[...]The Irish Economy » Blog Archive » Warmer Homes[...]…

For those interested, university of Sussex SPRU185 energy, growth and sustainability (five propositions) has an interesting take on this. The five proposition are;
Rebound effects are significant and limit the potention fo decoupling energy consumption from economic growth (aka Jevons Paradox)
The contribution (price) of energy to economic growth has been greatly underestimated
Energy efficiency needs to be complimented by an attitude of sufficient / enough (as opposed to affluence)
Sustainability is incompatible with continued economic growth in rich countries (resources limits in a physically finite world)
A Zero-growth economy is incompatible with a debt based monetary system.

All in light of the impending oil crunch in the next 3-5 years.

It’s great to see another professor wade into this debate on the merits of the Warmer Homes Scheme.

By David Friedman’s rational, then homes in nice warm conditions, may in fact be poorly constructed, compared to homes in extreme cold conditions. I have always had my own suspicions about this. I am familiar with a very interesting project, the Caribbean Disaster Mitigation Project, which provides a whole range of advice for construction in those areas. Check out things such as, Safer Building Toolkit for Credit Unions, and Hazard-resistant Construction, if you browse around the link below. To be honest, no website could ever produce such explicit structural blueprints and specifications for construction in other parts of the world (there would be uproar from vested interests such as engineers and architects). But I guess, what the disaster mitigation project is aimed self-builders who operate without formal code and practice. It is interesting though in Ireland, with our own impending ‘disaster’ in the form of dependence on gas imports, who much good technicial guidelines and literature have made it into the public domain, like the one I linked above for Al. Bear in mind, that in Ireland and UK, for decades now the professionals have been in charge of building standards and have not managed to produce anything like the same general awareness and availability of information, on good construction practice as we have seen, since energy independence became such a hot potato. BOH.

http://www.oas.org/CDMP/

So the economic value of improved insulation has to take account of the fact that well-insulated houses are more comfortable places given rational budgeting. Is this accounted for in these metrics?

A couple of random comments. I believe as peoples’ livestyles and work practices change in the coming years, heck, even as the age of society in Ireland changes over the coming years, the comfort factor in a house will change in ‘weight’. As I mentioned above, in the 1970s people were frozen in their houses and society accepted it. If you go back further, in the late 19th century and first half of the 20th century, people used to wrap up in woolen garments all day long inside their homes. You only have to look at the old photographs. I remember reading Peter Schewe’s book, The Grid, where the tsars in Moscow used to import coal from Wales to power a few Edison light bulbs in the emperial palace around the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Clearly, Lenin couldn’t keep importing coal from Wales to run light bulbs. There is a very interesting account of the Soviet electrification program given in Schewe’s book. In Denmark, they do use a lot of their wind generated electricity in simple room heaters. But that is made feasible by the fact their apartments are constructed to such high standards, and the heating load is so small. In Denmark also, they have community heating systems, where they used electricity from wind generation to power heat pumps to take thermal energy out of lakes and water courses and pump it around villages and towns. Denmark is expanding that kind of idea.

But back in the 1970s or earlier, there was no idea to have young entrepreneurs, there was no telecommuting, no broadband service. All there was, was a boat or plane ticket out of the country. When I grew up in the 1980s in rural west Limerick, you would see some localities, where houses had simply been abandoned as whole families left and moved to another country. There simply wasn’t the value put on properties there was later on. In the Celtic Tiger years, the opposite happened, those same houses became valuable all of a sudden, because planning permission for a dwelling in the countryside was a non-trivial matter, and there was demand in the market. But the problem was, in the Celtic Tiger, people began to look at property as a savings plan, a pension plan, an investment plan in itself. There were dozens of TV programs explaining to people that if you retrofitted the property to look nice, it would add value to the house, and therefore you could become rich. So all the old houses in rural west Limerick (and many other locations around the country) were subjected to what I call ‘bling retrofits’. Now that the capital in the tens of thousands of euro for ‘bling retrofits’ has been spent, the weird thing is, there is a second wave coming, where the same houses are expected to be eco-retrofitted. My only question is, where is the next wave going to come from? It seems to me, to find the most effective deployment of scarce capital, Ireland needs a joined up housing retrofit policy. It was auctioneers and a sales/speculative culture that drove the first wave of ‘bling’ retrofitting. We need all of these people to talk to one another. Ideally speaking, the architectural profession is meant to be the joined up thinker in all of this. But heck, in Ireland who listens to architects? BOH.

