Electrification Could Cut Global Energy Use in Half

toomuchtodo

Discovered in https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-10-31/europe... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jSqcwxpd14

abstractspoon

Unlikely. We'd just use the leftover energy for new things.

bschwindHN

I only now got around to watching the Technology Connections video on renewable energy, I wish I had seen it sooner. Almost feels like it should be required viewing. I definitely thought there were nastier chemicals/compounds in solar panels and hadn't updated my knowledge on them in decades. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM

darth_avocado

I swapped my hvac for an electric heat pump. My energy usage went down. Because electricity is way too expensive and I’m okay sweating a bit in the summers and wearing jackets indoors in the winters.

mikeweiss

I decarbonized my 125 year old home this summer. Cold winters here, using mini split heat pumps now for heat. Previously had oil, and 90 years ago it would have used coal. Love thinking this will be the first winter this house ever had where dirty exhaust wont be going up the chimney to keep it warm.

tianji-astrolog

The 'half' figure is mostly primary vs final energy accounting. A heat pump delivers 3-4 kWh of heat per kWh of electricity (COP 300-400%), and an EV turns ~80-90% of stored energy into motion vs ~25-35% for an ICE drivetrain. So electrifying heat and transport shrinks final energy demand even before counting upstream losses (refining, thermal generation - roughly 60% rejected energy in most Sankey diagrams of the current system). The comment below about electricity prices is the real friction point though. Where time-of-use rates exist, running a heat pump with thermal pre-heating during cheap midday solar hours changes the math entirely - the building itself becomes the battery. I got into tracking my own load against TOU windows and ended up building a small tool for it (energy-iq.app); shifting ~40% of consumption off-peak ended up worth more than any single efficiency upgrade. Electrification halves the energy; rate-aware scheduling is what makes it halve the bill.