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My green home: $90k in clean tech upgrades, $20k in tax breaks

arstechnica.com

1–6 of 6 posts

Re: My green home: $90k in clean tech upgrades, $20k in tax breaks

#2
$70K would keep my 1980s era furnace running for a very, very long time. Keeping that machine out of the landfill, and preventing the new carbon footprint of anything else I would have to buy to replace it, really makes me question the potential carbon decrease of such an effort. How much oil was burned to make your heat pump?

Also, in what world does this make any economic sense whatsoever? Most people cannot and will not be able to afford to do this. Meanwhile, why is the taxpayer subsidizing someone who _can_ already afford to spend $70K of their own money on this?

Enjoy your electric car, champ, but carbon-wise it's actually better to keep a mid-2000's Toyota running for an extra decade so that all the carbon that was released in its manufacture is amortized over a longer lifetime.

Re: My green home: $90k in clean tech upgrades, $20k in tax breaks

#3

$70K would keep my 1980s era furnace running for a very, very long time. Keeping that machine out of the landfill, and preventing the new carbon footprint of anything else I would have to buy to replace it, really makes me question the potential carbon decrease of such an effort. How much oil was burned to make your heat pump? Also, in what world does this make any economic sense whatsoever? Most people cannot and wi…

I guess writing for a tech website pays really well. Who knew?

Re: My green home: $90k in clean tech upgrades, $20k in tax breaks

#4

$70K would keep my 1980s era furnace running for a very, very long time. Keeping that machine out of the landfill, and preventing the new carbon footprint of anything else I would have to buy to replace it, really makes me question the potential carbon decrease of such an effort. How much oil was burned to make your heat pump? Also, in what world does this make any economic sense whatsoever? Most people cannot and wi…

"Enjoy your electric car, champ, but carbon-wise it's actually better to keep a mid-2000's Toyota running for an extra decade so that all the carbon that was released in its manufacture is amortized over a longer lifetime."

That's a nice strawman you've erected. Why not sell the Toyota to someone instead of sending it to the shredder?

Re: My green home: $90k in clean tech upgrades, $20k in tax breaks

#5
Focusing efforts on converting the natural gas stove to electric might end up causing more environmental harm compared to keeping it as is. Once you take into account the brand new entire replacement unit and the disposal of the old one (not to mention the portion of electric powered by fossil fuels anyways) it just doesn't make sense. You get a much better return on replacing windows, sealing cracks, adding insulation where needed, etc.

Re: My green home: $90k in clean tech upgrades, $20k in tax breaks

#6
post #3

$70K would keep my 1980s era furnace running for a very, very long time. Keeping that machine out of the landfill, and preventing the new carbon footprint of anything else I would have to buy to replace it, really makes me question the potential carbon decrease of such an effort. How much oil was burned to make your heat pump? Also, in what world does this make any economic sense whatsoever? Most people cannot and wi…

I guess writing for a tech website pays really well. Who knew?

And here I am commenting as fast as HN will let me for free