All in all it's good to see the market react by cutting consumption. You may hate this post but the reality is that it's the only way forward, subsides will only increase the price without doing anything about the problem.
Also, not many people realize this, but the problem isn't caused by the war. If you don't believe me then open an inflation chart of your country of choice and try to spot any change to the shape of the curve around Feb 2022.
If you think it's good to cut consumption, it seems like we have a lot of other places to reduce energy consumption outside of more basic necessity energy usage, like heating people's homes.
This perspective just externalizes side effects of all sorts of unequal societal resource allotments and paints the problem contributor as the average person. It's akin to blaming climate change on your average person when the biggest contributors aren't your typical person whose biggest crimes might be driving to work, taking an occasional mass shared flight, or ordering something on Amazon. Or plastic waste on consumers not recycling. There's lots of these blame deflecting trends from industry.
In the long term, you might be correct that we need to reduce energy expenditure (although birth rates could change this picture), but I'd say we have a lot of other low hanging wasteful consumption fruit that we should fix before having people shiver to stay warm in their homes.
>It's akin to blaming climate change on your average person when the biggest contributors aren't your typical person whose biggest crimes might be driving to work, taking an occasional mass shared flight, or ordering something on Amazon
Who's the biggest contributor then, corporations? If I order something from amazon, which causes emissions to be created because of the delivery truck, is that amazon's fault and not mine?
I believe corporations are effectively supporting campaigns to push the burden of climate guilt on consumers. That isn't to say that the average citizen shouldn't be aware of (and seek to change) their patterns of consumption, but if most people are too busy scrupulously examining whether reusable shopping bags are better for the environment than plastic, well, no one notices the massive effect that global consumer product shipping (facilitated by Amazon) has on the environment.
That said, environmental scrupulosity is a thing. Would it be better for the environment if I didn't buy stuff from Amazon, and maybe just bought locally made goods and food? And maybe I shouldn't buy new clothes, but just continually repair what I have? And maybe I shouldn't use computers or smartphones because the raw materials are damaging to extract from the Earth?
But, to answer your question, I think we can most effectively blame an economic system that rewards continuous production and consumption, with emphasis on disposable, rather than repairable, items. Amazon helps facilitate that with free shipping and impossibly low prices. Yet, instead of asking us, as consumers, to reexamine our habits of consumption, we are asked to feel guilty about how much we recycle, or how much we drive. I could not own a car, and walk everywhere, but if I purchase nearly everything I need from Amazon, I suspect my "environmental impact" is no different from a person who drives to work everyday.
>but if most people are too busy scrupulously examining whether reusable shopping bags are better for the environment than plastic, well, no one notices the massive effect that global consumer product shipping (facilitated by Amazon) has on the environment.
This feels like a non-issue to me. If you're the kind of person who's "scrupulously examining whether reusable shopping bags are better for the environment", I doubt you're going to forget that ordering stuff from amazon involves a ship traveling half way across the world.
>But, to answer your question, I think we can most effectively blame an economic system that rewards continuous production and consumption, with emphasis on disposable, rather than repairable, items.
But is the economic system actually incentivizing disposable stuff in particular, or is it incentivizing producing what consumers want? The fact that amazon is strewn with "reusable" variants of everything imaginable (eg. reusable straws, reusable bags, reusable k-cups) makes me think it's the latter.
> Amazon helps facilitate that with free shipping and impossibly low prices.
Maybe the prices are indication of something? For something like straws, it might actually be better to manufacture 1 gram worth of plastic and ship it across the world, than it is to wash/sanitize a reusable straw which also involve labor and resources (eg. hot water).
>we are asked to feel guilty about how much we recycle, or how much we drive. I could not own a car, and walk everywhere, but if I purchase nearly everything I need from Amazon, I suspect my "environmental impact" is no different from a person who drives to work everyday.
I don't understand what you're trying to say here. If you don't own a car, then presumably you're not driving to work. If you don't driving to work, that's one less thing that's contributing to environmental impact. Of course, if you're ordering stuff from amazon rather than going to a store, that loss might be offset by your amazon deliveries, but I suspect that you're still coming out ahead. The fact that the alternatives have environmental impact as well shouldn't come as a surprise either. After all, maintaining a first world standard of living is going to have some environmental impact associated with it, and it's unreasonable to expect otherwise.
As an individual, I don't even have knowledge, let alone control about the energy consumption over the production process of things I order. It won't improve anything to put responsibility for that consumption on the buyer, at least not without significant changes that could better be solved by putting an appropriate price tag on consumption.
