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There’s an elegant solution to all this: better energy efficiency for buildings. It’s funny seeing people in this thread jumping right past the root cause and

There’s an elegant solution to all this: better energy efficiency for buildings. It’s funny seeing people in this thread jumping right past the root cause and suggesting elaborate solutions like nuclear power. And before you say it’s not feasible to upgrade hundreds of millions of buildings in the USA, you should be aware that upgrading homes to be more energy efficient actually pays for itself (albeit in the long run, which is why most of us have not bothered doing it).

chemmail 6y ago
This is what the WOZX token plans to do. If you read what website and whitepaper, you will absolutely not get what they are trying to achieve. What i think they are doing is a marketplace for people to chip in to do renovations to improve energy efficiency and then dividends of the savings be vested back into those investors. It sounds like a good place, but ultimately seems too convoluted.
konjin 6y ago
>It’s funny seeing people in this thread jumping right past the root cause and suggesting elaborate solutions like nuclear power. The root cause is extreme weather events which will will get more of. Non-renewables are not affected by the wind and sun. Since we don't want to go extinct by pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere we are left with nuclear. I don't understand how people can want to return to feudalism where land is the only way to extract energy from the sun. But given how NYC and SF treat workers perhaps I do.
- akamaka 6y ago
  Did you know that one third of US carbon emissions come from buildings? Upgrading buildings would massively reduce emissions, and we’d never have to generate the electricity in the first place. It pays for itself.
  - konjin 6y ago
    Do you know that if electricity generation doesn't produce CO2 then consuming it won't either?
    - katbyte 6y ago
      what if we do both!
    - imtringued 6y ago
      If you are going to deploy an expensive method of power generation you better want to use that expensive power as efficiently as possible. The fact that you don't consider practical reality makes it sound like this is just a Santa wishlist of yours.
      - konjin 6y ago
        Nuclear power is only expensive to build. To run it's basically free, and unlike solar not limited to 6 hours in the middle of the day.
- imtringued 6y ago
  The evidence is stacked against centralized power production. Centralized power production is highly unreliable. Nuclear power stops working during freezing weather and very hot weather where flow rates in rivers drop. Gas stops working when pipelines freeze. Coal plants are the primary cause of death via power generation because their pollution is worse than just CO2. Meanwhile people spend a lot of effort on predicting Solar and Wind and yet their expectations were more pessimistic compared to the actual energy production capacity that is online.
  - konjin 6y ago
    >The evidence is stacked against centralized power production. Ok, show me.
abandonliberty 6y ago
I'd love to see us start building energy efficient homes. A bit more up front investment would give huge returns.
- jjav 6y ago
  A problem is that conserving doesn't in the end produce any cost savings, which is a perverse disincentive to conserve. Water during the CA droughts a few years ago is a perfect example. Water agencies asked people to conserve water. So people did. A lot. Water agencies promptly freaked out because their revenue decreased. Of course it did, people were conserving water. So they increased the base rates (the amount they'll bill you even if consumption is zero) to compensate (and then some). In my town, base rate went from a few dollars to almost $80. So even though my consumption went down about 20% from my efforts to conserve, my monthly bill went up from around $40 to near $100. So what's my incentive to conserve?
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    How about helping to ensure there's a planet worth living on in 20-50 years? Must it always come down to whatever costs the least money now?
    - jjav 6y ago
      Sure, that's a good goal. I spent a lot of effort, time and money to optimize and reduce water consumption as much as possible. Low-flow everything, upgraded appliances, redid the yard and all sprinkler plumbing, all for the idea of conserving water. It is quite a gut punch to then have the water bill increase more than 100% because the water agency is solely focused on how much profit they are making, instead of caring about conservation.
  - leoedin 6y ago
    If they increase the unit cost rather than the base rate, then there's still an incentive to conserve. It just means that the people who didn't conserve water initially are now paying more. To get back to the same price they need to conserve water. That's exactly the behaviour we (society) want - overall, water is conserved. Increasing the base rate (making water a fixed cost regardless of usage) has the opposite effect. That was clearly a mistake on the part of the water company.
zbrozek 6y ago
Great! Now go tear down the entire housing stock so we can rebuild it better. Unfortunately, as a society we're already under-building, so we can't really afford to tear down what we've already got. In some places (like here in the Bay Area) it's ridiculously difficult and expensive to build anything, so much of the building stock is untouched since the 1950s and simply rots in place. We'd do well to be as good at home construction as Japan.
- baybal2 6y ago
  > Great! Now go tear down the entire housing stock so we can rebuild it better. Unfortunately, as a society we're already under-building, so we can't really afford to tear down what we've already got. Well, why not? Japan effectively rebuilt its entire housing stock few times over since WW2, and so did Britain, Germany, and ex-Union countries. I believe USA has more money than the broke USSR did 20 year timelines is easily achievable for USA as a wealthy, and still relatively industrialised country.
  - chmod775 6y ago
    >I believe USA has more money than the broke USSR did Note that this doesn't really matter. It especially didn't matter back then in a less globalized economy. The USSR being poor doesn't change anything about their domestic labor pool, which is what is relevant for construction work. The laborers simply charge less. This is same fallacy that leads people to believe we'd magically have more of everything if money hoarded by rich people was distributed across the populace. At best stuff will be distributed better. But bakers won't start baking more bread, nor will car manufacturers be able to start making more cars. Assuming unemployment stays the same, the economic output of goods won't change. Money doesn't produce anything, people do. Money is a tool to guide labor in the right direction and distribute goods. Which means that in order to build more, the USA would either need more construction workers or become more efficient at constructing stuff. The first can be achieved by diverting money and making the job more attractive, the second by creating a competitive environment.
    - baybal2 6y ago
mcv 6y ago
Absolutely. And better insulated houses save money on both heating and AC. It's a very obvious way to save a ton of energy.

