Amory Lovins talks about this in "factor four" (great book). They go through how the refrigerator is a textbook example of loads of small design decisions endin

Amory Lovins talks about this in "factor four" (great book). They go through how the refrigerator is a textbook example of loads of small design decisions ending up with something really suboptimal. In a cold climate, what you do is put the radiator coils on the outside of the house. Every kitchen would have two pipe hookups where the fridge goes, leading to the coils on the outside. Then you get the fridge and plug it in just like you do with washers. (Or you could plug it into your heat pump, which you should use to heat your house anyway.)