The U.S. Department of Energy on Friday proposed energy efficiency standards on water heaters it said would save consumers $11.4 billion on energy and water bills annually.
The standards on residential water heater efficiency, which are required by Congress, have not been updated in 13 years. Water heating is responsible for roughly 13% of both annual residential energy use and consumer utility costs, the DOE said.
So I can’t stand it when people do the “reeeee” thing either, but this one kind of bugs me.
$11.4 billion in savings per year for 332 million people averages to $34 per year.
Here is a typical electric water heater. Cost: $439. Here is one with a heat pump installed as described in the article. Cost: $1,909 - a difference in price of $1,470.
At $34 per year, this water heater would have to last 43 years before any cost savings from the efficiency gains would be realized. I don’t know if you know much about water heaters, but this won’t happen by a long shot.
Gas units fare similarly, with typical units verses high efficiency units’ price differential.
It’s hard to be a homeowner these days. This will make it harder. I can accept it in the name of efficiency gains and saving the planet and all that, but the whole “this will save consumers money,” bit is pure gaslighting. It’s not true. This will cost consumers quite a lot of money.
The two models you linked have an estimated annual energy cost of $489 and $119. That’s roughly $40 a month vs $10. This would mean you’d come out ahead in total cost over the lifetime of the unit – parts + install + bills – at 4 years and 2 months.
Obviously every situation is different, but calculating at an aggregate level and using that math to dismiss the idea wholesale is disingenuous at best.
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You’re probably right about it not saving enough money, but the math you did above assumes one water heater per person.
The median household in the US is about 2.5 people. So $34 per year per person becomes $85 per household. Reducing the time to break even to 17.3 years.
Still longer than that water heater is likely to last, but not quite as bad.
True, that actually makes me feel slightly better. But nothing’s going to make me feel better when I go to buy a new water heater and it costs three times as much as the last one did.
Claiming there’s savings just isn’t true in reality. If they came out and said it’s to help reduce energy consumption to save the planet I’d be all in, and I’m still in for this, but it just makes it hard to fully support with the gaslighting as you aptly put.
Part of the problem is that most people who would need convincing of this will immediately turn away as soon as they hear “save energy” or “save the planet” as they see these efforts as nuicanses and a vie for control. The second you frame it as “what’s in it for you,” they immediately start to listen. Look at what happened with solar panels once they crossed the magic threshold of affordability and actually functioned as a cost saving method. A third of the houses in my neighborhood have them installed now. The only reason I don’t is because I’m currently paycheck to paycheck, and my local power company is also doing a killer job of sourcing solar and other renewables.
It would be nice if they occasionally spent time making and enforcing stuff like this for the 7 or 10 corporations that cause most of the climate change problem. Asking all the citizens to spend and extra $1000 when they replace their water heater is just limate change theater.
I think you maybe responded to the wrong person or didn’t respond to the OP. My post was about how to convince people to buy in, whereas yours seems to be focused on the big businesses and how they’re not being held to the same standard. Though, the overlap here is basically what I originally said: frame it as cost-savings for the businesses or something else in it for them and they’ll start doing it with or without regulation.
It’s important to note that the cost to make and the price to sell are too different things. I’m sure it costs more to make, but features like that are used to upsell. When they become a requirement, suddenly they can’t be used to upsell and so the price comes down. It happened with backup cameras in cars. For a few years, it was a major upsell for a car to come with a backup camera. If you wanted a backup camera you had to buy the premium trim for thousands more. Then it became a requirement and it could nolonger be treated as a premium.