Forget Property prices - the real elephant in the room is Energy



Aeroplane's emissions are a bit mis-leading. I remember seeing an advert by Ford in an US airport saying that a jumbo got 5mpg where as their SUV got 23mpg.

Bit misleading as an aeroplane carries far more people than an SUV so is more fuel effecient in transporting people.

However the problem with aeroplanes is that they thier emissions at such an altitude that they compound the green house effect.
 
daveirl said:
Agreeds, sorry my real point is that people have these things and they make out that they are environmentally friendly when they aren't necessarily.
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I am of course aware that my heat pump uses electricity supplied by the ESB. There's nothing I can do about that really - personal wind turbines don't cut it in terms of cost or efficiency.

I would be shocked, however, if the amount of electricity used by the heat pump is in any way equivalent in terms of fossil fuel consumption to a coal fire with the same heat output.
 
annR said:
Is that conjecture really a valid reason to continue driving the less efficient car? What's the solution then? For them to find a less energy intensive way of manufacturing cars?
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Who knows? Maybe the EU should force car manfacturers to publish the emissions per car produced so people can make an informed judgement.

It's horses for courses, but does somebody doing 6/7k miles of school runs a year really need a new car every 3 years? But if you're doing 50k a year, then maybe it is more efficient to replace your car with a more economical model as they become available.
 

Not a coal fire but yes a gas boiler. The net effect is you burn the same amount of gas, and the cost of the energy is the same. So to anyone thinking of installing a ground source heat system, save your pocket and put in a gas boiler instead.
 
ubiquitous said:
AnnR,
Should we all just run out and buy new cars every year because the motor dealers' association tells us it is environmentally friendly? Or should we make up our own minds?
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The latter of course but as Conor pointed out we don't have that info. We can only act on what we know about.

The problem is that most of this stuff is so complicated you'd need to be a full time analyst to figure it out .
 
Not a coal fire but yes a gas boiler. The net effect is you burn the same amount of gas, and the cost of the energy is the same. So to anyone thinking of installing a ground source heat system, save your pocket and put in a gas boiler instead.
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Save with money with a gas boiler? At the rate gas is going up in price! Not to mention paying for a service charge during the summer despite burning no gas whatsoever. Methinks there must be a better way?
 
annR said:
The latter of course but as Conor pointed out we don't have that info. We can only act on what we know about.

The problem is that most of this stuff is so complicated you'd need to be a full time analyst to figure it out .
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Maybe then choosing not to act might be the best strategy - despite what the motor lobby and environmental vested interests tell us...
 
I can see what you mean, we don't want to be naively obeying vested interests. But it's also true that the biggest obstacle for people who are genuinely trying to change things for the better is cynicism and apathy.
 
Don't forget that much of the cynicism and apathy directed towards the so-called Green movement in Ireland is well justified. Take for example the often bizarre pronouncements from the likes of Adi Roche and Patricia McKenna, and the hypocrisy exhibited by "Chemical" Ciaran Cuffe, Joe "Waste Charges" Higgins and others. Not to mention the loonies who inhabit indymedia, Shell to Sea etc...
 

I do know that when the ESB produces electricity from coal it is very efficient in terms of energy output because they use super heated steam. However the big added on costs with the ESB are their very high labour costs with over manning, and administration costs. If you had a really good domestic heating system using coal it would probably use less energy than powering a geothermal pump but there may not be that much difference in terms of energy used in both systems. However I think the geothermal system would probably be much cheaper over the long term because you would be buying your coal in bags from a shop which is very expensive with all the middle men, whereas the ESB buy their coal in bulk by the shipload which is way cheaper
 
Never disputed the cheapness, just said I wasn't so sure that people who are doing all this stuff to their houses are necessarily helping the environment in a measurable way!

Another example of the things I'm talking about, a Mercedes S Class will do less damage to the environment than a Prius because of the way it's manufactured, sure the Prius will burn less fuel but the S Class has standards on what can and can't be used in it's construction.
 

Well what do you expect from politicians. And anything environmental will always attract the usual gambit of dreadlocked people with dogs which I think does more harm than good. Who cares about all them - people who want to make some sort of difference should still try to figure it out rather than adapting a 'do nothing' approach.
 

Electricity - and fuels generally - are too cheap!! If they were more expensive the response to statistics on finite resources and the damage they cause would be for more parsimonious and responsible use. Nota Bene that the general debate here so far has been "how can we produce more fuel and keep it cheap" NOT "How do we learn to use less more effectively?"