The ‘comparison’ group was chosen on the basis that they failed to meet the criteria for inclusion in the Warmer Homes Scheme. This is the very opposite of a controlled trial; two groups carefully selected to be different from each other.

Is this like in testing drugs, where they collect patients who have specific sympthoms and treat one group with the new treatment, and another with a placebo (but where none of the participants in the trial actually know which they are on)? BOH.

So the economic value of improved insulation has to take account of the fact that well-insulated houses are more comfortable places given rational budgeting. Is this accounted for in these metrics?

Yet,to be fair to the SEAI, the report clearly explains that this is not a controlled experiment. It says, “It is important to state that the research has not been operationalised as a ‘case control’ study, given the problems in matching households on specific criteria.”

The ‘comparison’ group was chosen on the basis that they failed to meet the criteria for inclusion in the Warmer Homes Scheme. This is the very opposite of a controlled trial; two groups carefully selected to be different from each other.

A control group is functional if it is either randomised or a matched sample. In this case we have two completely separate demographics compared. We can see for example that members of the ‘comparison’ group compared to the intervention group were:
* 41% less likely to live in detached houses
* 43% less likely to be living on benefits
* 76% more likely to have secondary education
* 82% more likely to be located in Cork

So what the study really tells us is that one demographic has different behavior from another. Not so earth-shattering.

I will ask the SEAI for their data and see if I can draw any useful conclusions from it. I would urge others to do the same.

Good observation Hugh, I must look at that when I get time. BOH.

check out the document published by dept. of Environment some time. It is kind of the best reference around at the moment, which speaks a lot of the difficulties and challenges you describe in doing the job correctly. The document was compiled by several experts in the industry, with experience over many years trying to achieve the highest thermal efficiency standards. Perhaps veering more towards the ’super house’, but still with some application to many daily situations (where you rightly point out, the constraints of time come into play hugely).

http://www.environ.ie/en/Publications/DevelopmentandHousing/BuildingStandards/FileDownLoad,18749,en.pdf

I wouldnt really put myself in that catagory…

What surprised me was the amount of time, planning and seting out involved in creating a seamless fabric of insulating material, be it sheet or roll.
I would query what a honest costing of the job done right would compare to the market effort where price competition ultimately places time constraints on finishings and presumably quality.

Also there needs to be a hell of alot more work done of improving research and methodology of what housing stock we have, rather than this distraction unto super houses.
Or maybe not…

Anyway, I read most (but I confess I didn’t read all) of the documents and didn’t see any commentary on them removing outliers that might confirm my suspicion about the hospitalization costs distorting the averages… is that a possible explanation for the single positive result?

Having done a floor to wall to roof insulation job, I would be curious as to the standards of craftwork and finishing that exist out there!

I have huge respect for people who take on this kind of work. I met Paul McNally, an architect I have known for years one day in Dublin - Oh, it must be a few years back now. But his mate had bought a house and retrofitted himself. Paul was on his way that day to give him a hand on a Saturday. I must say, when you read Paul’s feature piece in Construct Ireland magazine, you get the idea that Paul has actually done the ‘hands on’ himself. BOH.

http://constructireland.ie/Vol-4-Issue-5/Articles/Sustainable-Building-Technology/Ecological-renovation-moves-F-rated-hollow-block-house-up-to-A3.html

Point taken. “He started it” is my excuse.

Given that two interesting articles on climate science/ “green” economics hve been published recently, perhaps you could start a new thread by delivering you opinion on either, or both?

1. Paul Krugman’s article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/magazine/11Economy-t.html?hp=&pagewanted=all

2. The Economist

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15720419

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15719298

No problem, glad to help out. BOH.

