When we rented our apartment, the owner gave us a tour and told us how things worked. We have lots of keypads in the apartment that control the electric blinds and lights and such. He pointed to a button and said, “When you want hot water for your shower or washing dishes, turn the “dude” on.”
If you read Hebrew, you can see on the keypad a word that looks like “dude”. Everyday before our showers and baths we mention we are going to “turn the dude on”. Or ask, “can you please turn the dude on?” And of course, the dude is only turned on when we need it. And yes, we love turning the dude on.
Being more conservative about energy consumption is one of the differences we experience here. Everyone participates in conservation because it’s practical and makes sense. It just is the way it is here. We only heat water when we need it, as opposed to having a large tank of water heated all the time. Just thinking about how much energy it consumes in our Cleveland house to heat a large tank of sitting water is astounding. And we even have two tanks just in case one isn't enough!
So, I think the moral of this post is that energy conservation is a real turn on.