Blaming China, blaming Brazil for cutting down the Amazonian forests for a ludicrous short-term dollars profit, blaming anyone and everyone else, is not an option.

Regarding your endorsement of nuclear power the planet is now brimming with radioactive waste which is regularly sent to the African subcontinent for 'disposal' (!???) If nuclear energy is so clean, safe, effecient, cheap then build a nuclear power-plant in Dublin city centre (Liberty Hall is up for sale I believe?) where the population can contemplate their decision and achievement.

Essentially we have to (now, and irrespective of the toothless parallysis of the Kyoto process) put in place stringent and enforced laws to achieve carbon-neutral buildings both domestic and commercial. We need also to adopt a culture where individuals take responsibility for their own 'carbon footprint'.
 
extopia said:
What sources, if any, can you cite for this claim?
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Your electricity is generated by burining gas, the efficiency is 35-40%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_plant

A heat pump gets averaging 3 units of energy out from 1 unit electricity in (COP 2.5-4)


Worst case; 2.5*.35 = 87% overall efficiency
Best case; 4*.4 = 160% "

A good condensing gas boiler is 96% efficient
[broken link removed]

The heat pump therefore may work slightly worse or at best 1.5 times better....either way nothing very impressive on the whole...Don't think I'll be going out to spend 15 grand to save a couple of hundered quid a year with no real environmental benefit...or do I save any money?:

Electricity at night rate will be around 7.2c/KWh with the new rate (correct me on this if I'm wrong)
Gas with the hike is 5.2c/KWh

Thats nearly 40% more expensive to run...so any system efficiency improvements are wiped out.

At least with gas you can choose from a couple of vendors, with electricity you've got a monopoly to deal with, just talk to medium voltage users who are being hit with wait for it......30 c/KWh peak usage (5-7pm)
 

All very well and one couldn't disagree with anything you say and in fairness to many of us we do try as best we can to lead more environmentally-friendly lives. I read recently that the UK accounts for 2% of the world's pollution. However approximately half the world's population live in emerging nations such as China and India and they are desperate to enjoy the polluting, hedonistic lifestyles we have taken for granted for so many years. What are you going to say to them to persuade them to achieve their desires in a more environmentally-friendly manner?
 
Not sure where you're getting the 15k figure, badabing.

The cost of my ground loop and heat pump was about €9,000. It was installed before the SEI grant scheme so the net cost today would be well under €5,000.

Its heating power is rated 10kW pump, electrical power consumption is 2.48kW

The cost of a suitable condensing gas boiler for my house at the time would have been about €2,500.

So the incremental cost of my heat pump if I'd been able to get the grant would have been about €2,500.

The COP of my heat pump, by the way, is stated as 4 @ -5 deg C, 5.4 @ 0 deg C. Let's say 4.5 on average.

So best case 4.5*0.4 = 180% efficiency

That's an 88% improvement on a condensing boiler according to your method above.

I have no choice really but to run it off the ESB grid, that's true.
 
Yes but you've got additional costs of an underfloor heating system, so you total excess costs are 15k
 
The choice of underfloor is independent of the heat source. If I had a gas boiler I'd still have underfloor heating as that was what I wanted. You can't take that into account.

Not sure what the excess cost of underfloor heating over conventional rads is, at any rate. What's the cost of a typical radiator installation in a 150 sq metre 3 bed house, not counting the boiler?

Underfloor heating is not for everyone, but we like it.

I'm happy that a geothermal system uses less fossil fuels than oil or gas system. I'm happy to pay a slight premium because of that, although I expect to recover the extra cost in time as long as maintenance costs are not too great. I'm not happy that I am more or less forced to buy electricity from a fossil-fuel company, but there's not much any of us can do about that.

The cost of a viable wind turbine (i.e. one that could produce an output that could reasonably be expected to meet most of the power needs of an average house), was about 35k the last time I checked. A 1k turbine can be installed reasonably cheaply but it's not much good for anything. The larger turbines would start to be viable once they can be fed back into the grid (i.e. your meter runs backwards when you're producing excess energy).
 
How exactly are they too cheap. They can't be too cheap they are what they are. Everyone knows that oil and gas are finite resources. The market has priced this fact in. The can't be too cheap.

Secondly what's wrong with wanting to produce cheaper fuel. I'm of the opinion the sooner we use all the oil the better, then and only then will be the real incentive to work on real alternatives be there.
 
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