We should use more energy*.

*...specifically, more clean energy - and more of it used well.

We need to use more renewables. Not less electricity. More.

I know this sounds counterintuitive. We all grew up being told to turn off the lights, take shorter showers, unplug the charger when you leave. That stuff was drilled into us as kids, and it stuck. Saving energy = being responsible.

Here's the thing, though: the climate problem was never that we use too much energy. The problem is that we burn fossil fuels to get it. If we cap demand, we cap prosperity and we slow down the very transition that's supposed to save us.

The "save electricity" myth

That "turn off the lights" mindset did something subtle - it framed energy itself as something bad. Something to feel guilty about. Every kilowatt-hour carried a little weight of shame.

But energy isn't bad. Energy is how you heat homes, move people, manufacture things, cool cities during 40°C heatwaves. The source is what matters, not the consumption.

Meanwhile, global demand keeps climbing. More people, more development, more devices, more compute. No amount of guilt-tripping will reverse that trajectory, and honestly, it shouldn't. Access to cheap, abundant energy is one of the strongest predictors of quality of life.

Abundance, not austerity

Here's where the framing needs to shift.

Clean grids can handle more load. They're designed for it. AI data centers, heat pumps, EV fleets - they all want kilowatts, and that's fine as long as those kilowatts come from wind, solar, or nuclear. Limiting energy use means limiting electrification. If you tell people to use less electricity, you're also telling them not to install that heat pump, not to charge that EV at home, not to switch from gas to induction.

The decoupling is real: prosperity rises with energy access. Emissions don't have to - as long as supply is renewable. This is not a pipe dream; countries like Norway, Iceland, and increasingly Denmark are living proof.

Why "use more renewables" matters

Demand drives investment. This is basic economics.

When there's guaranteed consumption, it justifies building new wind farms, new solar arrays, new battery storage. Developers need offtake certainty. The more we electrify - transport, heating, cooking, industrial processes - the stronger the business case for deploying renewables at scale.

Efficiency has diminishing returns, too. Once your home is insulated and your appliances are A-rated, the next big gain doesn't come from squeezing another 3% out of your fridge. It comes from switching fuels entirely:
- gas boiler → heat pump,
- petrol car → EV,
- gas stove → induction.
Each of those switches increases your electricity bill. And that's the point.

Smarter consumption, not less consumption

I'm not saying waste energy. I'm saying use it intelligently.

Run your heavy loads when the grid is green. This is what smart tariffs and demand response are for - shift your EV charging, your washing machine, your heat pump cycles to hours when wind and solar are abundant. At Pstryk, this is literally what we build: tools that help people consume energy at the right time, not just less of it.

Use energy for productive outcomes. Heat homes. Cool hospitals. Power manufacturing. Charge fleets. Don't feel bad that your kWh count went up - ask instead where those kWh came from and what they accomplished.

Encourage storage and load shifting rather than blanket "use less" messaging. The grid doesn't need you to sit in the dark. It needs you to be flexible about when you use power.

What this looks like in practice

In northern Germany and Denmark, surplus wind power regularly gets curtailed because there isn't enough demand to absorb it. Literally - clean electrons thrown away because the system can't use them. The answer isn't less wind. It's more demand in the right places: attract energy-intensive industry, build electrolyzers for green hydrogen, incentivize flexible loads.

Data centers are already doing this. The smarter operators schedule heavy compute jobs around renewable availability. Microsoft, Google - they're shifting workloads to match when the grid is cleanest.

And at household level, this is happening too. Families installing heat pumps and EV chargers are using significantly more electricity than before. Their kWh bill went up. Their carbon footprint went down. That's the trade we should be celebrating.

Stop shaming energy use. Start shaming fossil dependence.

The messaging needs to change. Guilt about flipping a light switch is misplaced. Guilt about burning gas in 2026 when alternatives exist - that's fair.

On a policy level: reward flexible demand, accelerate renewable build-out, make it easy and cheap for people to electrify everything.

On a personal level: audit what you can electrify in your home, your commute, your daily routine. Then go all-in - even if the kWh bill climbs. Especially if it does. That climbing number means you're switching off fossil fuels.

That's not a problem. That's progress.