Re:Chefs are adapting their menus for chilly outdoor dining
by mumblemumble on Thursday October 22, 2020 @09:45PM
(#24865248)
I'm curious what the energy formula on those things looks like. Is cold weather outdoor socializing going to help us catch up on the backlog of fossil fuel we haven't been burning in our cars?
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Re:Chefs are adapting their menus for chilly outdoor dining
by Flashtoo on Friday October 23, 2020 @03:49AM
(#24867003)
A quick calculation: space heating in food service normally uses 46 trillion BTU of energy [1]. That's 0.05% of all energy consumed in the US, which has dipped by about 10-15% [2]. So if these space heaters would increase heating energy use 5-fold annually across the entire food service industry (I think that's a high estimate), that would undo 2% of the dip.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/data/2012/c&e/pdf..., table E1. [2] https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec2_3.pdf