4 ms·

I don't have a real opinion on the incentive side of this, but as someone who's mostly lived in older, poorly insulated places, its crazy how different a true h

I don't have a real opinion on the incentive side of this, but as someone who's mostly lived in older, poorly insulated places, its crazy how different a true high performance building can be. From the energy savings, to the air quality, to just the plain old comfort. If you're building new it's crazy not to do it.

Retric 4y ago
I agree but IMO we need the equivalent of a simple MPG sticker on new homes not incentives. Keeping this house at 70f 24/7 for a full year costs X$. Picking a specific solution like passive solar or PV on the roof is likely to get outdated relatively quickly but cost is a useful metric.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  I'd want heating and cooling costs split. I'm a lot more willing to put up with some hot days. Also helps account for one system being inefficient (in a house with separate heating and cooling). At some level it would make sense for municipalities to actively identify inefficient buildings and offer the owners incentives to improve them. Fraught, but likely to improve things faster than waiting decades for stock to cycle.
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    Offer a "summertime energy required" and a "wintertime energy required" number. That should be obvious enough to most people while not so technical that folks become confused.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Mandate all rentals be rated for energy efficiency and that the rating be shown on all advertisements of the property. The market will sort it out once individuals can see "This one costs slightly more in rent but much less in energy."
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    That's what we have in France, and it has been in effect for quite a while. You get an A to G grade, A being best [0]. It didn't seem to have that much of an effect. The government has now had to ban the renting out of units that are too badly insulated [1], with landlords complaining about this. Of course, with there not being nearly enough units in some markets as is (Paris, for example), combined with rent-controls, I bet watching this unfold will be interesting. --- [0] The rating has existed for a while, though I think it only recently has become mandatory. In my neck of the woods (Paris), when I was looking to rent, it would be exceptional to not see the rating on the advertisements. [1] The rent is not allowed to be raised on G-class units, and they'll be banned from renting altogether starting in 2025.
    - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      >It didn't seem to have that much of an effect. Not surprised. In most cities housing is a seller's market so people can't be too picky about stuff like energy efficiency of the unit if they want to have a roof over their head so landlords get away with not doing any maintenance for decades while still collecting rent. >ban the renting out of units that are too badly insulated [1], with landlords complaining about this. Great. Maybe the landlords should do less complaining and more renovating instead of keep being slumlords and keep making money without doing any work.
      - zbrozek 4y ago
        Such measures will improve some stock and eliminate some stock, but won't produce new stock. So they drive up housing prices.
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  You can usually find energy efficiency information for housing you purchase. You may not be able to find it for rental housing. Something like "mpg" will depend a lot on your lifestyle, how many family members, etc. It's not realistic. But what you could do is create a generic "score" -- which I think is what you really want -- that takes into account things like insulation and double pained windows, and then you can buy houses with higher scores. This was the idea behind LEED certification for office complexes, so I think you want something like that for residential housing. The good news is that this exists! https://www.usgbc.org/leed/rating-systems/residential https://www.usgbc.org/leed/rating-systems/residential So what I think you really want is to mandate that every residential construction project obtain a LEED rating -- or equivalent -- which of course will add to the cost of residential housing. That's a trickier question. But seriously, we don't need more housing subsidies. Whether or not more regulation is needed is a quantitative question. Newer homes already have better insulation tech, for older homes, it depends on whether the owners upgraded them. If they did, you can be sure they will advertise this info in order to get more when they sell it. Regulating disclosure of this for rental housing by landlords might be a good idea, though.
