TL;DR: burning stuff wastes lots of energy, electricity mostly doesn’t.

My garage used to get hot. Like really hot. This being Texas, I figured maybe my garage doors needed better insulation. I thought about putting in a vent fan. And my office was over the garage and it was even noticably warmer. Recently I noticed the garage never gets hot any more. Then it hit me. The Tesla! I used to have two, sometimes three cars in that garage. Just the heat leftover after they were turned off were enough to really heat up the place. Glad I didn’t invest in new insulation!

I have also started using a little induction cooktop. It is so much better than gas (or old fashioned resistive electric). Things heat up fast and nothing else gets hot but the pot. No sweating over a meal, getting blasted by heat, and probably toxic fumes.

This article point out the massive amount of wasted energy in “thermal” power generation. You can tell this by all the excess heat given off. All that heat is energy being (literally) thrown away. So estimates of how much electricity we need to transition from thermal technologies are probably vastly over estimated, perhaps by as much as a factor of 2x to 4x.

Addendum:  I have told people many times it cost me $3 – $5 to “fill up” the Tesla.  This compares to maybe $30 to $50 for a similar gas car.  People don’t believe it.  Even techies when I show them the (relatively simple) math.  Maybe this is the real explanation.  Gas engines are inefficient.  All that heat coming off the radiator is a complete waste.  With a gas car you are basically burning a lot of fuel that does nothing to help move the vehicle.  All it is doing is making the nearby area hotter.

The Primary Energy Fallacy

From The Big Picture. Seems the number of Federal Government employees has been remarkably stable over the years. Not so much for state and especially local governments. Maybe people looking to make cuts in government spending are looking in the wrong place when they look at the Federal Government.