121–130 of 473 posts
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I believe a lot of that demand is due to there being no incentive to increase energy efficiency.
I believe it to be a question of physics and not incentives.
A well built home with more insulation will, according to physics, lose less heat in any given scenario. So policies that push for things that improve buildings can reduce energy use.
Do you think we have reached peak building efficiency or something?
Fun fact, 12 million hectares of land of used to produce corn used for ethanol which is used to produce gas. I'll let you draw the conclusion. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2025/04/trading-some-corn-e...
I’d rather people went rooftop solar, and put that land to producing food.
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You don't even need to go that far, put 100m of tubing 2m underground and plug it in your heat recovery ventilation system, bam free winter freeze protection/pre warming and free summer cooling, all you need is a 30w pumps and you will save hundreds of kw per year
uh no... You still need a heat pump. The water coming from that system would be like 50 degrees, far too cold for heating.
There are electric floor heating graphene foils that put out 20w per sqm, they're more than enough, no moving part, no maintenance, no bs, not even 20% of the price of a hydro floor heating, you can even install them yourself
What about STORING excess power and delivering it during the day at a same level ? That is a critical part! I remember last time it was too expensive.
Related is the other comments here that mention air-conditioning is largely a non-issue if you spec for year-round solar. If you are generating 3x as much energy in July compared to January, and January can power your house, then the A/C is basically free.
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People still build houses like energy is cheap and abundant. A properly insulated house in any temperate climate require very little heating or cooling. Spend 50k on insulation that will last the life of the building instead of 50k on heating and cooling devices which will need constant maintenance and replacement + fuel and end up costing 10x more over the life of the building. A modern house with modern insulation…
I could not retrofit my house for efficient heating with $50k. To do so would likely be cheaper to completely tear it down and rebuild.
The article is just wrong. And only mentions energy used for heating in passing. Heating requires MASSIVE amounts of energy. I should know bc I have a whole house battery and solar system (almost 30 kWh battery and 24kW solar). It keeps the lights on, but not heating. I live in a mild climate. The reality is that battery/solar requires major quality of life and activity time shifting trade-offs.
And Canada is not exactly the warmest country on the planet.
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I’m happy to be wrong about this globally, but in my neck of the woods the readily exploited hydro resources are already exploited to 90% of their capacity and have been for 100 years. Hydro is in many ways the ultimate renewable energy, but that’s been true since electrification and we’ve been using it as part of the energy mix since then. I’d love to be wrong but my understanding is that there isn’t a huge amount o…
Hydro in Norway goes very well with windmills in Denmark. Very simplified: Wind blows mostly in Denmark during the day, so Norway stops hydro during the day and imports electricity from Denmark's windmills. During night the wind is mostly still in Denmark so windmills don't produce much and Denmark imports from Norway's hydro. In this way you can stretch the capacity from hydro using windmills even though Norway isn'…