Posts

Showing posts from November, 2022

Morning coffee thoughts

 As I was making my coffee this morning I was idly speculating on if I would save energy by putting hot water from the faucet rather than cold into my electric kettle.  Now, first, it is written that " Every big counts ."  The energy in my morning coffee is probably below what I should be worrying about by a bit, if it wasn't fun.   That out of the way, if I use cold water then all the energy I use comes in as electricity from the grid which then gets turned into heat in the water with near perfect efficiency.  In Massachusetts I'm emitting about 421 grams of carbon per kWh on that. Or, lets say I use burning natural gas to heat my water directly.  That would typically be 185 g/kWh if I can do it perfectly efficiently.  If I was doing it on a stove top it wouldn't be that efficient but the boiler down in the basement should be about 95% efficient so lets say 195 g/kWh.  The water coming out of the tap isn't coffee making temperature but having part of the ener