[jchw]

I think they gave up on finding technological solutions too quickly. I don't think energy consumption is going to go down easily; the path of least resistance is clearly going to be finding a way to deliver more power sustainably. We can replace old water heaters with heat pump water heaters; they do have disadvantages (many require a 240V circuit and obviously they can't function during a power outage unlike gas) but they work. We can continue to improve the electric grid with renewables and batteries. It's expensive and it's a challenge, but increasingly it's pretty obvious that it is the future.

Having a culture of public bath houses would be interesting, but I don't think it would be much more than a speed bump in terms of energy usage of society. We can and will find more things to spend energy on for the foreseeable future until it becomes untenable...