I was probably not clear enough, my point was that even in normal times, energy use im some countries can be almost double per capita than other similar countries. But even in the more energy efficient countries there's room for improvement - better insulation, more efficient appliances on the individual level, and better urban planning etc. on the society level.

Sure it's sustainable. Wear a jacket indoors. Won't kill you.

This is how (a lot of) students live in Glasgow; jackets indoors, heating when you have guests.

I even lower heating when I have guests. Most of the time human bodies emit heat enough (N=1, for my lodging).

Yeah, when i have 4+ people in my living room i have to lower down the heating or open a window.

If you're not bothered by mold.

Mold is due to inadequate ventilation, not low temperatures.

It's both. Humidity will more readily condense on lower temperature walls and windows resulting in mould. You need a combination of ventilation to lower the dewpoint and warmer walls so as they don't meet the dewpoint.

Your choice of spelling of "mold" is consistent with your apparent lack of experience living in high humidity parts of the world :-)

Are you saying that the US is low humidity? Visit Florida.

In most buildings, ventilating a room while preserving temp in winter involves heating the incoming air. So there's a sweet spot between heating and ventilating when it comes to avoiding humidity.

that's why you don't ventilate by opening windows wide open but with purpose built fans with a heat recovery device.

That's the sense of the "most buildings" caveat: double flow ventilation systems are still uncommon in Europe, especially for housing.

If you keep your place at 15C and have a hot shower, you're going to need a hell of a lot of ventilation to keep the mold down.

Having a hot shower would be rather inconsistent with keeping a place at 15C, at least when the purpose is to save energy.

But you cannot ventilate everything and mold comes with moisture.

If you can't crack the windows open a few times a day for a few minutes, then you got bigger problems that require proper solutions. In this case a proper dehumidifier is much more energy-efficient than keeping the heaters on.

If you have a old house, with a basement and lots of stuff, than it is quite hard, that the ventilation reaches every corner.

And those corners will get moldy.

Oh and I don't have a house, nor a mold problem, but know enough people who do have, even though they do ventilate reasonable. Houses were build with the assumption, that they are heated.

Now you can build new houses that are better designed - but you cannot magically adjust all the existing houses.

>Houses were build with the assumption, that they are heated.

Yes and no.

It depends on the country and areas within it and it applies mainly to houses built in the last 60-70 years or so, maybe a few more years back in cities (for heating with radiators) before that time many, many houses were (poorly) heated by fireplaces and/or stoves.

Besides, the permeability of the building materials was traditionally much better, and windows/doors were leaky, guaranteeing a much better ventilation.

At least here in Italy the heating was a luxury until well after World War II, particularly in the country and in small vilages, anecdotally my family used to have a house in a small village in central Italy where the heating until the '70's was based on the devices that can be seen here (Italian):

https://www.muet.it/storie/tutte-le-storie/item/il-riscaldam...

Particularly the kitchen and dining room was heated by the "stufa economica" that was also used to cook meals, the sitting room had a fireplace that heated also (a little) the bedroom behind it, and there was another large bedroom heated by a "stufa in terracotta", having a "prete" for each bed was needed.

The house was anyway very, very cold, particularly at night/early morning.

"It depends on the country and areas within it"

Well, obviously it does, but I would think most houses in europe do have to be heated and were build in the last 60-70 years and those I was refering to.

And before that, yes it was something like 2 bugs cancel each other out. Leaky windows prevents mold.

(And in general only rich people could afford to heat the whole house)

Dehumidifiers are actually a pretty good way to heat your house if you have a humidity problem. You recover significant amounts of latent heat of vaporisation when running it.

I keep my house at 18C. It feels ok with a jacket or a blanket. There's no mold in sight anywhere. I guess you would need to have a humidity problem in your house to be affected by mold (my house has a central ventilation system which also keeps the humidity at bay - never above 40%).

A jacket at 18?!

If you are sitting all day in front of a computer, you need something. If you walk around, you'll be fine.

I reduced the indoor temperature this year to see how it was, and kept ~18'C. I think I'll keep it anyway - less energy used, and it's totally doable. When I have someone over for dinner, I bring it back to 20-21'C.