And that last part doesn't just mean to make things more expensive, which causes inflation and doesn't really make things more expensive. It means to reward saving energy compared to other costs.
Asking who is to blame is -- suprise! -- not solving anything.
The original comment wasn't about assigning blame but allowing market forces to work to balance supply and demand.
The prices are how you, as an individual, gain knowledge about the energy market. Prices are high and demand out straps supply. Prices are low and supply is higher than demand.
Subsidies distort this information.
This isnt to say it's good that people can't heat their homes but it's the only way to balance these markets.
Any solution that focuses on the consumer side relief rather than improving supply will only exacerbate the situation.
>As an individual, I don't even have knowledge, let alone control about the energy consumption over the production process of things I order. It won't improve anything to put responsibility for that consumption on the buyer, at least not without significant changes that could better be solved by putting an appropriate price tag on consumption.
But at the end of the day, the buyer is always right. It's easy to abdicate responsibility of production based carbon emissions to the producers, but if your buying choices actively disadvantage producers with lower carbon emissions (eg. because they cost more and you only care about costs) why would you expect producers to do anything about it?
>It means to reward saving energy compared to other costs.
Isn't there already an incentive to save energy? It's a cost, so businesses are already incentivized to save energy wherever they can. Higher prices incentivizes that even more.
The corporation have the decision making power over the emissions. Knowledge of emissions is abstracted away by this middle man, and the relevant decisions are already made by the time the product is available to the customer, leaving the customer with only the binary fake decision of buying-in to all hight emissions decisions of the corp, or going without.
> Who's the biggest contributor then, corporations? If I order something from amazon, which causes emissions to be created because of the delivery truck, is that amazon's fault and not mine?
It's even a harder question than that. Sure, Amazon is the one responsible for scheduling the emissions... but when you take into account the overall emissions of a purchase then it gets more interesting.
> Results are shown for the buying process of a toy, for customers living in an urban area. Figure 1 shows the carbon footprint of online and traditional shopping, when only the purchase step and the appropriate return rate are considered. The Cybernaut tends to have a lower environmental impact than the Traditional Shopper, as long as he does not use speed delivery.
> ...
> The Cybernaut’s carbon footprint is almost two times smaller than a Traditional Shopper. In fact the main component of the Traditional shopper is the customer transportation, whereas Cybernaut‘s emissions are linked to a parcel carrier, who uses an optimized delivery process. The freight transportation has a bigger impact for the Cybernaut since the item is packaged individually, which increases packaging weight and volume, and the linehaul distance of online warehouse is bigger than a traditional one. The packaging is the main component of the Cybernaut’s carbon footprint.
---
The box that you get from Amazon is the largest part of the carbon footprint for the online shopper, but it is still much less than the traditional shopper driving to buy an item in a store. The difference between an individual driving to the store and parcel delivery is akin to similar arguments for solo commuters vs taking public transportation - the bulk transportation of items or people is better.
Rather than reducing birth rates (which would mean less creative problem-solvers to care for the climate and the broader natural world and human cultures), in the long term we ought to increase energy production. Abundant affordable energy, produced sustainably, will help everyone, especially the poor.
That’s not how any of this works. 1) Weird to check the inflation charts when you can just check the price of oil and natural gas. They have moved considerably due to the war. 2) Natural gas is not a perfect long term market. It’s a consumable that has to travel through the supply chain and then be consumed in a short amount of time. 3) No reason to expect a massive shift right at the beginning of the war. No one expected the war to drag on this long. No one expected the West to double down on sanctions so dramatically. No one expected Nordstream 2 to get blown up and foreclose Germany’s options. 4) Inflation has many many causes. A major pandemic, a decade and a half of printing money like never before, political trouble in the US, and now a twitter-driven suicidal sanctions regime.
> If you don't believe me then open an inflation chart of your country of choice and try to spot any change to the shape of the curve around Feb 2022.
That's not how it works. It takes time for price increases to propagate through the supply chain. Utilities usually contract their gas months ahead, so if the prices for natural gas increased in February due to the war, the increase in consumer prices wouldn't have happened until months later.
Can you link to whatever chart you are referencing?
Because every chart I’ve looked at shows both a big jump in heating oil future prices, and more importantly, volatility starting at the end of February.
That is completely consistent with what you would expect, the war roiled energy markets and consumers are now paying the price.
Inflation charts often exclude food and energy specifically because of the volatility in those categories. To the extent the Russian invasion spiked those, it may not show up in a “core inflation” chart.
