My refrigerator died last week, and with that, my family and I lived with an “ice box” in its place, using frozen bottles of water as the source of cooling until today, when the new refrigerator was installed.
Refrigeration is a service billions of us take for granted. Living without it for a week helps one ungrant that taking (or however that is supposed to be phrased).
All of this also reminds me of a blog post in my feed earlier this year entitled “Why ‘The Fridge’ Continues to Resonate” which included the following, amazing graph:
This new refrigerator will consume more power per year than the average household in Sub-Saharan Africa. Just the refrigerator. That doesn’t include the lighting, heating, dishwasher, clothes washer and dryer, and hot water heater, let alone charging the family electric car.
Given my day-to-day work investing in Africa, none of this is surprising to me, but I had not seen this difference in energy consumption simplified down to the refrigerator.
See toddmoss.substack.com/p/why-the-fridge-continues-to-resonate for the rest of the story.
