of pulling in outside air while only losing about 20% of the heat difference between indoor and out. With slightly open windows, you're losing a bunch of heat for very little ventilation.
        6y ago
- elliekelly 6y ago
  My very first apartment in Boston was on the fourth floor of an old building and management controlled (and paid for) the heat. The building was so inefficient that in order to heat the lower floors to a temperature just barely above freezing my unit would regularly be 85 degrees or more with the windows wide open. I’ll never forget my first big winter storm thinking I was going to die of heat stroke because I had to shut the windows to keep the snow from blowing in. Some people on my floor would leave their window unit air conditioners in year-round to counteract the heat. It was so wasteful and almost no one in the building had a comfortable temperature in their apartment all because it was cheaper/easier for management to just keep burning a ton of oil instead of investing in a bit of insulation.
  - nhf 6y ago
    A lot of the winter overheating comes from poorly insulated pipes, unmaintained steam valves, and broken radiator controls. I lived in Boston for a few years and had the same issue in my first spot - old apartment complex, big boiler in the basement, and way too hot in the winter. Afterwards, I moved to a nicer but even older building where the landlord had bothered to retrofit a modern boiler with separate heating zones for the different apartments. Crucially, the radiators had new control valves the lines had modern insulation. It was like night and day. I think the retrofit cost over $10k, so like you said, the path of least resistance is often crappy heat.
    - milesvp 6y ago
      This. There was a great video posted on HN a couple years ago, by one of the few guys around who tunes up these old radiator systems. Apparently a lot of them were quite genius in design, but years of neglect make them not work very well. Was a fascinating video to hear him talk about common problems, and the amount of troubleshooting and problem solving involved with making these radiator systems work as designed again. Dan Holohan, for those interested. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18430512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18430512
      - elliekelly 6y ago
gruez 6y ago
>but there's no reason why any _new_ house should NOT have a heat-pump Are heatpumps always more economical than gas/oil? I know that natural gas almost always beats electrical resistive heaters in terms of cost, even though resistive heaters are more efficient than natural gas. Heatpumps are supposed to be more efficient than resistive heaters, but in areas with expensive electricity it still might be more expensive.
- csours 6y ago
  >"even though resistive heaters are more efficient than natural gas." You have to be careful about what you measure. Resistive heaters are 100% efficient by definition, but you have to look at the whole chain. The energy has to be converted from X (coal, natural gas, isotopes decay) to electricity and transmitted to your home. Only the last step is 100% efficient. You lose a lot of energy in generation and transmission of electricity.
- cmurphycode 6y ago
  I was curious about this a while ago and did some napkin math. Natural gas is roughly $15 for 1 million BTU. There are 3412 BTU in a kwhr, so if you heated resistively, you'd need 293 kwhr to get 1 million BTU. In my area, which I feel has pretty high electricity cost, we pay $.24 per kwhr, so that'd be $70. Therefore, you need a 70/15 (4.666) COP for your heat pump to match natural gas by price. My understanding is that that would be an unusually high number for cold weather conditions.
  - lsllc 6y ago
    The State of NH Office of Strategic Initiatives has a nice Fuel Price comparison page that they keep up to date (and are adjusted according to cost per MMBTU): https://www.nh.gov/osi/energy/energy-nh/fuel-prices/index.htm https://www.nh.gov/osi/energy/energy-nh/fuel-prices/index.ht... You can see that as of June 2, measured at $ per MMBTU (million BTU): Natural Gas $8.31 Oil $17.62 Propane $32.93 Wood pellets $21.92 Resistive electric $48.84 Air src heat pump $18.74 The fossil fuels are all measured assuming 80% heating efficiency, whereas for propane or natural gas you might well have a high efficiency unit up to 97% which gains you a bit more savings. These prices may vary depending on location and also I think natural gas isn't that common in NH as it's a mostly rural state.
saeranv 6y ago
The effectiviness of heat pumps is insane. I worked in an architectural firm, and had an epiphany one day that every single one of our highest energy performing projects used some sort of (air/ground/water) source heat pump. We had a 100% glass building that was better performing then buildings designed to PassiveHouse standards because the former incorporated a GSHP.
sethammons 6y ago
I lived in the Southern California mountains. For those who are unaware, yes, that means snow. Winter temps down to the low 20s(f). In summer, it seldom got over 90s. It was the house I grew up in, and I purchased it from my dad. Because it was an FHA loan, we had to have a heating/cooling unit installed, so we had a heat pump added. Aside from being absolutely hideous, the unit was utter shit. The "heat" was mostly cold air in winter. The pump would turn on, and ducts' air was cold (being outside and all), cooling off the house MORE when it was already freezing. Eventually some lukewarm air would come in until the unit got too hot and would turn off, again pushing colder air back into the house. And in summer, the cool air was nowhere sufficient to cool the house. Your only bet would be to keep it on all day with all drapes closed, lights off, do not cook, and don't move around too much. To contrast this, we generally used a wood stove to heat the house. A few logs would keep the house nearly uncomfortably warm for hours. In the summer, we ran an evaporative/swamp cooler. As long as there were no thunderstorms, the house was very pleasant. I cannot be convinced that heat pumps are the way to go.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  It sounds like you had some kind of compliance system that was low-quality or not big enough for your needs. Heat pumps and air conditioners are the same technology, you just make the hot side the inside instead of the outside. They're how your freezer works, but in reverse. Their main limitation is that they aren't effective in extreme cold. To pump heat there needs to be some to begin with. But most populated areas don't get that cold too often and they can be backed up by resistive heaters for the couple of nights a year when it is.
  - rudedogg 6y ago
    > Their main limitation is that they aren't effective in extreme cold. I've researched this a lot since I want to install one and live in a cold climate. The new ones can put out a lot of heat at low temperatures. As an example, see the linked "AHRI Certificate" for the product below. It states: - 11,800 BTU/h at 47 degrees fahrenheit - 7,800 BTU/h at 17 degrees fahrenheit I feel like I've even seen some that say they put out 100% of the rated heat at like 5 degrees fahrenheit. You have to make sure you get a cold weather one, with a base pan heater. They're usually more expensive. Here's one I've looked at for reference. It costs $300 more than the less extreme temperatures one. I don't think it comes with a base pan heater, but I'm not sure: https://senville.com/12000-btu-mini-split-air-conditioner-sena-12hf/ https://senville.com/12000-btu-mini-split-air-conditioner-se...
perl4ever 6y ago
>These days, a heat pump is more than capable of both heating and cooling even in the depths of a New England winter Are you talking about air source or ground source? And by "the depths of a New England winter" do you mean temperatures below 50 F? I lived in an apartment for a while that had some sort of heat pump, but there was a switch for "emergency" (i.e. resistive) heat that was necessary for any warmth in the winter.
- stan_rogers 6y ago
  It would be ground source, and a day of 50°F would feel like shorts and sandals weather that time of the year.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    You don't have to tell me. I was looking for sources of misunderstanding. In a multifamily structure, at 50 F, in my experience, heat through shared walls probably keeps you reasonably warm without any heat of your own.
- fyfy18 6y ago
  Modern air source heat pumps can be effective down to -25C (-13F) in heat pump mode, and will automatically switch to resistance heating if needed. I'm building a house where it can get to -35C at times (but usually above -20C in winter) and we will have an air source heat pump for hot water, heating and cooling [0]. Combined with good insulation and 10kW of solar on the roof, we should generate more electricity than we use over the year, and no need to burn any fossil fuels. My wife has insisted we have a wood burning stove for atmosphere, so that will function as a backup heat source if needed, but most likely it will generate too much heat to be used regularly. [0] https://www.daikin.eu/en_us/product-group/air-to-water-heat-pump-low-temperature/daikin_altherma_3_r.html https://www.daikin.eu/en_us/product-group/air-to-water-heat-...
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    I tend to take a dim view of the phrase "can be" because it's so weak. It's logically equivalent to "may not be" and is entirely consistent with "essentially never is". But sure, the heat pump in your future home may well be much better than whatever they were doing decades ago. I don't know if my apartment used ground heat, but I doubt it.
Dork1234 6y ago
Heat Pump Domestic Water Heaters are becoming very popular, plus you can combine them with a Drain Waste Heat Recovery system that would provide you with a very efficient system, that you could take long showers. This system would be a good for the environment but a hard sell compared to 90+ efficient natural gas boiler systems.