About veering off-topic, point taken, apologies.

@BOH

Thanks for the info you provided - will have to return to this when I have more time to explore the topic further.

I have not seen a proper solution of how to prevent heat loss through double glazed windows through the use of well insulated and proper fitting blinds and curtains by Duncan or anyone else on the web.

I agree, but Dan Chiras does mention it in his lecture I referred to on ‘free heat for life’. But as I say, guys such as Chiras would not be widely known or rated here in Europe, because they have built up their knowledge through trial and error in the practice of actually building solar homes over decades. In contrast to Europe, where there is its all about ’sides’ to the argument, over whose standard, or scheme, or calculation methodology is superior. I call it the ‘format wars’ like you see in technology between one standard of Blue ray DVD versus another. Microsoft windows versus windows. Apple versus Dell, etc. It was perfectly natural for Chiras to come up with the solution of window blinds because he is a practical kind of guy working from first principles. I should point out something else too, while I am at it. There was a very long and distinguished ‘off grid’ tradition in the United States, which arose out of the 1960s counter cultural movement over there. As an architect in Feasta in Ireland, Emer O’Siochru made the point to me recently. The off grid movement hampered development in some ways, as ‘green’ as it was. Because the concept of ultra independent living off the grid, denies any attempts at progress which can be explored through advanced ideas on cooperation of the larger community. There is always that conflict at the heart of the 1960s and 70s sustainability movement, which tends to tear it apart, even nowadays. David MacKay is a more recent voice who offers many more suggestions for larger scale cooperation to reduce environmental pollution.

To be honest, even the longest working ecological architects here in the British Isles, guys like Howard Liddell in Scotland or Paul Leech here in Dublin were activated by geopolitical crisises of the 1970s. All of those early guys like Liddell and Leech tried to live off the grid at some stage of their lives. I don’t know, how committed they still are to that extreme position. Probably they have mellowed. Remember the green party, Ciaran Cuffe etc was founded in 1982. Wolfgang Feist etc in Germany started their passivhaus movement in the early 1990s. The scene in the US goes back a lot further in my opinion. You start looking at things like the Whole Earth Catalog, back to the land and all of that movement. Which of course, was connected to the early European movers, via entertaining characters like James Lovelock, who wrote his original thesis, Gaia, here in Ireland in the 1970s. Paul Leech always talks a lot about cybernetics, as does Lovelock. This goes back to Gregory Bateson, Norbert Weiner etc in WWII in the USA. Remember, von Neumann (involved with Feynman, Oppenhiemer etc in the Manhattan project), one of the pioneers in the early computer history in the US believed humans would be able to modify the climate at will, with the new technology they had available post WWII. It was only when he started to study the climate, he began to realise how much more deeply complex it was, than first anticipated. That is when Lovelock etc got into the game, who was trained by the same community of Weiner, Bateson and what became the Sante Fe institute. The point is, the off-grid movement, is something which Dan Chiras is part of - which means, Chiras derives his design philosophy in a different way to those in Europe do. More practical, more independent, its a political/cultural/spiritual difference really. One of the early off-grid guys still has his website up (See also above to my reference to a recent clash of ideologies between the US and Passivhaus, over the subject of how to reduce Co2 emissions from residential building stock). The US guys have been big into solar PV, and life on about 7 KWh per day quite comfortably, off the grid.

http://www.wagonmaker.com/

The SEAI, CIF and Homebond went together last year to Canada. Canada have been doing this stuff for the last 30 years. Perhaps because their climate is so severe. I mean, our own Duncan Stewart on the television got many of his ideas about sustainable, well designed thermal envelopes from his visits to Scandavia down through the years. Duncan used to talk to myself and other students in Bolton Street about insulation back in the early 1990s, when the building regulations had only been passed into national legislation. Back then though, we had no appreciation as young architectural students for what the heck he was talking about. Check out the Canadian scheme, RET Screen, for your own interest. As the SEAI, CIF and Homebond guys from Ireland recognised in their trip - it is like ‘light regulation’ we have in Ireland - it takes a long time to improve upon that, and learn how to properly regulate an industry. The Canadians have much more experience in both financial and construction industry regulation it appears. Is that to do with the fact they are part of the commonwealth? BOH.

http://www.retscreen.net/ang/home.php

The best system is the insulated blind, and insulated roller curtain that I have invented and installed in my own house—–but that is another story!