When I was sitting at my computer for long periods I'd just make a warm bottle with hot water to put my feet on and also drink hot tea. That was enough to be comfortable even at around 16°C.

Maybe we mean something different with "jacket". Don't people wear sweaters and thermal underwear at home? And with those you would be conformable at 15 to 17.

English is not my first language. I suppose you would say "sweater" (but I said jacket because I prefer those garments with a zipper at the front: which I thought was always called "jacket" regardless of whether it's very light or thick).

You're not wrong. What people think will depend on context, and probably on region. In US English, jacket is a wide ranging term that could easily include a zip up sweater. If you wanted to be extra clear, you could saw "sweater jacket" or "fleece jacket" (if it's not woven).

It is very difficult to compare self-reported temperatures! Really if you get into it, there are many crappy sensors, crappy thermostats, thermostats mounted near single pane glass, etc... I spend some time complaining about my Nest V3, many people did, but it's just too difficult to get a reliable measurement. Btw, in the end my conclusion was that the Nest was doing quite well. Just the Shelly and the Hue sensors were easily 1-2 degrees off.

Btw, what's up with Nest? I want another V3 in my new house, but they are not available anymore??

> There's no mold in sight anywhere.

Not yet anyway. It usually starts in e.g. bathrooms.

I've been keeping it cold for at least 7 years. Maybe because my bathrooms have heated floors, so there's never any water after a few hours you've showered, there just isn't any mold at all, it's perfectly clean.

I suggest buying a hygrometer so you don't have to guess. In most places you'll quickly find out that you can bring humidity down to acceptable levels with a few minutes of "shock" ventilation. You can of course turn on the heating for a few minutes to bring humidity down a few percent-points more (entirely optional), but it absolutely doesn't have to be turned on all day long to have acceptable levels.

Not if you're young and healthy. Older people get less mobile and stiff when it's 15c inside though. And for health purposes it is suggested to not let the temperature get below 16c due to issues with moisture and mould.

Wife teaches exercise classes for the older 50’s and this is a cyclical problem. High temps mean less movement is required to keep warm which leads to loss of muscle mass and lower mobility, which requires higher temps to keep warm and so on….

> Sure it's sustainable. Wear a jacket indoors. Won't kill you.

Right. That's why we have technology and other advanced things, to live like cavemen used to.

Not everybody lives at the right latitude to have 22 degrees Celsius indoors without additional heating in the winter.

I believe the idea from above poster is not that you should stop heating and "live like a caveman", but that many people would make great savings by wearing a wool sweater on top of their t-shirt and turning the temp down a couple degrees. As a case in point, I never spent a winter with 22°c indoors, usually it's around 18-19°c.

That being said, as someone else said, controlling humidity is also a concern for the long-term viability of buildings.

Anything under 21 during night for me makes it uncomfortable to sleep. At 22 for me it is the perfect temperature and in the winter I wear a normal clothes, too cold for t-shirts at 22.

Jesus, I got uncomfortable just reading this. 21 at night would be insufferable for us (we’re in western Canada).

17 at night, 19.5 during the day is as hot as our house has ever been in winter; though with a new baby I suspect that might change by 0.5 for a while.

I'm in Ireland. My ancient cottage gets down to about 13°C with every-other-day heating, even if it's 0° outside. Rarely colder. I do indeed just wear a jacket or a sweater, and I have a heated blanket on the couch. You get used to it and start to prefer it! If it were 22° in here I'd be in a T-shirt opening windows to let some heat out.

22 degrees is pretty hot honestly, t-shirt and shorts temperature, is that what you're used to?

I'm currently happy at 18, it's pretty nice if you're a bit active.

Maybe we can just agree on this: set the temperature in your home to whatever temperature you feel like. Depending on the setting that might be more or less expensive but that is an optimization problem for you to solve, not others. Don't pretend you are some kind of climate change martyr because you are wearing a sweater.

> Don't pretend you are some kind of climate change martyr because you are wearing a sweater.

Where did i say or imply any of that?

