[Greenbuilding] Re-fridgeration

Reuben Deumling 9watts at gmail.com
Mon Jul 23 10:25:16 CDT 2012


On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 7:50 AM, Steven Tjiang <steve at tjiang.org> wrote:

> I don't think there was a concerted effort to create all those uses.


Actually there was. This was the subject of my dissertation. Increasing the
electricity demanded by a refrigerator ten-fold in the matter of one
generation isn't something that just happens. Our ability to subsequently
undo much of that engineering foolishness while keeping the bells and
whistles confirms I think the gratuitous nature of the project.
Here's a slide show that touches on several dimensions of this argument:
http://eetd-seminars.lbl.gov/sites/eetd-seminars.lbl.gov/files/deumling_lbnl_slides.5.27.08-web.pdf

There was a concerted effort to generate and distribute alot of cheap
> electricity and the market took care of the rest.


The Kitchen Debate between Krushchev and Nixon is just the most famous
example of the ideological skirmishes around appliances and prosperity
peculiar to the US, and the meanings attached to excess, automation, waste,
obsolescence. Remember, no other country went through this, experienced the
wild swing in in-use-energy consumption of refrigerators. The two partial
exceptions are Canada and Australia, whose markets for white goods was more
tightly coupled to the US market.


> We just need to make energy expensive again and conservation will happen.


Agreed.

> Alas, there is no political will to do that.
>

Acquiescing to an expansion of Energy Star is an example I think of our
reluctance to put our weight behind such a project.
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