Google video has a one hour length piece, Free Heat for Life: Fundamentals of Affordable Passive Solar Design - Dan Chiras. Now here is the problem. Chiras and his excellent book, The solar house: passive heating and cooling, are packed full of trial and error, common sense logic and learning over decades of real building experience. Chiras and others like him, as I mentioned above have developed knowledge of energy efficiency to apply to projects in all sorts of different climatic conditions across the continent of the USA. Like car manufacture, social networking web technology, telephones, the US market is large within its own borders and tends to do its own thing, have its own standards etc. Here in Europe we are full of little nation states. Each has its own set of rules and standards, its own bureaucracy and ways of doing things. If you were to show Dan Chiras’s ideas to anyone in Ireland, working with any of the various schemes to do with energy conservation in buildings, they would be horrified. For instance, Chiras sets forth some basic rules with regard to building orientation. On the other hand, if you believe the German Passivhaus institute, you need an Excel spreadsheet with about 14 million variables to know which way to orient you dwelling and how much, and where to do glazing. I don’t know. Maybe someone can answer this for me. But we seem to have too many different standards, programs, calculation techniques and voices in the debate with regards to buildings and energy conservation in Ireland. The end result is, a lack of clarity and focus. That is my opinion having looked at it, for what it is worth. The Deutsche bank report that Ahura Mazda linked to above got that much right. The market cannot make up its mind, it is getting way too many mixed signals at the moment. BOH.

P.S. I think Richard Tol would get a giggle or two, from Chiras’s other google video, Re-Energizing America: Rescuing America from its Costly Fossil Fuel Addiction.

Thanks, but I don’t see why that should negate the positive effects of the scheme? Some people couldn’t afford the improvements so the government paid for them to help reduce fuel poverty.

My observation is as follows, instead of spreading the €11.0 million over 17,600 homes, which only contributes €625 per home, we should be spending say €10 million on €7,000 homes. That would amount to a subsidy of €1,400 per home. Say if the occupier was able to put in €600 of their own money, paid in installments at low interest rate. And say, the €2,000 total was ’stretched’ a lot further by innovative means. I.e. Vacating a whole terrace of houses at the same time and housing them temporarily someplace else. Then you could contract a builder to do a large chunk of work together for a more competitive price. I mean, what I am describing is the business model of Zoe developments. But applied to a situation where the occupants are already in place. But one moves them temporarily, gets a blitz team in to do all the work at lowest per unit price, and then moves all the people back in again. If we stay chipping away with roof insulation at €1,000 per house, then the budget gets used up in no time. You get no where in terms of Co2 emission reduction and no very far either in terms of comfort level improvement. In other words, unless we start using ’shoe box’ kind type of techniques in this, it is a waste of time. I agree with Richard Tol. BOH.

I’d like to suggest a one-percent rule for news-articles about energy-saving gadgets or renewable energy systems. The rule says “a gizmo may be discussed only if it could lead to energy savings of at least 1%”. I suggest this rule not because minnow-sized savings are worthless, but because the public conversation about energy surely deserves to be focussed on bigger fish.

http://withouthotair.blogspot.com/2009/06/one-percent-rule-leading-to-patriotic.html

I had a former council house with crap insulation and I installed double glazing
My heating bill stayed the same but instead of wearing a jumper all the time, I was walking around in a t-shirt.
Is there any reason the folks who got the insulation in didn’t do the same? EUR 85 lower bill but much warmer.

