> I recently read Gates’ book I hope you didn’t intend to extract any valuable information from that. > the overriding factor in building costs is the energy

> I recently read Gates’ book I hope you didn’t intend to extract any valuable information from that. > the overriding factor in building costs is the energy required (and CO2 produced) for construction, heating, and cooling. Unfortunately I didn’t see any mention of energy or carbon in this post. That’s because when an eco-activist like Gates, who has no clue about environmental economics, talks about “costs”, he is completely bullshitting. Clearly he gave you the wrong impression, at least. The overriding factor in the cost of essentially everything is energy, if you decompose the cost network far enough. Obviously engineers and home builders are not stupid and if there was some massive efficiency increase they could exploit, the would do so.