Inflation measures an increase in prices, so if the price of fuel rises, then it will, mathematically, cause inflation to go up. The price of any good that is delivered using fuel also goes up, which again causes inflation to go up.
> All in all it's good to see the market react by cutting consumption.
People are freezing and you consider this good? Why?
> You may hate this post but the reality is that it's the only way forward, subsides will only increase the price without doing anything about the problem.
It sucks because there's ultimately far more efficient ways to heat a home and the only reason they're not implemented is to try to force greater consumption.
It’s not the only reason. I’m literally a mechanical engineer (by degree, not trade) and tried to get an air-to-water heat pump to replace my aging gas boiler.
Only one firm in the area could even quote me on one, tried to talk me out of it at every step, and gave me a quote that reinforced their sales pitch. It was literally never going to payback over a combi, which dozens of companies would be happy to install and service.
So, a fresh combi boiler sits on my wall (which is a good improvement over the old), but it also means that I don’t entertain the question again for another 15 years.
I was among the top 0.1% aware, educated, and motivated potential customers of a heat pump and it couldn’t happen.
Anything-to-air wasn’t going to work visually or for occupant comfort. I don’t want refrigeration linesets strung all over the outside, warts on a wall in each room, and after all that having less comfortable heat than hydronic. (On the plus side, it would give AC “for free” [in capital costs].)
Ground source (to water) was my first preference. I’m on a pretty small city lot and the well cost meant for an even longer payback period than an air-to-water heat pump.
You’re so close to openly admitting it. Just say it. The ultimate goal is to make it so only the rich can afford comfortable home heating, privacy, transportation, and travel, while the lower and middle classes pay the price for this climate religion.
Most market-based solutions have to be looked at carefully to make sure they don't just translate into more inequalities.
Food, shelter, education and other basic needs are supposed to be taken care of in developed countries (by definition) in the 21st century. Just leaving it up to the market means that poorer people won't have these needs fulfilled, and we can't pretend that it's just fine and so be it.
Maybe energy prices should be proportional to your wealth, like fines in some countries.
This is a strange take on what defines a developed country. Moast developed countries can meet these needs but that isn't what makes them developed countries.
The idea to make energy cost proportional to wealth is also bizarre.
The first problem with it is how will you determine wealth?
The second problem is how will you determine need?
The goal is to provide according to need while taking according to ability, right?
This has been tried many times in many ways and inevitably results in more inequality and a lower standard of living than allowing market forces to balance supply and demand based on economic signals.
You're conflating markets with inequalities and implilying a causal relationship when the market is simply the scale in the middle attempting to balance consumption with economic contribution.
It's almost ironic that markets are the way in which you can achieve this Marxist ideal.
Some countries have wealth-based taxes and so have apparently answered this question, so that can be a starting point.
I don't understand your point about markets solving inequalities on their own. If energy is expensive, poor people don't have heating, rich people do. Are you saying that's just fine?
Also not sure what the Marxist ideal is, is wanting poor people to have heating a Marxist ideal? I'm honestly confused by your comment.
There are some health risks to living in a cold home which can't be fully prevented just by dressing warmer. In particular being a little cold all the time tends to cause higher blood pressure due to vasoconstriction in the limbs. For young, healthy people this isn't a serious problem but prolonged low temperatures tend to cause a significant increase in elderly death rates.
I disagree. If your sat in a room at say 10c with thermal underwear, thick socks, long Johns, hat, 3 jumpers, coat and thick hat and gloves. Then you'll probably be sweating, blood will be flowing inorder to get rid of heat.
Extra clothing lowers the temp at which blood flow to the extremities reduces. There isn't some arbitrary line at which no amount of extra clothing will make no difference, else you could say the same thing about house insulation. Is blood flow going to reduce just because it's 10c outside, regardless of the inside temp?
The prospects of higher fuel prices and a $1600 rebate from our gas supplier (MA, USA) helped me to decide to replace our ancient boiler (1950s oil, later converted to single-stage 200MBTUH gas) with a modern modcon combination boiler.
I haven’t compared degree-days of last year vs this year, but by the gas meter, through yesterday we’re using 40% of (60% less) on per-day basis as compared to last year.
It was many thousands out of pocket, but if the 40% holds up, it will pay back in about five years. (Our old system was dark-comically inefficient though. For most 80-ish% cast iron boilers, it doesn’t make economic sense to replace with a [theoretical max] 95% mod-con if the old one is still reliable.)
