>IOW: the amount of money that will disappear from the home owner's bank
account.
OK, that is one measure. As long as we agree on total cost, I have no
problems.
>
>
> >I didn't even include installation costs in my assessment. Solar boilers
do
> >sound cost effecient, I wonder what is keeping them from being used
> >extensively. According to Charlie's numbers, the return on an
invenstment
> >in a solar boiler is about 20%. That's not bad. Cut it in half and it
> >still makes sense. If it is that good of an investment, why aren't more
> >people installing them?
>
> A few possible reasons:
>
> - Costs. Installation will cost between NLG 4,500 and NLG 6,500 (subsidies
> not included). For the average consumer here, that's still quite a lot of
> money (for Joe Average: 2-3 months worth of salary).
Ah, that's a lot more than Charlie's estimate. If I can do the math in my
head about 2x to 3x. That starts to make more sense. And, with less sun in
the Netherlands than Cyprus, they probably need more auxilary electric
heating. OK, its now a bad investment when energy is cheap, and a decent
one when energy is dear. That is consistant with the usage.
> Sun boilers turned out to be more popular than I expected, BTW. By the end
> of 1999, there were 42.500 sun boilers installed in the Netherlands. The
> growth rate has stabilized to ~8,500 additional installations per year.
The
> goal is to have 1 million sun boilers installed by the year 2020.
>
> Hm. That growth rate will have to go up dramatically, or else we're not
> gonna make it... I suppose most of that growth will come from installing
> sun boilers in new houses (lot cheaper too: NLG 3,500).
>
But, aren't new houses being built now? Will more be built per year in the
future?
>
> > > So far, 5 projects (a total of over 200 houses) have been completed;
> > > average reduction in energy consumption in these houses is 45%. A few
> >dozen
> > > similar projects (for a total of 10,000 houses) have already been
started.
> > >
> >
> >OK, lets assume this is true.
>
> Do you have any reason to assume these projects really don't exist???
>
No. I suspect that the article would lead readers to believe that they are
more successful than they really are. Nothing unique about the
environmental movement: most people who are advocates present information in
a manner that puts their stuff in the best light possible.
> Er, because this is a small country, and therefore our financial resources
> are limited? It's not like we have the US' annual Defense budget to work
> with...
>
> Besides, isn't small scale a characteristic of *pilot* projects? And as I
> pointed out in a previous post, these five projects were started to prove
> that it is possible to build energy-efficient housing.
>
Well, I guess this gets to a root of my understanding that I may not have
adequately explained. I've seen such pilot projects for 20 years now. My
father in law built an energy efficient house about 20 years ago. I've seen
pilot projects in my old home town, and have read about energy efficient
houses that are the wave of the future for years.
There was a boom in energy efficient houses back during the early 80s, when
oil prices looked to go to $100/barrel. Energy efficiency was less
important after coal prices fell by half and oil by a factor of 3.
I guess my question is why are we still in the small pilot project stage
after 20 years? Much of what you referred to, I've read about in 20 year
old articles on pilot projects that were the wave of the future. But, that
future hasn't happened yet.
>
> >Why isn't every new house built this way?
>
> It's all still new: the first project was only finished in 1998.
Ah, as I wrote above, that is not my understanding. I have a project in the
family that was 20 years old.
Then there
> is the problem that there aren't all that many companies that are
> specialized in this; they simply can't keep up with the rate at which we
> build new housing.
>
> Further, already existing plans for housing development will still be
> carried out, because it would be too expensive to change those plans now.
>
> I do expect to see a substantial increase in the number of these
> energy-efficient houses, though.
>
Well, now that natural gas prices have fallen by a factor of 3, and oil
prices are back in line with the prices of the mid-90s, I don't.
Dan M.
