[Rinzler89]

>Even older homes, compared to the average US home is highly insulated.

Why are you comparing apples to oranges? Germans don't care what it's like in America since it doesn't lower their energy bills.

America can afford to be wasteful with energy, since it's energy independent, has much cheaper energy than Germany, including oil, gas, and nuclear, and has higher incomes. Germany doesn't. Cheap Russian gas is gone and their nuclear also so of course their energy is much more expensive to the point it affects industry and consumers more than in the US.

>but there is also a large part of the population does not own a car at al

Passenger car ownership has reached record highs in Germany. Outside of big dense cities with great public transport like Berlin where car owners are in the minority, the majority of people own a car statistically.

[gostintheshell]

There's apparently nothing worth comparing Germany to? They were reducing energy waste even when they had cheap gas, that makes them less part of the energy waste correlates to prosperity argument than the US and hence less about per capita energy use being a good thing.