This is more of a general comment on an emergent theme of many comments on this post. Not directly at anyone in particular.

I do that every winter - not because of the high prices for heating but because heating gets my skin dry. So I keep it around 18-19° and wear a jacket/warm clothes and drink hot tee and have a hot-water bottle. I also have a wearable blanket which is just super comfy.

A humidifier will combat the dryness if you'd rather be wearing only a t-shirt.

Humidifiers are things that I will only run if I have to. I would much rather turn the heat down than run a unit that has to be refilled with de-ionized water constantly and blows moisture into whatever it is next to, and makes a huge mess if knocked over. It also has to be cleaned constantly because even with RO/DI water in it mold still grows.

I didn't notice that. I kept temperature at usual 24.5 degrees. I have a heat pump and a solar pv though.

Damn, we had the temp set to 17 or 18, if I walk in and it's 21 it feels like a wall of heat in the winter. I can't imagine having the thermostat set to 24, I'm pretty sure it would be uncomfortably hot unless you never go outside..

I've spent a fair share of my life in a very cold region where people overheat their houses so I'm used to high temperatures.

Yeah, some people have to lower the temps to compensate for your sauna :-)

I'm paying my bills and I'm giving about 1.5 mWh per year back to the grid for free. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong.

Clearly not. What's your total energy consumption? Unless your looking at something closer to passivhaus levels of 15kWh/(m^2.yr) your house is too hot (and frankly, however efficient your house is the temperature is absurd). That is a statement of ethics. The price you pay for your energy doesn't even begin to pay for the damage. That is a big part of the problem. Moreover, every kWh spent on overheating your house is a kWh we as a society need to find for all the other things that are less stupid.

Put on a jumper. Or even, let your body adjust. There's plenty of evidence that keeping your body working to stay warm when you are healthy is very good forblood sugar control, which has additional benefits.

About 1.2 mWh per month on average. In summer time I generate more than I consume. In winter time I generate about 15% of my consumption.

My house is extremely well insulated (BER A2), dunno if it qualifies as a passivhouse.

Also I'm exporting more than a megawatt per year back to grid for free, so you (as a society) may be happy.

So, I don't think I'm being unethical.

> I'm exporting more than a megawatt per year back to grid for free

Do you take into account the energy needed to grow and transport the food you eat? To extract the material needed for objects you own? To build your car? To maintain the roads you use? I guess you obviously don't use fossil fuels at all and instead rely exclusively on the clean energy you produce?

Because if you don't, then you are still overall a consumer of energy.

But even if you were a net producer of clean energy, we as a society have a big problem of consuming too much overall. We will have to reduce that at some point (whether we want it or not). So it would be great if people started thinking about not eating meat for every meal, taking a plane every second week-end, and living in a sauna.

Again, I think that I'm doing better than the majority of the people and it makes zero sense for me personally to save several hundreds of kWt/hs per year (which I compensate through PV) while there are major industrial offenders around. Also I travel rarely but I can't work while on vegetarian diet.

The whole point of the energy / climate crisis that is coming is that it's not about money.

We as a society need to consume less energy (because we depend on fossil fuels that emit CO2), and anyway we will have less energy in the future (because... peak production of fossil fuels).

There is no price on that: we need to do less with less.

I (as a society) would happily (or unhappily) do whatever is necessary when everyone does that and the system is fair.

At this point I see zero reasons to conserve damn solar energy while half of the country still uses OFCH.

Yup, that's rational. That's why I don't believe that we will solve this major crisis. We will just have to survive with the consequences.

Probably, but if your solution is to propose me to reduce my home temperature to 19 degrees instead of dealing with Russia and China burning shittons of coal - that's kinda laughable.

I guess my point is that we will need to do *a whole lot more* than most people are comfortable imagining.

One way is to say "well I don't care, I won't do anything until I don't get a choice, and probably at that point it will hurt a lot".

Another is to face it, start doing things, and pushing your politicians to enforce very big plans. One problem I see is that everyone says "I would be ready to do a lot more if I knew everyone else did", but when it's time to vote, they don't.

