> That is what we're using this electricity for, right?

Yes, amongst others.

> increasing energy consumption, I'm happy that people are living in more comfortable homes, that the Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation).

Over the last 25 years, we've the seen the following change across the dimensions you picked:

Energy consumption: +15%

Population: +21%

Hospitals (hospital sector size as a function using employment as proxy): +45-50%

Homes: +27-30%

Food production: +23-25%

Transportation (vehicle miles travelled): +14-16%

------

Some take-aways:

Population grew faster than energy and transportation, implying major efficiency gains.

Housing stock outpaced population, reflecting smaller household sizes and more single-person households.

Healthcare expanded far faster than population, a structural shift rather than demographic necessity.

Food production grew roughly in line with population, but without proportional land expansion productivity gains.

Transportation growth lagged housing growth, suggesting more remote work, urbanization, and efficiency.

You have a lot of assumptions in your takeaways.

> Housing stock outpaced population, reflecting smaller household sizes and more single-person households.

Or rich people owning more vacation homes.

> Healthcare expanded far faster than population, a structural shift rather than demographic necessity.

What? It could easily be the population getting older and/or sicker. Even if it was a structural shift, it could be in the negative direction ie less efficiency.

> Food production grew roughly in line with population, but without proportional land expansion productivity gains.

What land expansion? You didn't include that in your stats. And no source to verify.

> Or rich people owning more vacation homes.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSAHORUSQ156S

Home ownership rates have a 6 percent variance over the last ~50 years.

We dont have a housing problem in America, we have a utilization problem:

https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/06/more-than-a-q... as an example.

There is a conversation that needs to be had about housing, but no one is going to LIKE the medicine that comes with that.

There's some historical stuff happening in that graph that it's easy for young people to not have context for, like the fact that the peak home ownership around 2005 was caused by a subprime mortgage fiasco.

There is a push to switch from fossil fuel to electricity across the board, and that’s a good thing.

Cars are the big one. However even heating is going electric (heat pumps, not resistive). Induction stovetops outperform residential gas cooktops. Some cities are even experimenting with phasing out natural gas hookups for new construction.

It all adds up, and it a good thing. It doesn’t explain 100% of the growth but it’s a lot of it.

> Amercian industrial base is being restored, that more and better services are being provided (better healthcare, inexpensive and healthy food, comfortable, efficient and inexpensive transportation).

Trying to put concepts like “better healthcare” on to the growth of electricity demand is unrealistic but generally speaking we’re putting electricity to good use. It’s not being wasted.

In Vancouver, Canada natural gas was completely phased out as of the beginning of 2025 in most new construction.

What is NG good for? Induction cook tops perform better than gas ones, heat pumps do better than gas heaters. The only gap I can think of are just in time hot water heaters.

Perform better as in more efficient electrically, not necessarily more pleasant or efficient in the cooking process.

For example, when cooking an omelette, a recommended technique is to angle the pan so the liquid part flows towards the hot part of the pan touching the flame as you slowly scrape the curds up to rest at the cooler part of the pan. AFAIK an induction cooktop is unable to simulate this technique. Now maybe there are similar ways of getting this, but there’s centuries of experience informing cooking on top of a fire in some form or another. The techniques for cooking on induction cooktops well have not been learned, taught and communicated.

I've been cooking eggs on induction cooktops for something like a decade now; while it's true that you can't tilt the pan (the induction won't work, and the cooktop is likely to just say "nope, not operating without a pan on me"), I've had no trouble with getting either scrambled eggs or omelettes to be softly and evenly cooked.

Perhaps it helps that I had never had that particular advice for cooking on gas/electric!

I have an old but still perfectly functional high-end gas cooktop. I have no plans to replace it. Sturdy cast-iron trivets are bulletproof. You get visual feedback about heat intensity. I use enough heavy Dutch ovens and stainless and cast-iron pans that a glass cooktop under them seems like an added risk.

You can find induction wok stove tops on alibaba (China obviously has more vested in electric transition than we do), but ya, standard western stove tops are flat.

How is filling your living space with poisonous gas pleasant at all?

P.S. basting works on induction if I crank up to boost mode.

> not necessarily more pleasant or efficient in the cooking process.

For amateurs, I find that the gain of control from using induction far outweighs everything else--especially at low heats. If I put a newbie on an induction with a temperature sensor, they generally do great. Over time they start to correlate the behavior of the food with the temperature, but, even if they don't, they still can maintain control over the food via the temperature sensor.