saeranv 6y ago

However, it's a lot easier to passively heat a house then to passively cool a house. We could easily upgrade building envelope standards, incorporate a heat pump, and reduce the heating-associated CO2 emissions to a fraction. If we did that, I think on net the Houston C02 emissions might be larger, since there really aren't equivalent ways to passively cool space.

post_break 6y ago
A lot of texas power grid is renewable however, which helps tilt the scales.
- saeranv 6y ago
  This works both ways! You can clean the grid in the the Northeast[1], and the clean energy would go a lot further to condition your (properly energy-retrofitted) houses then a house in Houston. [1] For example in Toronto, Ontario, the electric grid is fueled from hydro (and we get passive cooling from lake water). And yet, Toronto's urbanization is so intense (and still growing) so the city still needs to reduce the energy consumption of it's buildings to manage it's peak power consumption. And I would argue this still has a huge impact on CO2 emissions given the reduction of transportation emissions associated with high density areas.
  - frandroid 6y ago
    > hydro Okay, the power company is named Toronto Hydro, but it buys electricity from whatever is available on the grid, be it hydro, gas, nuclear (Darlington wasn't built to power Ottawa...), wind (hello Chatham farmland!) or solar.
    - saeranv 6y ago
      Ah I am humbled, I didn't know that.
kortilla 6y ago
There is no evidence this is really possible. Houston homes cooling a house 25 degrees will still be significantly less than maintaining a 100 degree difference in Minneapolis during a -30F snap. Don’t forget that there is significantly less daylight to work with in the winter for this “passive heating” too.

closeparen 6y ago

Thermodynamics isn’t against your quite so much with heating.

cumcastsucks 6y ago

sure! and canada can just fuck right off then!

mnm1 6y ago

Few places in the world get hot enough to kill you outright inside a house. Most of the north (and south in the southern hemisphere) gets cold enough during winter nights to kill without heat. I guess it's puritan now to not want to die?

readarticle 6y ago
It’s Puritan to view air conditioning as a new-fangled luxury, while viewing heating as a necessity. 50,000-70,000+ people died in Europe in 2003 due to heat. “Gets hot/cold enough” eyeballing notwithstanding.

Shivetya 6y ago

well don't forget that petrol vehicles tend to run rich until they get to a good operating temperature and you can see these spikes. in some cases it can be worse in winter than summer. as others will point out, moving is not an option but improving energy sources and how its expended are the "well duh" means to manage it. the issue there of course is the scale is beyond what most can conceive and even some who think they understand the scale undershoot by a lot; akin to why some people wonder that it is so difficult to deliver high speed internet to everyone.

fulafel 6y ago

Heating energy is highly dependent on insulation and energy source. In northern cities with CHP powered district heating & heat recovery ventilation, it's fairly good. This in addition to the nature of thermodynamics which makes cooling quite energy-inefficient to start with. (Of course cooling could also be done with energy efficient city district cooling like they do in some places...)