I never think about wasting electricity. But living in England and Germany I learned fast—leaving a light on meant neighbors knocking, assuming you were home. Electricity wasn't cheap. It was a bill that bit. Is it still like that?
I never think about wasting electricity. Lights on all night, AC running all day, every device in the apartment doing its thing—it doesn’t register as a real cost the way food or rent does. That’s an American relationship with electricity and I didn’t know it was specific to America until I lived somewhere else.
In England first, then Germany, the relationship was completely different. In Germany especially, leaving a light on when you left the house wasn’t just wasteful—it was a social misdemeanor. Neighbors would see the light, assume you were home, and knock. The light being on was an invitation. It meant someone was there. So you turned everything off when you left not just to save money but to avoid the social consequence of implying you were available when you weren’t.
And the bill itself was punishing in a way that shaped behavior at a cellular level. This was around 2008 and German residential electricity was already expensive enough that you thought about it the way Americans in the 1950s thought about the phone bill or the heating oil—it was a real number that required real management. One light left on all night was noticeable. Leaving the AC running in an empty apartment was almost unthinkable.
I don’t know if it’s still like that. London felt different—maybe wealth smooths it out, maybe the culture shifted. But Germany felt like a place that had never forgotten that energy costs something. America forgot that somewhere around the time central air became standard and never remembered it again. Is it still like that over there?
I never think about wasting electricity. But living in England and Germany I learned fast—leaving a light on meant neighbors knocking, assuming you were home. Electricity wasn’t cheap. It was a bill that bit. Is it still like that?
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