> The techniques for cooking on induction cooktops well have not been learned, taught and communicated.

And, sometimes, those old techniques are just a pain in the ass and only exist because of the lack of control. Caramelizing onions requires a lot less attention when I can set the pan to a specific temperature and don't have to worry about thermal runaway as the water cooks off. There are all manner of directions for thickening custards that aren't required if you can set the pan at exactly 180F and know that it isn't going above that. Tempering chocolate is stupidly easier when you can set the pan for 115F-81F-88F rather than having to swish it on a marble slab or put it on a double boiler and risk seizing the chocolate because of water. On an electric or gas stove, I plan for two batches of caramel because I almost always screw up my first batch if I haven't done it in a while; on induction I almost never miss. etc.

I used to be a gas snob for ages but after moving, first to a place with an induction stove, then to one with a regular electric one, I have to say the supposed advantages are overblown. You can cook perfectly well on either. Induction/gas are slightly nicer if you want to use very high heat but even my current electric stove puts out a lot of power on the highest setting.

And then there's the downsides of gas:

They're a complete mess to clean. Tons of nooks and crannies where stuff might get into. They suck for low heat simmering. There's iron plates you can put below the pot to distribute the heat but that's cumbersome. Low heat flames also go out more easily if there's a draft. Not even talking about air quality and fire risks.

So I'm never going back to gas if I can help it. If I have a choice I'll probably get an induction stove next time around.

I own an induction stove, and overall really enjoy it. But there are certain types of cooking it's not nearly as well suited to (still possible, but not as good). One of those is cooking on a wok.

But really it comes down to heating. Heat pumps are not universally better. We are currently sitting at -25C or so which is pretty common in the winter (it can even get a fair bit colder at times). Hardly any of the contractors around here work with heat pumps, and even the ones that do aren't aware of the latest tech. That said even if you could get a cutting edge system through sheer money/will I am not sure how it would perform without at least a gas backup. At least from an efficiency standpoint.

Not to mention we have had electricity go out in the winter which can be life threatening or at least cause substantial damage to property. I can't remember ever having the gas go out. (we have generator backup but that couldn't run an electric furnace for very long).

Lastly we have a gas water heater (tankless) and damn that thing is efficient. A few therms a month...

If you're really hampered by not having a wok behavior for your induction stove, good news! There are plugin induction woks! From what I hear they work great. Technology Connections on YouTube did a great video about them

I also own an induction range and love it, but I keep a portable butane stove around for random things gas is better for like woks or cooking that involves a lot of lifting the frying pan. Just make sure things are well ventilated (which should be the case with gas stoves, too).

Lifting the frying pan is fine if you don't mind the fucker beeping at you.

Wok induction cook tops are a thing you can buy also. It’s just not something that westerners are going to build in.

Heat pumps do not do well when it's -40 outside. You can say "fine, but how often does it get that cold?" but consumers are not going to be happy with a heat pump if their pipes freeze during an extended cold snap.

I live in Southern Ontario and I have a heat pump with an auxiliary natural gas furnace for emergency heating. The heat pump shoulders most of the heating load but the thermostat does kick on the furnace when the heat pump starts falling behind.

It should also be noted that although heat pumps are very efficient, even when it's below freezing outside, they cannot raise the temperature of the house very quickly. Consumers are generally quite unhappy when it takes 8 hours to raise the temperature of the house by 1 degree, so the thermostat usually calls for the furnace to start up before things get that bad.

Canada's climate is really different when it comes to the extreme cold.

Heat pumps are getting better at lower temperatures, but in an environment like Canada you still want auxiliary heat to be safe.

> It should also be noted that although heat pumps are very efficient, even when it's below freezing outside, they cannot raise the temperature of the house very quickly. Consumers are generally quite unhappy when it takes 8 hours to raise the temperature of the house by 1 degree

That would be an undersized heat pump in any regard. The installer would be at fault for screwing up that badly.

You're right that efficiency falls off at lower temperatures, 8 hours to move 1 degree would be from the installer sizing the unit wrong.

It's not just the efficiency of the heat pump that is at issue, it's the insulation of the house. As the outside temperature plunges, the house begins cooling off much more rapidly. This means the reduced efficiency of the heat pump (operating in cold outdoor temperatures) needs to produce more heating than it would at higher temperatures, and it's just not capable of that. My house was built in the 1980s and its insulation has always been more than adequate for the original natural gas furnace to be able to heat.

