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.