I wish we could buy US-style furnaces and AC units. European combi boilers seem to give up the ghost after 10-ish years, regardless of manufacturer. You are very lucky to get 15 years out of any one without major issues. Planned obsolence maybe?
Mine is a Bosch, assembled in South Korea. From my research, these seem more common in UK and EU than over here.
It was also only $2550 for the boiler (much more for the trim, labor, pipes, pumps, etc., but the boiler itself was cheap). That was cheap enough that I considered buying an entire second one to just put on the shelf for the eventual need to replace it or replace major parts. I decided not to as the space required is probably more valuable than having a whole shelf in the utility room tied up for 10-15 years.
It's easy to buy a junk furnace in the USA. Even the good brands have begun to make low-end units with only five year warranties and few serviceable parts.
The overall burning cycle is more efficient. Even with tuning, my old boiler was putting out well over 200ppm CO (down from 2500/off-scale when they first tested it). That’s one source of inefficiency of getting BTUs of heat out of the gas and into the water. As a sibling mentioned, it was also sending 450+°F vapor-laden exhaust up the chimney and out the roof.
New boiler vents through plastic pipe and extracts so much more of the heat that the exhaust is leaving the boiler at around 150°F with the water vapor largely condensed (at least this time of year) and giving up that latent heat of vaporization to the water incoming to the boiler. Additionally, it pulls combustion air from outside instead of the basement. (If you pull combustion air from the basement an equal amount of outside air must leak into the house to replace it.)
New boiler also has a modulating gas valve and can burn in 5 steps between 25K BTU/hr and 149K BTU/hr (from memory, but close enough) to match the space heating demand. The old one was either 0 or 200K BTU/hr.
I probably went from 60% to 95% now plus the effects of not pulling millions of cubic feet of outside air in per year.
The computer controls on this one (and the ability of the boiler to not just tolerate but encourage condensation) mean I can heat my house at 32°F/0°C with 114°F/45°C supply water temps. Traditional boilers are harmed by acidic condensation so need return temps of 140°F which means supply temps of 160°F. That means hotter rads and pipes and more losses in the piping. As it gets colder, the boiler can compensate (via an outdoor sensor) and increase the flow temp so it’s just enough to heat the house. Based on 114°F flow (about 90-95°F return) being enough for 32°F, I'm virtually certain that I'll be operating in condensing mode (return under 120°F) even on the coldest nights we get here or if not, on all but one or two nights.
I have pump controls that can run the pumps for a bit after the zone and burner shuts off to put that (much smaller amount) of trapped heat into the living space rather than leaving it trapped in a massive hunk of cast iron to leak to the boiler room.
The old burner likely achieved ~100% combustion (not sure what you mean by the burning being efficient).
As to the other part, yes, less heat is sent up the chimney in modern designs. My boiler is getting pretty old but was sold as 80% efficient. As far as I can tell, the near drop in replacement would be 84 or 85%. Neither is a modern condensing boiler (which I'd have to figure out a new exhaust to switch and probably add active outside air exchange; tempting with the way the current one sucks all the humidity out of the house).
We replaced a 25+ year-old propane furnace with a high-efficiency natural gas furnace two years ago. The difference in waste heat is astonishing.
The old furnace vented through a vertical chimney vent and the exhaust was so hot that touching the metal pipe would burn your hand.
The new furnace is direct vented with PVC pipes and the exhaust outside the house feels barely warm — that’s a lot of additional heat that stays in the house instead of being wasted.
Between the cost difference of propane vs natural gas, better efficiency and a programmable thermostat, we easily reduced our fuel bill $$ by 50% with no noticeable change in comfort level. I did not track the difference in therms.
In a traditional design boilers/furnace you run hot combustion gases through a heat exchanger (HX) to heat water/air and then into a flue. The problem is that if it cools too much in the HX it can condense in the flue. With the condensate being extremely corrosive it will quickly destroy the flue and can cause all kind of issues from CO poisoning to fires. So the HX is small enough to keep the gases hot in the flue to prevent corrosion.
A more complicate design has a big HX and various pumps and fans to drain the condensate and push out the exhaust gases. It uses a PVC flue and drain line to withstand corrosion but at the end you still have moving parts exposed to the acidic condensate and it does not have the service life of a straight metal flue design. That, combined with the higher cost of a condensing heater (because of all the additional pumps and fans and corrosion protection), calls for a careful cost analysis since you need to burn a lot of gas to justify quicker replacement and more service calls for a more expensive unit.
The article opens with a +18% increase in heating prices, and talks about the problems people have with paying their heating bills.
Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, gas prices went from 0.70-0.80 eur/m3 to 3.50-4.00 eur/m3
I spoke to someone at the collections department of a utility company. They expect total carnage as people start to skip on paying their bills. Government support notwithstanding, the coming winter will be hell. People on or below the median income will be hurt by the coming 300-400€ increase in monthly costs.
As a fellow European, my reaction was the same. Energy prices still seem very low in the US compared to here.
I could afford to pay the extra 400 euro/month. But it feels like a perverse luxury now that there are many people who can't afford it. And it's basically throwing money in the gas furnace, which I'd prefer to invest into something useful. So instead I'm sitting in a room at 16 to 17 degrees C, wearing extra layers (including thermal underwear), under a blanket, sipping a hot beverage.
Buy 3 adult onesies. Wear two at a time, you hardly ever need to wash the outer-most onesie. Alternate the other onesies as you wash them. Sleep in the inner onesie.
You want your onesies to have feet, at least that's my preference.
When I was a student in Edinburgh, I lived in an old tenement with super drafty windows and super high ceilings. Trying to heat the place was pointless. I gave up and just wore two onesies whenever I was inside.
In the winter I used to wake up and see my breath, I'm not sure how cold it got, but definitely colder than 17. I think that was the indoor temperature on a cold summer day.
I'm living the 17 C life too, it's not as bad as I thought it would be. Took a week or so to get used to it.
Working behind a computer is still annoying though, even when standing at my desk I'm still too immobile to keep warm. 8€ usb heated gloves help a bit, but still. Otherwise it's not so bad.
Cold hands/feet are a consequence of your body deciding that it needs to reduce blood flow (which implies heat loss) to those extremities, in order to keep your core temperature stable with minimal energy expenditure.
Therefore, heating your torso might work better than trying to heat your hands.
Googling for electrically heated garments typically leads to some dodgy looking cheap products though. I would have a look at body warmers sold by power tool brands to go with their battery platform. E.g. I already have LXT batteries for my Makita power tools, so I'm considering buying something like the DCV202Z vest.
Try a far infra-red heater. They heat bodies, rather than space. Hung on the ceiling over a desk, they are great balance between expense, space-heating and keeping warm.
Yeah, drastic measures are suddenly not so crazy sounding anymore. I wish I was being hyperbolic but the situation is very bad indeed... I think government support is the only way ~25% of the country can get through.
A friend, with a very conventional house, is suddenly looking at a yearly bill of over €6000. Up from €1500 last year. Many people simply don't have that kind of money, especially in a period with crazy inflation.
We blocked and shut down nuclear power plants, we blocked shell fracking and places like Groningen gas field. Then we partnered with Russia for our energy needs. Now we are partnering with places like Qatar.
I have my thermostat set to 50f (10c)... only because any colder and I worry about pipes freezing. I'm on the computer all day, so I sit in a sleeping bag and have an electric hotpad on my hands. It works fine for me, I can still get in "the (programming) zone", even while I'm on day 4 for a water only fast, which typically drops my metabolism and therefore my perception of body temperature. (I'm a pretty extreme person...) I typically do this every winter, but especially this one because fuck the war.
For me, day 2 is by far the hardest. Significant energy swings on days 1 and 2. After I hit day 3, it's mostly smooth coasting - I can do 7 days no prob. If anything, days 3 and after, I'm more productive. I find it somewhat easier to focus, and there's zero eating/foodprep/cooking/toilet distractions (I also pee less despite drinking quite a bit of water.) I say this with the advantage of having done this for years - you may need to build your way up to it.
Often, the maximum temperature a heat pump supplies is a lot lower than conventional heating (think 55 C versus 80+ C). This means heating up a house happens slowly and steadily, instead of the "turn a knob and your radiator is now scorching hot" paradigm.
Before installing a heat pump, your house should be insulated pretty well. Otherwise you'll never heat it up properly.
My experience with heat pumps has been that I've had to replace them much more often, they didn't offer a significant cost savings and frankly didn't provide the same level of comfort compared to a gas furnace for the trouble. That was in a relatively mild climate, I couldn't imagine using one where it gets properly cold.
To be fair, most people I know who installed air-source heat pumps are not actually paying significantly less than before. Currently the high electricity prices pretty much negate all the efficiency gains. I'd say insulate first, a very well insulated home barely needs heating. Eg. the passivhaus standard in Germany.
