>In the USA, given that the vast majority of apartments don't have to pay energy bills, this means they don't have an economic incentive to upgrade appliances, provide adequate insulation during construction, or maintain air seals.

I don't understand this argument.

Someone is paying the bill (the owner), and they are also paying for maintaining air seals and upgrading appliances (you don't bring your own). Why don't you think there are economic incentives?

In fact, I'd argue there are greater incentives to do this for the building owner: greater scale and more efficiencies.

I think OP might be saying apartment owners don’t pay the bills (because the apartment tenants do).

Then the argument makes sense.

That's the key, though. The owner is not the one paying the bill most of the time, it's the tenant.

If the windows leak heat like a sieve, a cheap landlord won't care, because they have no incentive to lower energy costs.

The provider (landlord) and payer (tenant) being two distinct entities is part of the problem, but the other part is that the landlord actively hides that sort of information. If you ask how much water costs, they'll likely not answer, might throw out some fuzzy idea of it being normal, perhaps give you the rate per gallon, and definitely not tell you about the actively leaking pipe whose costs the tenants have to share or about the outdated appliances using 3x too much water. You don't learn about that till you're trapped in a lease, and the amount they're scamming you isn't usually worth the activation energy of taking legal action or moving.

I've rented 3 different apartments in the US. I always had to pay electricity myself. The water was included as part of the rent.

That's what the previous comment is saying - the tenant is responsible for the electricity cost, but has no ability to make capital improvements/investments to increase efficiency. Meanwhile, the apartment owner has no incentive to make those same investments, because they aren't on the hook for the monthly energy costs. It's a mismatched set of incentives that results in cheaper, low efficiency apartment buildings and higher energy usage across the country.

In theory people should consider electricity cost when selecting where they live. Maybe there is an issue with getting that information. But I think this is the same with all renting, not just apartments.

NYC buildings now have an "efficiency" rating they're required to post on the front of their building. Doesn't give you a $, but maybe a gist of what your energy bill might be like.

In Germany (and I believe the entire EU?) we now have a "building energy passport" that summarizes information like this, broken down into simple numbers and rating scales. It has to be provided when selling or renting a place, and definitely influences behavior.

> In theory people should consider electricity cost when selecting where they live.

In theory, perhaps.

But how many people truly have the capability to choose where to live? Most are happy enough to find somewhere they could afford, let alone afford near enough to where they work, and they can't just go find new work to find better (more efficient, in this case) living conditions so easily.

Given the other answers I got shows that this is something that is done and people have found solutions too.

Many people look at multiple places when they are looking for a place to live.

Its unrealistic to think that for most people there is only a single possible place they can live.

So as soon as you have two places you are considering, having information about what future cost will be, will make you help prioritize one over the other.

Pretty sure OP meant apartment landlords/owners. I can see how you mistook it though, I had to read it a couple of times. Initially, you think individual apartments (i.e. renters) not apartments as in the owners/landlords of the apartments.

Just a datapoint, I had an apartment (2019) that had all utilities included (water, electric, no gas in the building). I wondered many times if they would be able to detect a bitcoin mining operation or if they would notice.

Back in the olden days of hot lights, grow houses could be detected by the large amount of electricity being used.

We had a guy who found a direct connection to the grid and it was noticed, reading the article the setup was in the 2-5kW range. How many goes unnoticed is another issue.

"Vast majority of apartments" seems to be referring to the building/complex owner, not individual renters. In other words, you pay the energy bill but you don't have a say in which efficiency upgrades are implemented.

In principle, there is an incentive - renters should be picking apartment buildings which are more energy efficient. So buildings should be competing on this metric. But, in practice, renters have no reasonable way of knowing which buildings are more efficient. And buildings will not volunteer this information.

You could mandate buildings get an energy efficiency assessment. But I imagine that will go the way of carbon credits contracts and such - mostly lies.

Apartments in the EU and UK are required to have EPC Energy Performance Certificate.

By January 2030, all residential buildings in the EU must meet at least an E energy efficiency rating, and by January 2033, this will rise to a D rating or better. By 2040, all buildings must achieve an A or B rating.

Energy efficiency happens when an apartment is built or remodeled. The right way to improve it is regulations mandating things like minimum insulation.

I wouldn't say that an energy efficiency assessment hurts, but it's also limited in what it can do to improve the situation. An apartment built with 0 insulation and natural gas heating just isn't going to be environmentally friendly without completely bulldozing the complex.

Transparency is good, but I think most renters really just won't care.

Many car owners certainly care about gas mileage. It might not be the most important factor but there is some consideration for it. Similarly, renters could care if informed. But cars and apartments are very different products, and you can get somewhat reasonably cheap+accurate estimates of the efficiency of one but not the other. So the whole point is moot.