The heat pump I have is only a few years old and cost $12,000 installed (before tax credits). To be able to rapidly heat the house when it's -40 outside would require a system costing several times that! Much cheaper just to use a furnace for those few days per year.

air source heat pumps, though they're improving won't do well in extreme cold; even if they can operate they'll still be running at much lower efficiency.

For temperatures significantly into negative territory a ground source heat pump would perform far better, where it can draw on a source of heat that will always be at least above freezing.

A hybrid system doesn't seem like a bad trade-off though..

I think NG outperforms in high efficiency heaters when the outside temperature is around 1-4 degrees Celsius with humidity as it causes ice buildup on the external unit which then has to be cleared using resistive heating. Also if only little hot water is required sporadically, heating it just in time with gas is more efficient than keeping a buffer heated for long times.

Also, heat pumps do best when the temperature differential is lower. So in older housing without floor heating or duct heating, it is typically not as efficient to use a heat pump when the water to heat has to be above 55 degrees Celsius.

For any new residential construction I think there is very little value in natural gas.

Methane has lots of value in colder climates, especially much of Canada. Methane is cheap and does not lose heating capacity as temperature falls. Across most of Canada, the median construction year for a typical house is in the 1980. Half were built before that, meaning insulation standards were lower.

The #1 problem with heat pumps in Canada is low temperature performance. The heat output drops but the rate of heat loss from the house also increases. This is the precise situation where even backup resistive heat cannot keep up. Methane is excellent at filling this gap, especially now when winter temperatures swing more than earlier.

Toronto/Vancouver areas are both well within the temp range for heat pumps (e.g. ~50% of Canada's population). The further norther areas are a bit cold for air source heat pumps, but are still well within ground based heat pump temp ranges.

Toronto and Vancouver have completely different climates.

Toronto regularly has ten days per year where the high temperature is below -15 C.

Even cold climate heat pumps struggle at those temperatures. I would know, i have one.

Heat pumps do fine down to -20C or so. The modern ones have all sorts of tricks to avoid icing. (mostly they run the cycle in reverse which is extremely efficient since you are heating the ice on the compressor with the warmer inside air)

That is awesome to hear. I noticed that mine does fine sub 0, but when it is moist and around 1-4 degrees Celsius a lot of ice forms and it needs the resistive heating.

I didn’t see it reverse cycle yet. But I have air-air with one outside unit connected to three inside units. It’s a Mitsubishi Heavy from 2023.

Induction is better in some ways and worse in others. It's so efficient and boils water like crazy but at low settings it's almost always pulsed rather than continuous and I've never liked that. I have both in my kitchen.

Gas cooktops are good for still being able to cook when the power is out.

I recommend a backup butane stove, which is what I have for outages where my induction stove doesn't work.

Also an outdoor camp chef stove. Both are cheap and work great. My camp chef doubles as an outdoor pizza oven.

Interesting fact: A lot of modern gas cooktops have safety features that will cut the gas off when the electricity is out. The safety mechanisms are powered by electricity, so if they can't confirm that the operation is safe they fail with the gas valve shut off.

It comes as a surprise to most users because power outages are so rare. They just assume it will work until 8 years later when they try to cook something during the first long outage in their area.

TIL. Never used a modern gas stove, so I had not considered that without a pilot light, there must be a way to disable the flow or constantly spew gas into the house. Then again, I have had a pilot light go out for some amount of time without ill effect, so the volume of gas must be low.

Pilot lights stay lit all the time so no igniter is required. My range has electric spark igniters. They don't work when the power is out but there is also no pilot light expelling gas. I just manually light the burner when the power is out.

My gas stove has spark ignitors for the burners and the oven has an incandescent ignitor. The oven has safety interlocks so the gas valve won't open if the ignitor is not hot. The oven cannot be lit manually, but the stovetop burners can. So in a power outage, I can cook in pots and pans but not bake.

Usually the pilot energizes a thermocouple+solenoid that is used to hold the gas valve open, so the valve shuts if the pilot goes out.

> Interesting fact: A lot of modern gas cooktops have safety features that will cut the gas off when the electricity is out.

Huh, I did not know that. The natural gas stove that I grew up with has a good ol' fashioned pilot light, so it's fine even when the power goes out.

I am not sure where you live, but I cannot remember the last time our power went out (Western Europe).

I have gas-cooked since I was a kid (living in an area with a lot of natural gas, so houses were connected to gas since the 50ies), but induction is so much nicer that I'm happy to not be able to cook during a once in a ~10-20 year outage. Also a lot safer (it still happens quite frequently that a house blows up because of a gas leak, just this week there was a huge explosion in Utrecht what was presumably a gas leak).