Not being ready to go lower than 24.5 degrees (doesn't have to be 19 if that's not bearable for you) in winter does not sound like you are ready to do much, though.

> Another is to face it, start doing things

As I said before, I'm living in a house insulated up to the highest standard, I have a heat pump and a solar PV, the largest PV array in the estate. I think this is something reasonable. I work remotely, I don't drive much and I drive with very good MPG, I've figured out that my car has the best MPG at 90 kmph so I drive about 90 kmph, I don't travel often, I'm carefully sorting my waste (most people throw everything into the black bin), I'm trying to buy things which last and I'm trying to repair and sell, I think if everyone does that it would make some reasonable impact.

Though I don't think that 19 or whatever degrees is something of your business.

> you are ready to do much

I'm not ready to do unreasonable (or idiotic) things. Why 24.5? Because I've figured out that it's the most optimal temperature for me.

You seemed to be surprised because people reacted to your 24.5 degrees. I don't see how people could have guessed all that upfront.

> I'm not ready to do unreasonable (or idiotic) things. Why 24.5? Because I've figured out that it's the most optimal temperature for me.

Let's say that your case is extremely special and for you it does not make sense to not overheat, it does not make it unreasonable (or idiotic) to say that the vast majority of people should not overheat, does it?

24.5, are you walking around in underwear? I couldn't live with that temperature in winter, where I am wearing thick pullovers and jeans.

Unrelated: Does your solar pv really do anything for your heatpump? What's your kwh/kwp for december-february? I don't think it'll be anywhere close to the heatpump consumtion.

T-shirt and shorts, just as God intended.

> I couldn't live with that temperature in winter, where I am wearing thick pullovers and jeans.

Are you really wearing those indoors?

In winter, I imagine most people do. You can save a lot of energy by wearing a bit more clothes. Although I'm sure that equation looks different if it's all coming from your own solar panels.

I know it's a sign of prosperity and my perspective is probably lucky.

However, I find it SUPER SAD that... in developed countries people are living less comfortably during the winter than the middle class in Romania, a developing country.

It makes no sense. In Romania, everyone who's at least middle class sets the thermostat to 22-23 degrees and basically only wears t-shirts and shorts indoors.

So a German making €40k net per year lives worse from this point of view compared to a Romanian making €20k net per year.

It's actually not a sign of relative poverty but of education in my experience. Most people do it because they understand climate change.

Thank you for calling me uneducated :-)

Also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc

Isn’t gas one of the cleaner sources of energy?

It's the least bad of the fossil fuels, but it's still a fossil fuel.

The majority of natural gas is extracted along with oil. However, methane is a product of anaerobic decomposition. It can be produced from municipal waste. Natural gas produced from waste is net zero carbon.

In the US, and I assume elsewhere, the single greatest reduction is carbon emissions was achieved by switching from coal plants to natural gas plants. Thats a win in my book. No fossil fuels at any cost is a losing proposition. Incremental progress to sustainable energy is how we get to sustainability.

I'm not opposed to gas as a transitional technology. Same with nuclear. They're both significantly better than coal and oil, and if using them helps us get rid of coal and oil, then that's great and we should do it.

But I don't see them as the end goal; that's still 100% renewable to me.

What's wrong with nuclear climate-wise?..

It's fine on CO2, but it has other risks, not to mention its own pretty long-term waste problem.

But for the short term, I think that's preferable to the much bigger disaster of global warming and climate change.

Energy that isn't consumed is the easiest way to reduce carbon emissions. Obviously no one demands we switch of gas power plants and let coal power plants run instead, but climate change has reached a point where we need to act on all fronts at the same time. So switch to renewables, switch to cleaner solutions and conserve as much energy as possible.

Nope. There is C in CH4, and that C makes CO2. There is no C in U, though. Nuclear energy is good for climate.

What does it matter? I wear t-shirts a jumper and soft pants indoors, it's a bit odd to me that anyone finds that problematic

I'd happily wear a jacket, if that can help with shutting down a coal power plant

What an attitude.

