This is nonsense. Wasting energy doesn't make anyone's quality of life better. Perhaps in a future where we have magically limitless energy produced at next to zero cost we can stop caring about it, but at any point before then (i.e. our entire lives) being more efficient increases quality of life.
Net zero could push energy bills up by £120 a year
- Thread starter Mrwong
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This is nonsense. Wasting energy doesn't make anyone's quality of life better. Perhaps in a future where we have magically limitless energy produced at next to zero cost we can stop caring about it, but at any point before then (i.e. our entire lives) being more efficient increases quality of life.
If energy were uniformly cheap that would redress the economic imbalance with China - stlll some manual steps making those iphones, but for how much longer.
(many of their natural resources are duplicated elsewhere, too)
carbon footprint of the gaming industry and those 3/4090 during their (overclocked?) lifetime probably deserves Rishis attention ( RIP tungsten light bulb + CFL )
(many of their natural resources are duplicated elsewhere, too)
carbon footprint of the gaming industry and those 3/4090 during their (overclocked?) lifetime probably deserves Rishis attention ( RIP tungsten light bulb + CFL )
I never said wasting energy, I said use as in using. The future shouldn’t be a world of energy peasants hand washing clothes to save the world.
You said we should aim to use as much as possible. That's the same thing. Maximising energy use is a stupid goal; we should be maximising utility.
Weird strawman.
Banning tungsten light bulbs has been one of the most quietly effective way to reduce energy consumption and emissions. It’s saved the average consumer about £120 a year.
It’s remarkable what a small change driven by technology can achieve.
Well kind of but the issues is the emissions at the point of generation. Electronics don’t emit oxides of nitrogen and carbon.
Yeah, using not wasting. The goal should be to use as much energy as possible to improve quality of life. That’s the reason people buy energy.
D.P, with all his education, is apparently unaware that all energy used like this ends up as heat!
Of course burning petrol/diesel or using electricity to drive and operate the systems of a car generates heat!
The question is how much useful 'work' is done before the energy stored in fossil fuels or a cars battery ends up at its eventual destination of heat energy being emitted.
Of course both diesel and petrol are far more energy dense, by both volume and weight, vs even the best batteries currently available this is partially offset by BEV's being able to use their batteries stored energy much more efficiently that an ICE vehicle can.
Soldato
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Which planet are you sending this message from?
Soldato
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Your right but I think your taking his post out of context.
The heat generated from the first iteration of something is basically 1-efficicency.
Take a mavity storage device. You input 1kwh but it only stores (by hoisting something up) 0.7kwh, the heat is likely to be the total of the difference 0.3kwh (eventually).
The energy is then harvested at say 90% efficiency, so 0.7x0.9kwh of energy is passed on and the 0.1x0.7kwh is released as heat.
If that 0.7x0.9kwh is used in say a heater then it will all come out as heat.
Or even if not, eventually the sum total of the 1kwh will be heat.
It just depends on how efficient you can be at energy conversion, if somehow we could hit 100% then in theory it may never need to be converted to heat either deliberately or via conversion.
But thats no different to the vast majority of the energy we consume. Its converted to heat (remember we can only change the form of energy, not create or destroy it).
If the energy your using is captured solar your in effect net zero. It would have already fallen on something and been converted to another form of energy, depending what it fell on, roof tile would vary to a tree leaf for example.
Its really two conversations, we should be aiming to 1) be as efficient as possible will all energy usage, source independent, and 2) where possible harvest renewables as opposed to using non renewables.
Changes are painful but you can end up in a better place. Lightbulbs are a great example. We all suffered from those horrible coiled tube pieces of nastiness, but they for sure supported the faster progression of LEDS as there was a massive demand for something better.
We ended up with bulbs that are vastly lower energy, vastly cooler (sometimes heat matters), last longer, have more options (colour temp for example).
At best it was very badly worded. For example the sentence:
Is just nonsence. Its not the 'inefficiencies' that cause the heat.
The 'inefficiencies' are related to the amount energy turned to heat that hasn't performed some useful 'work' beforehand ( of course useful work may indeed be the intentional generation of heat for example for a cars cabin climate system)
Heat is the inevitable outcome of expending the energy stored in fossil fuel or a battery.
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Individuals are never going to stump up the cash to improve at an individual level.
Heat pumps (or other options), better insulation, new windows.
You simply get no benefit unless it's a life house.
In my opinion only way I'd improve this house (a temporary house) is if the government took more from me in tax (ie inescapable) and then gave it back in form of "free" money for home improvement.
As our boiler is 20 years old, if it was a well insulated house, and heat pumps stacked up, it could be a significant saving over time.
But if it dies today it would be replaced with another gas boiler
But I'm not paying maybe 15k to retrofit a house when that 15k could go towards my next home. And that is the story everywhere.
How many under 40s know they are going to stay in thier house to reap the benefits?
These things have to be funded by government, and the money needs to come from somewhere to fund it. It's the only way we are going to make the personal changes.
Heat pumps (or other options), better insulation, new windows.
You simply get no benefit unless it's a life house.
In my opinion only way I'd improve this house (a temporary house) is if the government took more from me in tax (ie inescapable) and then gave it back in form of "free" money for home improvement.
As our boiler is 20 years old, if it was a well insulated house, and heat pumps stacked up, it could be a significant saving over time.
But if it dies today it would be replaced with another gas boiler
But I'm not paying maybe 15k to retrofit a house when that 15k could go towards my next home. And that is the story everywhere.
How many under 40s know they are going to stay in thier house to reap the benefits?
These things have to be funded by government, and the money needs to come from somewhere to fund it. It's the only way we are going to make the personal changes.
