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It’s expensive up front, but it should pay for itself if done right. This is not a trivial finance problem, though. It’s very challenging fund projects with d
by akamaka 6y ago
It’s expensive up front, but it should pay for itself if done right. This is not a trivial finance problem, though. It’s very challenging fund projects with decades-long payoffs.
- zbrozek 6y agoThat's probably true in places with sensible construction costs and timelines. But around here it's going to cost me $250k to fix the envelope of my house. If it reduced my energy usage to zero it would take only 70 years to pay for itself. But it won't do that and I won't live that long, so...
- akamaka 6y agoYep, you nailed the biggest problem. No single person can individually make decisions on those time scales. Future energy costs, interest rates, climate trends, technological changes, and urban planning all need to be factored in. There needs to be a financing system that packages all this together and offers homeowners a simple low-interest construction loan that is cheaper than their energy bills.
- zbrozek 6y agoIn practice it's vastly more cost efficient for me to build an enormous solar array and install batteries. So I'm doing that.