Would heating a space up to 50c require the same amount of energy as cooling it down to -50?

Question

Lets assume we have a 0.5 square meter box, sitting in an envoirement that is 0c.

Would it take the same amount of energy to heat the box up to 50c as it would take to cool that box down to -50c?

Assuming the exact same box is in the exact same location with the exact same surroundings

In: 6

Answer 1

No.

To cool a box, you must pump its heat elsewhere, and this process consumes energy.

To heat a box, you can either dump energy directly into it, or pump heat into it, and for the sake of comparing apples to apples we’ll compare pumping heat into it. This consumes less energy than pumping heat out, because the energy consumed also winds up as heat inside of the box.