Having individual heating and cooling units (<i>per unit gas heaters!</i>) is stupendously inefficient.<p>I travel in Asia fairly regularly so this isn't new to me, but even after all of these years I can't believe I continue to see shiny, brand new "high end" condo buildings in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, etc., with individual AC units hanging out the window.<p>Contrast this with a condo in Minneapolis that I own wherein heat and AC are central in the building and individual units can set their temperature to whatever they like - all run with tremendously higher efficiency.<p>It was explained to me once that there are Asian (specifically, Chinese) attitudes towards thrift that make it inconceivable/impossible to pay for AC that someone else might be using (or misusing). I don't know how true that is.<p>What I do know is, my building in MPLS looks very nice without several hundred crappy boxes hanging out the windows.