We feel the price of energy most keenly at the gas pump. But a large part of the energy budget goes into heating or cooling houses, offices, etc.
Usually they're heated by direct or indirect consumption of fossil fuels. with an energy efficiency of 70% to 90%
The thing is, we could heat our houses at a far higher efficiency, easily at 200%-300%.
Sounds crazy, eh? Efficiencies of more than 100% are impossible, aren't they?

The technologiy to reach these efficiencies is old, well tried, well tested and ubiquitous - the fridge. It's a heat pump. It transports heat energy from volumes with low temperature (inside the fridge) to volumes with higher temperature (outside the fridge), against the natural flow (from high temperature to low temperature). The amount of energy to transport 1000 kJ of heat from outside (let's say at 10 degrees Celsius) to inside (at 19 degrees Celsius) is far less than 1000 kJ (around 150-200 kJ should be enough), so the total influx of heat is around 1200 kJ. Divide this by the 200 kJ you spent to get this amount of heat into your house, and you get an efficiency of 600%.

Yet, as far as I know, heat pumps are NOT used to heat offices. I'm quite certain that heat pumps could reduce our total energy consumption by a significant amount. Why on earth don't we use this?  It can't be technological hurdles, this is old and tested tech. It only can be human inertia - this way of heating doesn't fit the accepted template of rules and regulations, and it would cost the energy companies a huge amount of money if heating costs were suddenly cut by 80% or thereabouts.

The pen is mightier than the sword. But if you literally want to have some impact, use a typewriter

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