The problem is, if one focusses too much on reducing emissions, it tends to conceal the dimension of comfort in upgrading of homes. (See sub-note below on Low carbon housing) Holbrook Fields made an interesting point - the 17,600 homes which were upgraded using funds of almost €11.0 million. Lets assume, that averages at €625 per home. So I am assuming that the occupants put in some of their own money. Attic insulation on its own costs over €1,000. The government wisely chose to leave VAT, value added tax on products such as insulation. It ensures that the SEAI have a paper trail back to the contractor who is registered for VAT and where he purchased his raw materials, who he purchased them from. Do bear in mind all, one of the reasons for the Statutory instrument 666 of 2006 to implement energy ratings for residential property - along with building regulation revisions in 2006 and 2008 for new dwellings - is to avoid a situation, whereby Ireland became a ‘dumping ground’ within the EU for products were are deemed inferior to be used anywhere else in the EU region. Think of it like the taxation on workers, it is a kind of competition, to stay at parity with other countries. Not a little above, or a little below parity with other EU states. Otherwise all kinds of market distortions begin to happen with regards to materials, services, standards and so on. But even trying to establish what ’standards’ other EU members states work to is hard, because they collect data differently sometimes, and have different regulations. You see?

As a comment, I would observe, that Ireland introduced energy conservation in building regulations 20 years ago, and since then the fuel consumption of buildings has gone down by almost 10%. In other words, a lot of the benefits from energy conservation have already been drawn down through improved construction methods. There is still a way to go, but there is a law of diminishing returns. Bear in mind also, the homes in the 1970s were uncomfortably cold compared to today. People simply put on more layers of clothing in the old days to keep themselves warm. When insulation regulations were introduced, society decided not to conserve fuel so much as enjoy increased set point temperatures in their living rooms and home in general. But even with shedding the clothes when indoors in the last 20 years, and turning up the heating temperature, Ireland still consumes less fuel per house than it did in the 1970s.

Look at the low carbon house standard for instance - the Americans have a version of that. The Americans really rubbed the German institute up the wrong way recently, when it conspired the Americans were using software which curtailed expenditure on insulation, when it met a critical threshold, where the price of Photo voltaic panels was cheaper. This horrified the Germans who were working, not with a low carbon yard stick, but rather the comfort dimension of sustainable construction. The Americans would point out, that PV panels will get cheaper the more large LCD televisions that are manufactured and developed. Because it is basically the same technology for both applications. Lets not forget of course, that computers improved in leaps and bounds because of the global gaming industry’s development. One was able to piggy back on the other.

To my mind, an apartment built in Dublin’s docklands, for someone who works there or somewhere in Dublin city centre, is a low carbon dwelling. But many who study building standards might say the insulation levels of those apartment developments is far, far beneath where it should be. David MacKay, a British professor has done studies to proof that even a journey to the supermarket adds to a persons carbon footprint. Similarly all of the public buildings and offices that we use throughout our daily lives. I mean, realistically, how much time does the average city dweller spend in their apartment? From a carbon saving point of view, it is much to do with transportation to work, and lifestyles. It is wrong to look at the dwelling alone. I blogged something about shopping centres a while back. Link below. Kathleen Barrington wrote in the Sunday Business Post on March 14th 2010 about lease agreements for high street retailers. I think it sums up the problem with regards to peoples’ carbon footprint. They are travelling further to shop and also demand a tropical kind of environment with bright lights etc inside of large regional SC’s.

Secondary high streets, shopping centres and retail parks are already vulnerable because people are travelling further to dominant regional centres rather than the grotty, tired precinct down the road.

BOH.

http://designcomment.blogspot.com/2010/03/foot-traffic-part-three.html

There are plenty of blogs where you can discuss hockeysticks at length. Please stick to the topic of this thread.

Steve McIntyre recently announced to his readers at ClimateAudit.org that he’s “been doing some mining business in the past few weeks and it’s taken time. I’ll likely do more this year for a variety of obvious reasons.”

According a bio listed on the University of Guelph website, this period involved, among other things, “general corporate management, including specific oversight of company audited financial statements, annual reports, numerous corporate disclosure documents; oversight of exploration programs; direction of several corporate re-organizations.”

http://www.desmogblog.com/steve-mcintyre

You can’t trust these guys any more than a Goldman Sachs salesman.

And there, you have a text-book case of projection.