Cars will last for 10->15 years roughly before getting switch out. Apartments hang around for anywhere from 100 to 1000 years.

The cost of retrofitting energy efficiency is massive compared to the cost of building an apartment with energy efficiency in mind in the first place. That's why striking on new builds is so important.

For vehicles, bad gas milage sucks and it should be regulated to keep it down. However, we are talking about products with somewhat short lifecycles destine to be melted down and turned into a new car in the next 20 years.

The median car in service in the USA is 13 years old, so I think your mental model of car lifetime is pretty outdated. For cars made today you should figure 22-25 years.

This says 16->18 [1]

Where are you getting 22+?

Definitely an update to my mental model though.

[1] https://autorecyclingworld.com/what-is-the-lifespan-of-a-veh...

See recent paper, noting the trend and that the rightmost point of the trend is already 8 years ago. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-024-01698-1/figures/4

Very interesting. I wonder why there's an apparent discrepancy between UK and US life expectancy. The UK has more stop and go traffic, I'd have thought that'd be harder on vehicles.

What may be useful is clear law that makes it mandatory to share energy usage over past 3 years or so and the associated costs.

Mandate apartments report typical (median or mean) energy costs. No assessment necessary.

You can often get average monthly billing from the utility company on request.

My experience is that apartment units tend to have low utility rates anyhow, particularly in larger buildings where only 1 or 2 of 6 surfaces (walls, floor, ceiling) will have any outside exposure.

If you're not too particular about temperature, it's often possible to "coast" based on the heating/cooling of your neighbours rather than heating or cooling your own space. Temperate climates such as California further reduce need for interior climate control, though construction is also correspondingly less well weather-proofed (insulated, wrapped, weather-stripped) than in colder, hotter, or more humid climates.

My washer/dryer had to be replaced, and I was able to convince my landlord to split the additional cost of a heat-pump dryer. (The QoL improvement is great since there's no vent in the unit, though it's unclear if my energy bills are actually lower).

But he's just a single-unit condo landlord, and I'm a pretty good tenant, so we have a good relationship. I can't imagine a multi-unit corporation doing this.

So what it is just entirely free electricity? Someone must be paying for it somehow otherwise every apartment would be a bitcoin mine by now.

The tenant pays for the utilities. Because the apartment complex is not paying for they they have no incentive to install energy efficiency upgrades and will instead install only the cheapest hardware they can buy.

Wouldn't the property owner have an incentive?

Because they're not paying for it, the tenant is.

Building more would likely help somewhat. If supply and demand are matched up, supply has to compete.

It’s rarely obvious to tenants that their only exterior wall is extremely inefficient.

20-30$/month very quickly pays for a new sliding glass door, but it’s hardly going to get people to swap apartments.

I guess I'm not sure what your point is. Are you worried that building more and having apartment landlords competing for tenants will work out poorly?

I wouldn't really expect people to be switching apartments to save $30 a month, but I would sort of expect them to give some preference to the more comfortable apartment that bragged about their reduced energy costs when they were otherwise switching.

My point is more housing stock alone would solve many issues, just not this one. It’s the same reason sound insulation which most people care about isn’t directly measured when renting or buying an apartment, you just don’t know upfront.

Now if there was a lot of housing stock, and apartments were forced to include expected utility bills / apartment to apartment sound transmission level that would help.

I've never heard of tenants not paying electric in the US. Water maybe but never electric.

Apartment (complexes) don't have to pay energy bills. Tenants do so there's no incentive for apartment owners to pay for energy efficiency.

The reading comprehension in response to this comment is atrocious. It's apartment complex /owners/ who aren't paying energy bills because their tenants are.

In American English "apartment" almost always refers to a single residence in a large building. The large building is often called an "apartment building."

The phrase "the vast majority of apartments don't have to pay energy bills" sounds like a claim that each apartment (i.e. each tenant) doesn't have to pay their own energy bills, because it would be very odd to refer to an entire apartment building (or the building owner/manager) as as "apartment."

It's poorly worded, which is causing a lot of confusion.

The full comment does provide context clues to the author's intent, but it was somewhat poorly worded (i.e., "vast majority of apartments" is easily taken to mean individual units/their tenants, and not the property in the aggregate.)

There is no such thing as "energy waste". You just use abundance of energy. It is like throwing money at a problem. If energy is available limitless, why would you care? Lucky americans. Poor germans.

Energy waste here is simply economic inefficiency.

Drive the cost of production low enough and uninsulated structures aren’t wasteful, but we aren’t there yet.

> In the USA, given that the vast majority of apartments don't have to pay energy bills,

This is false.