That doesn’t seem to match. In this case, AFAICT, both wanted the cooling effect. No one wants the heat. The saline solution was now being used to cool double

That doesn’t seem to match. In this case, AFAICT, both wanted the cooling effect. No one wants the heat. The saline solution was now being used to cool double the volume (2x the cellar space), so it seems pretty clear-cut to me — if saline cooling cost increases with volume being cooled, it should be trivial to say he’s now covering someone else’s costs. I don’t even see why we even need to bother digging into thermodynamics — looking at the cost structure of the cooling unit alone should tell us the answer. If there’s no relationship saline-usage-cost based on volume, then it still taken but no harm was done. If there is, then it’s trivial to calculate how much harm occurred If one cellar was being heated, and the other cooled, then your paradox could be triggered (but it also seems to me the “paradox” is trivially resolved by double-entry accounting — the problem is simply in the name “waste”)