Of course, the equation may change for countries with less stable power.

It's very local here. I'm in the suburbs of Philadelphia, in one of the highest income counties in the state, two blocks from a major hospital, one block from a suburban downtown. Despite that, I've experienced one or two 4-6 hour long power outages per year the past few years. (Mostly correlated with weather.) One outage in June 2025 was 50 hours long!

Many larger homes in this area have whole-house generators (powered by utility natural gas) with automatic transfer switches. During the 50-hour outage, we "abandoned ship" and stayed with someone who also had an outage, but had a whole-house generator.

Other areas just 5-10 miles away are like what you describe: maybe one outage in the past 10 years.

Sadly one of those countries is the United States.

Here in Colorado they've started pre-emptively shutting off power during wind storms when it's hot and dry because there have been multiple instances of wind blowing down power lines which then start big fires. We had one instance in December where the power was out 2-3 days for tens of thousands of people, and over a week for some people.

Of course the problem is that nobody wants to pay to bury the lines. They'd need all new equipment for digging, to retrain all of the technicians, and get permission from a million different entities to dig up their land. We're effectively locked in to overhead cables.

> I am not sure where you live, but I cannot remember the last time...

Here in SE Michigan (USA) I have quite a few friends who've totaled more than 15 days without power in the past couple years. Most of that in multi-day outages.

I'm on a decent power co-op that keeps the lines clear and has a fleet of trucks ready to roll before storms, but it still goes out when some drunk fool takes a run at a power pole or when lightning hits the right spot. And then there's the wind. Good management can only do so much.

Outages only last 1-4 hours at most though, so a LED lamp plugged in to a UPS is more than enough.

On an island, in a rainforest with regular storms. The power goes out multiple times a year due to trees falling on power lines. We also don't have municipal gas lines piped everywhere. Delivery only. If you have a leak they won't deliver until its fixed.

In the central USA my power is out up to 3 or 4 times a year for an hour or more, and momentarily maybe once every month or two. It's due to our power distribution being mostly overhead lines which are vulnerable to falling trees, squirrels, ice accumulation, storm and wind damage, etc. Even though my neighborhood has buried lines, that's just the last mile. The incoming power is all overhead lines.

North America generally has more extreme weather (everything from tornadoes to hurricanes and usually a much larger temperature range) and more above-ground electrical distribution than Europe.

I live in downtown Toronto and we get ice rain that occasionally knocks out power in portions of the city, though I live downtown where most of the lines are buried and I'm on the same electrical sub-block as several hospitals. The last time I lost power was the massive North American blackout of 2003.

> I am not sure where you live, but I cannot remember the last time our power went out (Western Europe).

I guess you don't live in Berlin.

Gas stoves need electricity for the starter these days. Maybe you can get a really old one with a pilot light.

It's far easier to provide a backup for electric appliances using a generator, than it is to store CNG onsite for gas interruption.

Matches work fine to light burners.

A lighter works wonders if your spark igniters ever get shorted by your wife dumping water on the stove.

Batteries or Generators don’t just let you cook and stay warm when the power is out but do everything else such as keep food cold as well.

Do induction cooking tops work well on batteries (or generators)? IIRC our induction plate has two-phase power because it can pull more than 3.6kW.

Sure, as long as you size the system to expected loads.

An 8kW generator suitable for occasional use is only ~1,000$. A Powerwall 3 does 11kW continuous and peaks at 30kW for transitory loads like starting heavy equipment.

The most convenient solution where a generator automatically kicks in during a power outage requires an electrician and extra equipment, but there’s also real tradeoffs to having gas lines going to your home.

There are models that include a battery to reduce the input power requirement. That's not quite the same as the question, but it answers it, you just need a big enough battery and they are fine.

There is a good technology connections video about building backup batteries into the actual stove.

I think part of the problem with whole home backups is that they tend to be sized to a maximum load that is unusual or could be avoided with some effort. And that providing a backup for the essentials you actually need is relatively cheap and uncomplicated if you make some modest sacrifices.

You could get a small propane burner or a lot of people have propane grills (sometimes with burners) in their backyards. Gas burners and stoves aren't bad but expanding the gas network to new homes is a huge expense.

If the power goes out I can still cook and heat with gas.

*this is a regular occurence in some countries

> What is NG good for?

Mostly a myth by cooks that think it "heats faster" or "heats with a better distribution of heat".