  - Retric 4y ago
    Car MPG doesn’t account for the number of people in the car either, but the point is simply to be a consistent point of comparison. Having big stickers with annual costs on them at point of sale is just as much about influencing manufacturers as consumers. Think about the steady improvement in refrigerator efficiency, it’s not that everyone compares these numbers it’s that more people do. Someone being able to roughly find this out if they jump through some hoops isn’t particularly meaningful to the overall market. Someone building 1,000 homes however has to predict consumer behavior and looking obviously worst than the competition is never appealing.
- evandijk70 4y ago
  I am so surprised this is not the case in all developed countries. Every house in the EU that is sold or rented, needs an energy label, ranging from G (>380 kWh /m2/year) to A++++ (0 kWh/m2/year). If you sell your house, it needs to be rated by an independent and certified party. New houses need to have an energy label A+++ or A++++ ( eg energy usage of at most 50 kWh/ m2/per year, which in practice means all new houses come with good isolation, a heat pump and solar panels. Restrictions are also coming in 2030 that forbid renting out a house with a poor energy label, and subsidies are provided to home owners for measures that improve the energy label of your house.
  - Retric 4y ago
    Energy labels on a scale like that don’t really convert to costs in peoples minds very well. It also focuses on the upper end of the scale when most of the benefits come from removing the least efficient housing. Cost however has a great way of ordering the scale because the biggest differences are also the most impactful differences.
zip1234 4y ago
Really air tight homes sometimes have air quality issues because there is not circulation. There is a reason it is more expensive to build homes like that--it comes with other problems that take specialized knowledge about things like ERVs to build them.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  You can still put windows in airtight homes. They're usually triple paned to insulate well, but nothing is stopping a builder from putting windows in. Most passivhauses do this. ERVs are additional engineering needed for when all the windows in the house are closed, but yes are necessary in those situations. ERVs aren't really that much more expensive than an exhaust that needs to be added in most homes anyway to release ventilation/dryer exhaust/cooking fumes. Only the really, really old homes don't have something like this and many of them have chimneys.
- danans 4y ago
  HRVs/ERVs are not specialized knowledge, they are just uncommon knowledge at the moment. They are even simpler to install than heating/cooling systems, as there is no fuel or refrigerant to deal with. Many are even DIYable.
orev 4y ago
The people who build the homes are almost never the ones living in them and paying the energy bills.
- denkmoon 4y ago
  This decoupling of capital for building houses and those who "consume" the housing is only going to increase this problem. My apartment tower has broke garbage disposal chutes on _every single floor_. That is, the building's waste disposal system is entirely broken. For 2 years now. Nobody can get it fixed because by my estimate under 20% of residents are owner-occupiers.
  - rdtwo 4y ago
    Don’t you have a HOA that can vote to make it happen?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - denkmoon 4y ago
      Structured slightly differently in Australia but yes there is a voting body of owners. Problem is the owners don't live here and don't give a shit if I have working waste disposal outside of receiving their rent payment. That's the entire point of my post :) People who own things (and therefore control them) and people who use them are becoming less aligned. Real Estate agent says to contact building management, building management ignores you, real estate agent says there's nothing they can do about that. Perfect denial of responsibility. Move elsewhere? It's all the same in other buildings.
m463 4y ago
the thing is to incentivize the right things.

