Heath Robinson would love to be an energy auditor
Outside my office window, a team of builders is working on an eco-house. They are running a petrol generator to produce power for an electric cement mixer. That little system is converting chemical energy into rotary energy into electrical energy into rotary energy. That’s at least two conversions (and losses) that don’t need to be there.
Years ago I walked into a meeting room where the radiator and air-conditioning unit (installed one above the other) were blazing away – one producing hot air from hot water from gas (and electricity to pump it) and the other trying to cancel that out with cool air from electricity from gas/coal/nuclear. I switched both off and the temperature was just fine.
I’ve been in food companies where the cool rooms were next to the ovens. I’ve seen many examples of air compressors sucking their own heat into their ‘cool’ air intake. Stories abound of air conditioning intakes being downwind of hot air vents. The list goes on…