4 ms·

Cutting down A/C usage is, in fact, an important climate change mitigation.

comboy 6y ago
Climate change doesn't care if I use my 1kWh for gaming on a console, using dryer, A/C or computing digits of pi which have already been computed because I wanted to do it on my super inefficient old computer. There are many ways to mitigate climate change but I don't think that telling people what should they do with electricity is the way to go. Perhaps focus more on how the energy gets produced, not how it is consumed.
- effie 6y ago
  > I don't think that telling people what should they do with electricity is the way to go. If the advice is sound, maybe we should be telling people about it. For example, we could recommend to replace cheap ineffective ACs with effective but expensive heat pumps and some small percentage of people will do that. But this won't do much to mitigate CO2 production. AC energy consumption isn't a major driver of CO2 pollution, fossil-fueled transport and coal/gas power plants are.
effie 6y ago
It is not, because 1) it is quite a small part of total electricity consumption (around 1/30 in U.S.), and 2) it is unlikely to be cut down, due to more and more people on the planet and getting higher standard of living. Important actions are those that are realistic and have an impact. For example, cancelling coal/gas power plants, building more CO2-free power plants, getting rid of combustion motors in naval transport, etc. Everybody can have an AC if we have CO2-free electric energy production.
- azernik 6y ago
  1) 1/30 of total electricity consumption is a hell of a lot! 2) Yes, developing-economy per capita energy usage is going to go up while they catch up to developed-economy standards of living; that's happening in all categories. Developed economies still need to reduce their energy usage. e.g. we're not stopping our switch to electric cars just because half of India is getting their first gas-powered scooter. Everyone can have A/C, but we need to keep our usage as low as is feasible.
  - effie 6y ago
    Agreed. But while BTC consumes a lot, so do hundreds of other kinds of activities that are also by themselves insignificant. The pain of CO2 production should be felt by every consumer proportionally to what they consume. We need to fix overall energy policy, make everyone pay for their consumption just amount, and keep fixing the damn production to get carbon neutral.
    - azernik 6y ago
      BTC is particularly egregious because it produces a lot less social value in exchange for its energy usage than A/C

Climate change doesn't care if I use my 1kWh for gaming on a console, using dryer, A/C or computing digits of pi which have already been computed because I wanted to do it on my super inefficient old computer. There are many ways to mitigate climate change but I don't think that telling people what should they do with electricity is the way to go. Perhaps focus more on how the energy gets produced, not how it is consumed.

effie 6y ago
> I don't think that telling people what should they do with electricity is the way to go. If the advice is sound, maybe we should be telling people about it. For example, we could recommend to replace cheap ineffective ACs with effective but expensive heat pumps and some small percentage of people will do that. But this won't do much to mitigate CO2 production. AC energy consumption isn't a major driver of CO2 pollution, fossil-fueled transport and coal/gas power plants are.

effie 6y ago

It is not, because 1) it is quite a small part of total electricity consumption (around 1/30 in U.S.), and 2) it is unlikely to be cut down, due to more and more people on the planet and getting higher standard of living. Important actions are those that are realistic and have an impact. For example, cancelling coal/gas power plants, building more CO2-free power plants, getting rid of combustion motors in naval transport, etc. Everybody can have an AC if we have CO2-free electric energy production.

azernik 6y ago
1) 1/30 of total electricity consumption is a hell of a lot! 2) Yes, developing-economy per capita energy usage is going to go up while they catch up to developed-economy standards of living; that's happening in all categories. Developed economies still need to reduce their energy usage. e.g. we're not stopping our switch to electric cars just because half of India is getting their first gas-powered scooter. Everyone can have A/C, but we need to keep our usage as low as is feasible.
- effie 6y ago
  Agreed. But while BTC consumes a lot, so do hundreds of other kinds of activities that are also by themselves insignificant. The pain of CO2 production should be felt by every consumer proportionally to what they consume. We need to fix overall energy policy, make everyone pay for their consumption just amount, and keep fixing the damn production to get carbon neutral.
  - azernik 6y ago
    BTC is particularly egregious because it produces a lot less social value in exchange for its energy usage than A/C