My first instinct in shopping for appliances is to look for ones that are the most energy efficient, more in order to save money than for any environmental reasons. However, if you live in a cold climate, how important is it to cut your electricity usage, when all the juice is going to ultimately end up as heat anyway? Granted, it makes a difference in the summer time, when your A/C will have to pump all that heat out. But in the winter, your furnace will have to work less while your old fridge merrily chews up watts.
Based on a few minutes' Googling, the average home furnace is rated at 75000 BTU, which is roughly 20 kW. Usage must vary a lot with the outside temperature and how well a home is insulated, but let's guess that a furnace is on for about 10% of the time in the middle of winter, leading to an average of around 2 kW. A modern refrigerator will draw upwards of 70 W, so your major appliances can throw off a significant amount of heat relative to the furnace. You'll certainly see detailed postings on the internet about how people's electric bill went down when they bought an efficient new fridge, but did they look at their gas bill, too?
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