It is foolish, but many still think so. I personally believe that the only kind of cooking that benefits from NG are round-bottom woks. But they can be substituted by flat-bottom pans without problems.

> Mostly a myth by cooks that think it "heats faster"

It’s almost entirely about heat _control_, especially when you turn the heat down or off. Non-induction electric stoves can take minutes or longer for a burner to cool down. When you cut the heat on a NG stove, it’s essentially immediate.

This matters quite a bit for heat-sensitive dishes like omelettes.

Induction doesn’t have this problem, but also hasn’t been widely available until maybe recently and won’t work on a lot of aluminum cookware. So you’re asking people to change their cookware along with their range. That can be a bridge too far for many.

They are mostly Nouvelle & Haute Cuisine french dishes: omelettes, holandaise/bernaise sauces, custards (Crème Anglaise, Pots de Crème), melted chocolate, caramel, generally poached stuff, etc.

For the lower temperatures, a lot of that temperature control can be made with bain marie (warm water).

And the remaining ones aren't made in aluminum cookware, anyway. And people that cook such sophisticated food probably will have a lot of non-aluminum cookware, already.

Burning gas also releases a lot of pollutants — we’ve a gas hob but always switch the extractor on when we use it because of this

You should have the hood on while cooking no matter the type of stove top.

> Burning gas also releases a lot of pollutants

To be more precise: mostly CO2 and small amounts of CO. But the actual concentration of CO2 in your house can be affected by a lot of other factors (ventilation, urban environment, weather, etc).

It also releases NO2, PM2.5 and VOCs

Flat bottom woks need a lot more oil to stir fry properly, due to the lack of pooling. Flat bottom woks on electric cooktops (radiant or induction) also tend to have essentially nonexistent heating of the side slopes, preventing you from using the technique of splashing soy sauce (and other cooking sauces, as well as cooking wines) in a wide arc so that it reduces rapidly to form a sticky coating for the food. Instead, all of the sauce will just run down to the bottom where it joins the rest of the liquids coming out of the food, contributing to boiling/steaming rather than stir frying.

I don't know about that. I like my induction cooker but I can't use cast iron on it (I've ruined other ones trying). I will use it for 90% of my cooking though.

I have a duxtop induction burner and I notice it gets hotspots where the coils are. I wonder if the breville control freak is worth the money or it has better granularity of its heating element.

But yeah if I built a new house, I would have an induction top.

The control freak (commercial one) is worth every penny.

Better is subjective here. Vancouver will be a bit different with it's warmer weather, but for the week or two at -30C to -40C(like I get) it provides a lot more heat at a lower price and in Canada, at least Ontario, it is still much cheaper to heat a home and water with. I'll probably go heat pump if my boiler goes as I can avoid the cost of adding ductwork(really expensive these days and more than furnace for install) and get A\C too.

Backup generator for power outages. NG usually still works during electric outages. A generator that you do not need to periodically go out to get more fuel for can be very convenient.

> heat pumps do better than gas heaters

Well, unless the inverter valve breaks and you've got an air conditioner for two and a half months of winter.

Ask me how I know.

Natural gas is good for when the power goes out. I've never seen natural gas go out in my life. If you have an electric stove and the power goes out, you simply can't cook stovetop meals until the power is restored. Oh, and if you're thinking of using a generator to power your house if the grid is out, know that most generators run on natural gas.

You can use bbq.

Power went out in my area at night the other day. It was easy to spot the guy with the solar panels and home battery. His was a fountain of light in the darkness.

> What is NG good for?

The biggest advantage of NG is that we can store months of it. (Currently we can store only seconds of electricity, if that. Citation needed!)

I have a dream that some day we will come up with an efficient process for generating methane from atmospheric CO2, water, and electricity, and we’ll be able to take advantage of our extensive natural gas grid. (Natural gas is essentially methane.)

We are indeed living in more comfortable homes. Americans are migrating to the sunbelt because of ample AC in the summer and the winters are pleasant. that’s a big part of why we have many fewer heat deaths per capita than Europe: https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/2025/08/02/opinion-us-heat-...

You don’t realize how nice it is to live and work in air conditioned spaces until visiting a part of Europe where AC is viewed with disdain for reasons I still don’t understand.

Also the move to electric heat pumps is increasing electricity rates but reducing natural gas usage and improving overall efficient.

The GP comment was trying to do snarky doomerism but accidentally hit upon a lot of truths. It’s amazing how many things are getting better but some people are hell bent on being cynical about it anyway.