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£7.5k is a decent wedge to throw at the householder but if no one under 40 is going to do it and many over 60 won't do it, (life's too short), it falls to those having to do it because of inevitable failure of a system.
I would want much more information and certainty of outcome to spend the money but if it was necessary I would probably do it, I could afford it and even if I am over 70.
Soldato
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perhaps but all we can control right now is our corner of the sky
it's not feasible for the energy I generate on my roof to be sent to China for instance . (that is not to say we do not need more interconnects for our European neighbours however.)
Some of us have are willing to. Would you not consider a highly efficient house more attractive?
More likely.. I'd move.. And have to spend it all Over again.
I certainly would. But it wouldn't bump the asking price up by anywhere near the outlay
Soldato
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They don't have to be paid for by the government at all.
You will pay but you will pay indirectly.
When (maybe if) gas becomes uneconomic your will pay then.
If you don't and you insist on not modernising then your house value will fall by the amount in takes to modernise it.
Its normal and happens all the time. The best example is a completely outdated house, its market value is lower than the same house modernised.
So you will pay, but it will be via reduced asset value as opposed to cash.
Very hard to measure though. And we are not there yet. I know putting in new windows here would not increase the price by the amount spent.
And right now, am ashp might actually decrease price, such is the distrust of them.
I'm extreme examples, yeah, for sure. But when youre in a house just a few years, it's a big big gamble to spend 10-20 on what might be no net gain. Especially with parts and labour higher than ever
It's not just the money frequently the 'solutions' provided aren't inadequate, cause major issues of their own or a poor replacement for what was there before.
Some examples....
You'll hear a lot of noise about heat pump installations elsewhere (Inc Scandinavia but what you'll hear less about is that most of these systems are designed to heat air (to a lower temperature) vs water (which needs to he heated a much higher temperature).
Heat pumps of course becine increasingly less efficient based on the heat level required and what you are trying to heat (dense water or much less dense air)
Attempts to retro fit insulation to older housing stock are beset by issues (often due to condensation). For example try selling your home after having soreayed insulation installed in a loft and there are massive issues with attempts to retrofit insulation to cavity wall aswell.
BEV's really only make sense if you can charge them at home as there no chance that a sufficient charging infrastructure will be in place by 2030 / 35 for anything like the amount of electrical vehicles that will be around.
BEV's are currently extremely poor fits for any towing application or for anything like emergency service vehicles. As these are handed to shift to shift and hence in use 24/7/365 when not being serviced or repaired.
Solar and wind power are completely misrepresented to the public.
Sold as a 'cheap' way of producing energy when they are in fact anything but.
A lot of the of the 'cheap' claims are based on bid prices for new wind offshore wind farms where the government guaranteed to pay the price of the lowest bidder (above a certain ceiling) and companies were quite happy to bid initially because they weren't held to their end of the bargain and could low ball their bids knowing full well that they would not take up the price they had bid for and instead sell at the prevailing market rate. This was changed so that companies were obliged to sell at the price they bid at and all of a sudden there was zero bids.... Renewable intermittency is a huge issue both from too much and too little being produced. And there just isn't the means to practically store, at the massive scales needed, the excess energy produced in the boom times to cover the dips.
Solar and wind are never going to be 'cheap' when they need pretty much 1:1 redundancy from another power source especially when operating I'm this manner often means the backup source is running inefficiently as its having to spin up and down all the time.
2030 - 2050 could be a really interesting time when the crows really come home to roost and the folly of making commitments on one hand without even having the workable solution let alome actually implementing them on the other comes to fruition.
The only hope is some rather large, a quickly deployable technology breakthroughs in the best few years.
Some examples....
You'll hear a lot of noise about heat pump installations elsewhere (Inc Scandinavia but what you'll hear less about is that most of these systems are designed to heat air (to a lower temperature) vs water (which needs to he heated a much higher temperature).
Heat pumps of course becine increasingly less efficient based on the heat level required and what you are trying to heat (dense water or much less dense air)
Attempts to retro fit insulation to older housing stock are beset by issues (often due to condensation). For example try selling your home after having soreayed insulation installed in a loft and there are massive issues with attempts to retrofit insulation to cavity wall aswell.
BEV's really only make sense if you can charge them at home as there no chance that a sufficient charging infrastructure will be in place by 2030 / 35 for anything like the amount of electrical vehicles that will be around.
BEV's are currently extremely poor fits for any towing application or for anything like emergency service vehicles. As these are handed to shift to shift and hence in use 24/7/365 when not being serviced or repaired.
Solar and wind power are completely misrepresented to the public.
Sold as a 'cheap' way of producing energy when they are in fact anything but.
A lot of the of the 'cheap' claims are based on bid prices for new wind offshore wind farms where the government guaranteed to pay the price of the lowest bidder (above a certain ceiling) and companies were quite happy to bid initially because they weren't held to their end of the bargain and could low ball their bids knowing full well that they would not take up the price they had bid for and instead sell at the prevailing market rate. This was changed so that companies were obliged to sell at the price they bid at and all of a sudden there was zero bids.... Renewable intermittency is a huge issue both from too much and too little being produced. And there just isn't the means to practically store, at the massive scales needed, the excess energy produced in the boom times to cover the dips.
Solar and wind are never going to be 'cheap' when they need pretty much 1:1 redundancy from another power source especially when operating I'm this manner often means the backup source is running inefficiently as its having to spin up and down all the time.
2030 - 2050 could be a really interesting time when the crows really come home to roost and the folly of making commitments on one hand without even having the workable solution let alome actually implementing them on the other comes to fruition.
The only hope is some rather large, a quickly deployable technology breakthroughs in the best few years.
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Soldato
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I beat you to that pun in post 209
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