Apart from that, Romania's energy consumption comes 75% from coal, oil and gas. THAT is something that does not makes sense and something that is SUPER SAD. And to walk around in shorts and t-shirt in the winter when you are heating with those sources is just plain stupid.

It's unfortunately these kind of attitudes which will make it hard to reduce climate change.

1. Source?

2. That's just dumb. Romania reduced its energy usage a ton since 1989 plus its per capita usage is super low, if someone needs to look in the mirror it's the US, Australia, Canada, Germany, China (China for the industrial pollution primarily), etc.

3. Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiw6_JakZFc

If we really care about climate change we would take care of the major offenders first. And when we come to domestic heating we would run reasonable insulation programs and heat pump installation programs instead of the laughable "grants", ban OFCH, etc. I think that if I generate 25% of my winter electricity consumption on my own, I may increase my in-house temperature without killing the damn planet. Also don't forget that the total footprint of a heat pump is nothing against a typical OFCH system.

Why would you take care of major offenders first, instead of taking care of all offenders at once? It's not as if you shutting down your heating means the coal power plant next door looks at your chimney and goes "Hey lads, this sucker switched of the heating, add an extra shovel of coals!".

Because my personal contribution won't change anything on the global scale but it would significantly impair my quality of life. Also because I've taken reasonable actions to reduce my footprint. Also because if we take care of the major offenders responsible for 70%-80% of the emissions there might be no need to care about the rest.

I even doubt that anything would change if everyone in the developed world switches to this extreme economy. E.g. Russia burns coal and wastes hundreds of gigawatt hours to heat the atmosphere because of how their heating systems are designed. But of course it's lot easier to force me, a person who works from home, drives a hybrid car with 52MPG on average (and I rarely do more than a couple of hundreds km per month), travels couple of times per year and who installed a heat pump and a solar PV, to live with 19 degrees than to deal with Russia. It's equally easier to force me going full vegan instead of applying seemingly working solutions to reduce meat industry emissions (toilet training, seaweed diet, artificial meat in the end).

> Why would you take care of major offenders first, instead of taking care of all offenders at once?

For the same reason that if you had two jobs with the exact same conditions, but one paid twice as much as the other, you would probably pick the one that pays more. Efficiency matters. Resources are limited. Oil is a resource. The capacity to take care of offenders is another.

I am an energy-guzzling American and even for me 24.5C seems crazy in the winter time. That's 76F! My elderly grandmother (who has circulation issues and so is always cold) keeps her heat at 72F. Why would anyone want to wear shorts indoors when they will have to change them anyway to leave the house while it's 10F (-12C) outside? Seems like you're just wasting energy to inconvenience yourself?

Shorts are comfortable and I'm not OP, 22-23 is enough for me.

The first thing when I come home is to change out of jeans and co and into more comfortable clothes.

There are few clothes more comfortable than a t-shirt and shorts.

Wearing shorts is a bit declasse.

24.5 is my target point. Considering hysteresis, the actual temperature varies between 23.5 and 25.5.

OTOH, why sad? I would have found the info sad if Romanians including the middle class could not afford enough heating and had to shiver in winter, whereas people in Germany lived in overheated apartments. According to what you say, many people are happy: Many Romanians are warm, many Germans save money / energy / CO₂ or so (I am happy to have done that myself by hardly ever heating this winter).

> I find it SUPER SAD that... in developed countries people are living less comfortably

In my country, we say that the bedroom should not be warmer than 19, because that's bad for sleeping :-). So it's really a choice. If I go to bed and the temperature is 24.5, I open the window.

Also I don't find it less comfortable to wear more clothes in the winter than in the summer. Ok, working from home on a computer at 19 degrees is a little bit cold, so I tend to use a warm water bottle. But honestly that's really fine.

I remember when I went to Canada (from Australia). It was snowing outside and many people ansewered their doors with no shirt on as the inside temp was so high!

I've literally never seen this in Canada.

I’m often naked at home and don’t have it that hot!

Obviously PV doesn't do much in winter, it generated just about 200 kWh (my system is nominated for 7.5 kW peak output, I can get about 6 kW peak output in the summer) in December while the pump consumed about 850 kWh. It's a new house with highest insulation rating and even in the winter if there is any sun the house gets hot even without the pump.