> You don’t realize how nice it is to live and work in air conditioned spaces until visiting a part of Europe where AC is viewed with disdain for reasons I still don’t understand.

Most of Europe is poor. AC is expensive. It's actually that simple.

There's AC in Switzerland.

> There's AC in Switzerland.

Not at all, it has one of the lowest rate in Europe along with the UK. It's very hard to get the building permit required to install one. Portable AC has had a boom those past few years though (because it doesn't require a permit).

I have lived and worked in Switzerland. My office (shared with 2 other people) was the only space in the entire floor with AC due to some obscure archaic reason.

That air conditioning worked great for years, but a few months before I left that position, the facilities management people suddenly came in and ripped it out. No justification given.

Thank God TPTB didn't notice I had AC for all those years; it really would have been miserable without it. But despite the misery I noted all around me, there was an extremely strong disdain for air conditioning that permeated the culture. When I talked to friends and colleagues about the AC situation I was regularly ribbed for being a gluttonous American wasting electricity on such a triviality. They were legitimately proud to suffer. Baffling.

I've come to the conclusion that most Western and Central Europeans--yes, including Swiss--have a masochistic superiority complex around AC. They see suffering without AC as core to the European identity and sweating it out in unproductive misery (or taking a whole month off of work) as virtuous. They willingly kill over a hundred thousand people and leave hundreds of millions in misery every year simply to feel superior and European.

I’m not from Europe but those sentiments I think are changing with the recent intensity and frequency of heat waves.

Europe is so backwards when it comes to annual heat deaths that they manage to have more heat deaths per year than the US has gun deaths + heat deaths combined. You won't hear about that from Europeans though, it'd make them seem barbaric. 175,000 heat deaths per year in Europe according to the WHO. It's a staggering genocide of technological primitiveness. Imagine having millions of people die because you can't be bothered to adopt 1950s technology (and of course I'm aware of the things the US is backwards on).

I think there wasn't a culture of buying ACs, because in most of Europe the climate was much more moderate. The summers are much hotter now than when I was a kid and heat waves are more regular. Many more people are buying air conditioning now.

Much of the US already had warmer summers than Europe when the impact of climate change was smaller, so AC is far more common.

You sent me to the books because this is such a fascinating stat. It's true! Heat deaths in the US: 5 per million people. Italy: 500+ per million people. I had no idea.

I do think we'll need to change our view on airconditioning, every home should have airconditioning just like it has heating.

But I'm very sceptical of those numbers. They are apparently even worse for cold, and you can't attribute that to lack of airconditioning. I still think the huge difference can only be attributed to a difference in reporting.

Which way? For all we know the numbers are much worse and under-reported by Europe. China made the playbook for that a long time ago.

Cuts both ways.

What has China to do with this?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence doesn't cut both ways.

I think it’s common knowledge China never reports numbers that cast them in an unfavorable light, to the point where analysts generally disregard them.

For example: https://www.nber.org/digest/aug19/official-statistics-overst...

Figures based on coroners reports are somewhat suspect.

> In September 2022, a vicious heat wave enveloped much of the western U.S., placing tens of millions of people under heat advisories. Temperatures across California soared into the triple digits. Sacramento broke its heat record by more than 6 degrees Fahrenheit when the temperature hit 116 degrees.

> California death certificates showed that 20 people died as a result of heat-related illness from Aug. 31, 2022 to Sept. 9, 2022.

> But a study last year by California’s Department of Public Health found that death rates increased by about 5 percent statewide during the heat wave, causing 395 additional deaths.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/u-s-deaths-from-h...

Excess mortality studies seem to show about 24 per 100,000 excess deaths from heat in Europe vs 6 in US/Canada.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34245712/

Thanks for the paper link, very different figures from the random USA newspaper article :)

I'd love to see an age adjusted figure as well as it's likely Europe has likely more very old people and my guess is that heat/cold mortality is concentrated in the very old people.

I suspect age distributions are part of the story. Also the Eastern US (where most of the population lives) experiences much larger swings in temperature between winter and summer so maybe people are just more prepared for it.

It's not the most convenient format because of their idea of what constitutes a region, but yeah, the US has a pyramid shaped population pyramid, while European regions have a big bulge of old people: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/references/population...

Can their pension system afford A/C?

I think it is simply because in most of Europe air conditioning is unnecessary for comfort 95% of the year. Here in San Francisco most homes don't have air conditioning either, but there might be a week or two where it gets very hot and we just put up with the barbaric technological primitiveness.