Edit: typo
I beg to disagree. I have a new, custom built, triple-glassed, very well insulated home. We moved in Feb before we got our heating pump installed. The house was at 15 degrees, with portable heaters often on. Sun shining thru, oven usage and said heaters couldn't keep it warm.
It gets really cold in Canada. How efficient is the backup electric heating at -20 c? How much money will it cost to expand the power grid for all those new units and EV? Governments that invest too much in the future don’t get re-elected. Lots and lots of cans get kicked down the road.
We're back to "it's expensive to be poor". I have friends in the same situation, except they rent their home, so they couldn't even invest in a heat pump if they had the money. Overall they could have a rather significant amount of money each year, if they bought a home. That would require being able to afford the down payment... Which they could, if they had access to the potential savings from owning their own home.
It's a vicious circle, trapping the poorest in a circle of poverty from which there is little escape, even in social welfare states.
They live in a houses (I guess? Since they buy oil). They are not poor. Maybe bad "liquidity" and penny wise.
Many seniors seem to thing living in their house is cheap since they pay so little per month compared to renting. But in my experience that is usually because they cut down on repair and upkeep. They should just be renting flats, and if they can't due to shortages or insane rent, that is the problem not the heating bills.
Living in a house becomes way more expensive then you are too sick or weak to do the base upkeep yourself.
I see the problem with my father. It's is not like saying: ok I buy a heat pump instead of buying more oil. The disruption caused by having to hire someone to install a new heating combined with the feeling that the write-off period does not match their life expectancy leads to those decisions. In Germany we have a great lack of well trained heating technicians and consultants that have the time to handle this inheritantly conservative target group. It used to be different for a while, when companies were still looking for customers and not the other way around.
Heat pumps are sold out for obvious reasons. They are expensive and you depend on yet another expensive maintenance firm if (planned obsolescence?) they break.
A house built in 1987 in Massachusetts didn’t have air ducts as oil heating didn’t require it. Messy as all get out trying to get a heat pump installed. All of those kinds of places (“where a/c wasn’t needed”) suggest the need for replacement housing which is blindingly expensive.
I think we will probably see a lot of minisplit type heat pumps being installed in the coming years. In addition to being easy to retrofit, they have really high efficiency ratings (20+ seer).
You get a better heat pump setup with old water pipe radiators really than electric radiators. A water-water heat pump with a drilled hole. But it is more expansive than air to air heat pumps.
Why don't people just spend $10k and have their problems vanish? (and don't quote me the cost of a heat pump, you have to also pay to rip out your old stuff)
I hope that the inflation reduction act will help with lower income families in this regard. Up to $8000 back on a heat pump install at the point of sale. This could make the install only a couple thousand.
You think that heat pump installers won’t increase their prices by a few thousand when those come into effect? Based on tracking prices across the start and stop of utility rebates, I seriously doubt that whole $8K will land in consumer wallets and would even be surprised if half of it ended up there in the end.
If anyone is in this situation, we can look at solutions people used when they heated with wood in old homes.
In japan, people ate at tables with a thick quilt built in to cover your legs.
European sitting chairs were designed with “hoods” to trap as much heat as possible. Everyone wore long johns every day in the winter. A thick wool sweater was a requirement for life and you had blankets all over. Only the critical parts of the house with people in them were heated.
When you went to your bed, which was likely away from the fire, you would boil water and put in a bottle that you kept underneath your blankets all night.
The typical solution is to use a heat recovery ventilator (HRV) or a energy recover ventilator (ERV). They exhaust old air outside and bring fresh air in, but they also attempt to transfer the heat of the outgoing air to the incoming air.
DIY ventilation with co2 monitor, some motors to control the incoming air. The amount of air needed to recycle the air is so small it doesn't make a dent on the temperature.
'Heat or eat' is a real dilemma. I don't mind being cold though. I would choose to be well fed rather than living in a warm room, if given that choice.
Cutting consumption is great. Still, we should do the rational thing and deplete our current enemy of its natural resources rather than buying gas at four times the price from the U.S.
And stop buying Russian LNG via China, which through shipping pollutes so much that it will probably offset the energy saved by cutting consumption.
Probably we should also stop hundreds of private jets flying to climate conferences.
On reason is that the EU (except Hungary) largely stopped importing gas and oil from Russia. One of the world's largest exporters of both. Pipelines into other countries do not have the capacity that the EU pipelines have. The EU then buying from other sources contributed to a shortage and rising prices.
Also, not many people realize this, but the problem isn't caused by the war. If you don't believe me then open an inflation chart of your country of choice and try to spot any change to the shape of the curve around Feb 2022.