Anyways I'm happy enough with my bills, even winter bills.

I live in Germany and honestly didn't notice any difference. I heated my home normally and it also didn't feel colder in other places I visited.

I live in Belgium and my house was cold all winter because I couldn’t afford the price spike.

A villa, not an apartment?

I live far to the north, in an apartment, and didn't notice anything this winter, wherever I went. But I heard someone in their villa here nearby actually moved elsewhere, over the winter, because of the high cost of heating

I guess someone who owns a villa in Belgium doesn't really have to worry about electricity prices :P

Villa just means house in that context, I believe

I am 'owner' of a villa in Belgium. Villas in Belgium vary between 250K to 750K for a normal family 3 to 4 bedroom house. Typically a house has 1 kitchen, 1 bathroom. The price is very dependent on the location! Well we saw the monthly gas+elec price of 150 euros before the crisis, suddenly go 6-fold, so we did worry a lot. We decreased our heating a few degrees and used a lot more bio fuel during winter. Lately the price is about 3 or 4 fold the price of before the crisis.

Edit: by villa we typically mean a house that is not adjacent to another house.

750K US or Euros?

I visited Germany and honestly I felt pretty uncomfortable most of the time. I could tell that people were conserving on heating - everywhere from public buildings to restaurants to where I was staying.

It certainly was much colder at my public sector employer in Germany. My hands turned blue in my office and I had to wear fingerless gloves some of the time.

* * *

Here in France it was the first winter where the cold actually bothered me, and the first time I had to heat in 5 years.

10x in August. By January it was lower than 2021 winter.

The person you replied to was talking about retail consumers. Retail prices don't always move in step with wholesale.

There's a saying that if wholesale prices rises, retail prices quickly rise; if wholesale prices drop, suddenly there’s a disconnect.

This is always the case. If e.g. petrol moved in tandem with the price of oil, it would have gone up and down by a lot - it's gone from $25 / barrel in 2020 to $110 in 2022.

I for one hope the consumer market will get an overcorrection and I can fix my contract for a few years, since I'm not convinced we've seen the last of energy price fluctuation.

I don't know where you're based, but you are mentioning prices in dollars in another comment, so I'm assuming most likely US.

Continental Europe's got much better housing than the bits of the US which I've visited. East coast more relevant here than the West, given exactly where I went, but Boston, Providence, etc., were awful build quality, the "middle class" places around there were even worse than the "working class" Victorian terraces and post-War council houses in the UK.

A lot of stuff in Boston and other places in the East Coast is actually pre-War and pretty terrible. I grew up in the Upper Midwest (Minnesota), and our house, built around 1980, was very well insulated. Double paned windows, etc. Houses built today to even just code are even better, and anyone going a step beyond code has an insanely efficient house.

My current house in Virginia is over 100 years old, and isn’t terribly well insulated and has single pane windows (although we have storm windows which help… also it’s small and is a duplex which helps).

So the places you visited (on East Coast, big old cities) are not necessarily very representative. Any place with newer housing will have better insulation. (And yes, I realize that a lot of people think newer houses are cheap crap, but overall I think building codes have improved average quality significantly, and the reason you don’t see it in some old houses is because the crap old houses were already torn down, ie sample bias.)

It's survivor bias, and a great point to make when people say old construction is better. Really bad construction simply doesn't survive long enough to be considered old

I’m not here to defend US housing quality but if you’d asked me the worst-built houses prior to your post, I’d have said the Eastern US, specifically New England/Boston.

While what you are saying is true, there has also been a tremendous amount of investment in energy efficiency, and that is something that I would expect to continue for quite a while.

I know my mother (based in .nl) had her heater set to 14 degrees because she simply couldn’t afford the gas bill. And there are huge threads on Reddit about people in similar situations in .nl last winter.

My personal gas+electricity bill went from €180 a month to almost €600. I really think the price of energy is a huge influence in the reduction of usage.

Capitalism worked. Price signals are very effective, though painful