Much of the US is extremely unpleasant without air-conditioning for a substantial portion of the year so of course everyone living in those parts installs it.

Yes in many parts of the US it's not just the heat but the humidity. One summer I tried going without AC as much as possible to see how much it would change my electric bill. I could handle the temperature most of the time but the humidity especially at night started giving me mold problems in the house. Cleaned that up and went back to using the AC and no more mold. Not sure how people controlled this back in the pre-AC days, maybe just a lot more cleaning.

My parents still don’t use AC. The windows stay open all summer unless there is a rainstorm. Whole house fan is turned on at night to draw in cooler air. Much time spent in the cooler basement if you are going to be hanging at home. At night you are basically sleeping naked on top of your fitted sheet with one or two window unit fans circulating air. Maybe another fan pointed directly at you. Basement had some dehumidifiers and afaik that was the only problem moisture area.

If you are OK with the heat maybe a dehumidifier would be able to address the humidity problem while still saving electricity compare to the AC.

A dehumidifier is basically an air conditioner that exhausts its heat back into the room. It will make the air warmer (but dryer).

The temperature a few metres below ground level is consistently cool (approx. 15 celcius) year round.

Could this be made the basis of an efficient cooling system?

It's not as simple as it might seem at first glance. People often go into their basement and think "wow, it's cool down here. If only I could make my house this cool." But, as soon as you moved the air from your basement to your house, the air in your basement would be replaced by ambient air and would take time to be cooled by the Earth. And so you quickly realize you need a lot of thermal mass and an efficient way to move heat in order to keep up with removing the heat from your house.

It's not so easy in dense urban environments where power cables are buried, along with ancient sewer systems, subways/metros, etc.

You are starting to see a lot more external AC (heat pump?) units jerry-rigged into the sides of multi-unit dwellings, though.

Yes, but it needs to work both ways. Heat needs to be extracted during the winter. Otherwise the ground would just be heated up to much. That is what a ground source heat pump does.

I spoke with two working class people last week who are facing power shutoffs because they got an unexpected $700 power bill. Not sure if it were a sneaky electricity supplier change or if costs have simply gone up.

But the problem of consumer rates just always ratcheting up needs addressed.

Electricity prices are heavily regulated. The largest increase I can find from a short search is around 20% for some customers in New Jersey. The average year over year increase is closer to 6%

Unexpectedly high electricity bills are almost always from actual usage. Unexpectedly high winter electricity bills are usually from resistive electric heating in one way or another.

You didn’t mention their normal December bill in this exact house, which is an important piece of information.

You are part of the PJM. Read into what the "Fuel Adjustment" actually is. Yes, prices are regulated, but if your area is short of power, they can buy it from the PJM, usually from other sources they own, at "market" rate not regulated rate.

The Fuel Adjustment is the legal loophole difference in the regulated rate vs the market rate. A few scheduled maintenance windows and oh look, we are short power.

Texas is really different, it could be from there.

One of the families mentioned heats their home with natural gas.

I suspect they got slammed with an alternative energy supplier that charges abusively high rates.

With that said, the total cost to the consumer of electricity is 3X what it was 20 years ago, and I am in one of the cheapest markets.

Can I interject regarding resistive heating? I’ve recently added one for my bedroom using home assistant and PID control, 22.5c during day, 18c at night, shuts off when nobody home (radar presence detector should be next step and likely save another 30%). It cost me 150kwh per month in NZ winter (single glazing, but got decent ceiling insulation).

That happens when people are on variable rate or TOU plans, it's very common. "sneaky" may or not be part of it, since ostensibly there's a contract that defines the terms of the electrical service, so it shouldn't be a surprise. But for a lot of folks it's a lot to keep track of, there can be confusing terminology, and yes, some energy retailers are predatory in their plan marketing or contract terms. It's a double edged sword of free market choice in deregulated markets. People that have choices for their energy supply don't always have the time and knowledge to optimize their plan choices and electricity use to get "optimum" pricing. This is why there's pushback in some areas that have had deregulated energy markets to go back to regulated pricing, the "average consumer" isn't seeing the payoff of the free market (even if that is technically "their fault").

I kind of doubt a single surprise bill that happened to arrive in the winter is a TOU plan change.

If someone changes to a TOU plan and their bill shoots up, they’re smart enough to blame the plan change and cite that

Most surprise winter time bills are just excess electric heater usage, such as after the purchase of a couple space heaters without thinking about the overall cost.