chemmail 6y ago

This is what the WOZX token plans to do. If you read what website and whitepaper, you will absolutely not get what they are trying to achieve. What i think they are doing is a marketplace for people to chip in to do renovations to improve energy efficiency and then dividends of the savings be vested back into those investors. It sounds like a good place, but ultimately seems too convoluted.

konjin 6y ago

>It’s funny seeing people in this thread jumping right past the root cause and suggesting elaborate solutions like nuclear power. The root cause is extreme weather events which will will get more of. Non-renewables are not affected by the wind and sun. Since we don't want to go extinct by pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere we are left with nuclear. I don't understand how people can want to return to feudalism where land is the only way to extract energy from the sun. But given how NYC and SF treat workers perhaps I do.

akamaka 6y ago
Did you know that one third of US carbon emissions come from buildings? Upgrading buildings would massively reduce emissions, and we’d never have to generate the electricity in the first place. It pays for itself.
- konjin 6y ago
  Do you know that if electricity generation doesn't produce CO2 then consuming it won't either?
  - katbyte 6y ago
    what if we do both!
  - imtringued 6y ago
    If you are going to deploy an expensive method of power generation you better want to use that expensive power as efficiently as possible. The fact that you don't consider practical reality makes it sound like this is just a Santa wishlist of yours.
    - konjin 6y ago
      Nuclear power is only expensive to build. To run it's basically free, and unlike solar not limited to 6 hours in the middle of the day.
imtringued 6y ago
The evidence is stacked against centralized power production. Centralized power production is highly unreliable. Nuclear power stops working during freezing weather and very hot weather where flow rates in rivers drop. Gas stops working when pipelines freeze. Coal plants are the primary cause of death via power generation because their pollution is worse than just CO2. Meanwhile people spend a lot of effort on predicting Solar and Wind and yet their expectations were more pessimistic compared to the actual energy production capacity that is online.
- konjin 6y ago
  >The evidence is stacked against centralized power production. Ok, show me.

abandonliberty 6y ago

I'd love to see us start building energy efficient homes. A bit more up front investment would give huge returns.

jjav 6y ago
A problem is that conserving doesn't in the end produce any cost savings, which is a perverse disincentive to conserve. Water during the CA droughts a few years ago is a perfect example. Water agencies asked people to conserve water. So people did. A lot. Water agencies promptly freaked out because their revenue decreased. Of course it did, people were conserving water. So they increased the base rates (the amount they'll bill you even if consumption is zero) to compensate (and then some). In my town, base rate went from a few dollars to almost $80. So even though my consumption went down about 20% from my efforts to conserve, my monthly bill went up from around $40 to near $100. So what's my incentive to conserve?
- pmiller2 6y ago
  How about helping to ensure there's a planet worth living on in 20-50 years? Must it always come down to whatever costs the least money now?
  - jjav 6y ago
    Sure, that's a good goal. I spent a lot of effort, time and money to optimize and reduce water consumption as much as possible. Low-flow everything, upgraded appliances, redid the yard and all sprinkler plumbing, all for the idea of conserving water. It is quite a gut punch to then have the water bill increase more than 100% because the water agency is solely focused on how much profit they are making, instead of caring about conservation.
- leoedin 6y ago
  If they increase the unit cost rather than the base rate, then there's still an incentive to conserve. It just means that the people who didn't conserve water initially are now paying more. To get back to the same price they need to conserve water. That's exactly the behaviour we (society) want - overall, water is conserved. Increasing the base rate (making water a fixed cost regardless of usage) has the opposite effect. That was clearly a mistake on the part of the water company.

zbrozek 6y ago

Great! Now go tear down the entire housing stock so we can rebuild it better. Unfortunately, as a society we're already under-building, so we can't really afford to tear down what we've already got. In some places (like here in the Bay Area) it's ridiculously difficult and expensive to build anything, so much of the building stock is untouched since the 1950s and simply rots in place. We'd do well to be as good at home construction as Japan.

baybal2 6y ago
> Great! Now go tear down the entire housing stock so we can rebuild it better. Unfortunately, as a society we're already under-building, so we can't really afford to tear down what we've already got. Well, why not? Japan effectively rebuilt its entire housing stock few times over since WW2, and so did Britain, Germany, and ex-Union countries. I believe USA has more money than the broke USSR did 20 year timelines is easily achievable for USA as a wealthy, and still relatively industrialised country.
- chmod775 6y ago
  >I believe USA has more money than the broke USSR did Note that this doesn't really matter. It especially didn't matter back then in a less globalized economy. The USSR being poor doesn't change anything about their domestic labor pool, which is what is relevant for construction work. The laborers simply charge less. This is same fallacy that leads people to believe we'd magically have more of everything if money hoarded by rich people was distributed across the populace. At best stuff will be distributed better. But bakers won't start baking more bread, nor will car manufacturers be able to start making more cars. Assuming unemployment stays the same, the economic output of goods won't change. Money doesn't produce anything, people do. Money is a tool to guide labor in the right direction and distribute goods. Which means that in order to build more, the USA would either need more construction workers or become more efficient at constructing stuff. The first can be achieved by diverting money and making the job more attractive, the second by creating a competitive environment.
  - baybal2 6y ago

mcv 6y ago

Absolutely. And better insulated houses save money on both heating and AC. It's a very obvious way to save a ton of energy.