> This is why there's pushback in some areas that have had deregulated energy markets

What areas have deregulated residential electricity?

> What areas have deregulated residential electricity?

17 states in the U.S, plus D.C.

The “optimum” pricing is one that rips off the customer the most. A deregulated free market for utilities doesn’t work because bad actors will find ways to do so through complex contracts.

Prices only go one way. Without inflation, debt has to be repaid in more expensive $'s than it was created in and the whole system goes boom.

A huge bill probably means there were on a plan that charged them a set amount each month based on estimated usage. They probably used more than projected and then had to make up the difference at the end of 12 months. This is how my electricity works. You can end up with a refund as well if it goes the other direction.

the US is not a planned economy. if it was, computers would exist only to guide missiles and operate industrial machinery, and you would be mining coal, farming wheat, or manning an assembly line for a living.

Some of the economy should be encouraged with heavy subsidy or though DoD purchases.

It's worked out well for us in the past.

Wind and solar, nuclear, EVs, manufacturing, robots, chips, and drones should be helped along by the state.

We would be stupid not to spend in these categories.

We should also build out chemical inputs manufacture, rare earths refining, pharmaceutical manufacture, etc. to support the work that happens downstream and to be less fragile to supply chain disruption.

A multi-polar world is inherently less stable and demands more self-sufficiency.

Its not a planned economy by the government, because the US is an oligarchy. The billionaires are deciding how the government should plan investments in infrastructure and social policies.

They have been able to lower the taxes that affect the richest (big beautiful bill) and cut spending on social programs (Medicaid).

So it surely looks to me like the US economy is following a plan, just not the one that's in the best interest of the population -- which is OP's original criticism.

>Its not a planned economy by the government

This just seems like a quibble over wording, given that "planned economy" is generally assumed to refer to economic planning by some governmental authority. Nobody thinks the opposite of a "planned economy" is everyone just going based off vibes, for instance.

The available selection of automobiles available for sale feels like a good example of huge distortion caused by regulatory capture and tariffs imposed for same industries.

Yup take the ford lightning f150. It out sold cybertruck but that wasn’t enough for ford to keep it around. Market makes decisions for you, not the other way around like free market theory posits.

…and I wouldn’t have to read this kind of drivel. Sounds like a blessing.

> China is not a planned economy. If it was, recent electric vehicles and battery technology would exist only to guide missiles and operate industrial machinery...

It is now, haven't you heard? Computers are reserved for LLMs only.

The US was a planned economy during wwii fwiw

I’m guessing there’s a strong “/S” after this post..

It’s a political imperative to get rid of everybody who thinks increasing energy consumption is a bad thing.

Better: advertising!

Forgot /s

That’s what I was thinking, clearly sarcasm because none of that is true.

> That is what we're using this electricity for, right?

Ok, I'll say it: it's for AI datacenters to train chat bots.

You know, we don't have any choice! We need more power. It's getting so tough to get something to tell Trump he isn't totally fucking up America.

Why are you against increasing energy consumption? Increasing energy consumption is what pulled the world out of the feudal, warlord misery of the past. Maybe switch the focus of this feeling towards being against pollution or something that is a negative. Just being against energy consumption is quite regressive and anti-human.

And slavery is what pushed certain empires and colonies to riches, that doesn't mean we keep doing it forever expecting positive returns

Moving electrons around isn't inherently immoral like slavery is. It's odd to compare the two!

To mitigate the ongoing climate catastrophe we must ramp down fossil fuels use and production. As long as there's fossil fuels in the electricity production mix, electricity use is contributes to the problem. This report tells us that fossil energy use is increasing as only 60% of the increase was covered by solar.

The world would much more easily transition to post fossil fuel if all of society was pushing for cleaner and cheaper electricity and a philosophy of using more to make life better. The attitude that we must reduce is just anti-progress and anti-human and is what many people are fighting against when they support more fossil fuels. The split of solar and wind being supported by the reduce camp and fossil fuel use into the growth mindset was a great tragedy.

Accelerating fossil fuel usage and while adding renewables to the mix is not going to pan out well. Accelerating the climate catastrophe is not pro-human. It might be pro-progress for some definition I guess if you don't mind the death toll.

Few people just want to burn fossil fuels, they want to do things with energy. Focus should be on making non-CO2 emitting energy cheap and abundant. Most people against burning fossil fuel are also not promoting more and cheaper energy use.

Is that sarcastic? I'm not sure. Healthcare, food, transportation, and housing are becoming much more expensive and less affordable.