Retric 4y ago

I agree but IMO we need the equivalent of a simple MPG sticker on new homes not incentives. Keeping this house at 70f 24/7 for a full year costs X$. Picking a specific solution like passive solar or PV on the roof is likely to get outdated relatively quickly but cost is a useful metric.

maxerickson 4y ago
I'd want heating and cooling costs split. I'm a lot more willing to put up with some hot days. Also helps account for one system being inefficient (in a house with separate heating and cooling). At some level it would make sense for municipalities to actively identify inefficient buildings and offer the owners incentives to improve them. Fraught, but likely to improve things faster than waiting decades for stock to cycle.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  Offer a "summertime energy required" and a "wintertime energy required" number. That should be obvious enough to most people while not so technical that folks become confused.
Gigachad 4y ago
Mandate all rentals be rated for energy efficiency and that the rating be shown on all advertisements of the property. The market will sort it out once individuals can see "This one costs slightly more in rent but much less in energy."
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  That's what we have in France, and it has been in effect for quite a while. You get an A to G grade, A being best [0]. It didn't seem to have that much of an effect. The government has now had to ban the renting out of units that are too badly insulated [1], with landlords complaining about this. Of course, with there not being nearly enough units in some markets as is (Paris, for example), combined with rent-controls, I bet watching this unfold will be interesting. --- [0] The rating has existed for a while, though I think it only recently has become mandatory. In my neck of the woods (Paris), when I was looking to rent, it would be exceptional to not see the rating on the advertisements. [1] The rent is not allowed to be raised on G-class units, and they'll be banned from renting altogether starting in 2025.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    >It didn't seem to have that much of an effect. Not surprised. In most cities housing is a seller's market so people can't be too picky about stuff like energy efficiency of the unit if they want to have a roof over their head so landlords get away with not doing any maintenance for decades while still collecting rent. >ban the renting out of units that are too badly insulated [1], with landlords complaining about this. Great. Maybe the landlords should do less complaining and more renovating instead of keep being slumlords and keep making money without doing any work.
    - zbrozek 4y ago
      Such measures will improve some stock and eliminate some stock, but won't produce new stock. So they drive up housing prices.
rsj_hn 4y ago
You can usually find energy efficiency information for housing you purchase. You may not be able to find it for rental housing. Something like "mpg" will depend a lot on your lifestyle, how many family members, etc. It's not realistic. But what you could do is create a generic "score" -- which I think is what you really want -- that takes into account things like insulation and double pained windows, and then you can buy houses with higher scores. This was the idea behind LEED certification for office complexes, so I think you want something like that for residential housing. The good news is that this exists! https://www.usgbc.org/leed/rating-systems/residential https://www.usgbc.org/leed/rating-systems/residential So what I think you really want is to mandate that every residential construction project obtain a LEED rating -- or equivalent -- which of course will add to the cost of residential housing. That's a trickier question. But seriously, we don't need more housing subsidies. Whether or not more regulation is needed is a quantitative question. Newer homes already have better insulation tech, for older homes, it depends on whether the owners upgraded them. If they did, you can be sure they will advertise this info in order to get more when they sell it. Regulating disclosure of this for rental housing by landlords might be a good idea, though.
- Retric 4y ago
  Car MPG doesn’t account for the number of people in the car either, but the point is simply to be a consistent point of comparison. Having big stickers with annual costs on them at point of sale is just as much about influencing manufacturers as consumers. Think about the steady improvement in refrigerator efficiency, it’s not that everyone compares these numbers it’s that more people do. Someone being able to roughly find this out if they jump through some hoops isn’t particularly meaningful to the overall market. Someone building 1,000 homes however has to predict consumer behavior and looking obviously worst than the competition is never appealing.
evandijk70 4y ago
I am so surprised this is not the case in all developed countries. Every house in the EU that is sold or rented, needs an energy label, ranging from G (>380 kWh /m2/year) to A++++ (0 kWh/m2/year). If you sell your house, it needs to be rated by an independent and certified party. New houses need to have an energy label A+++ or A++++ ( eg energy usage of at most 50 kWh/ m2/per year, which in practice means all new houses come with good isolation, a heat pump and solar panels. Restrictions are also coming in 2030 that forbid renting out a house with a poor energy label, and subsidies are provided to home owners for measures that improve the energy label of your house.
- Retric 4y ago
  Energy labels on a scale like that don’t really convert to costs in peoples minds very well. It also focuses on the upper end of the scale when most of the benefits come from removing the least efficient housing. Cost however has a great way of ordering the scale because the biggest differences are also the most impactful differences.

zip1234 4y ago

Really air tight homes sometimes have air quality issues because there is not circulation. There is a reason it is more expensive to build homes like that--it comes with other problems that take specialized knowledge about things like ERVs to build them.

Karrot_Kream 4y ago
You can still put windows in airtight homes. They're usually triple paned to insulate well, but nothing is stopping a builder from putting windows in. Most passivhauses do this. ERVs are additional engineering needed for when all the windows in the house are closed, but yes are necessary in those situations. ERVs aren't really that much more expensive than an exhaust that needs to be added in most homes anyway to release ventilation/dryer exhaust/cooking fumes. Only the really, really old homes don't have something like this and many of them have chimneys.
danans 4y ago
HRVs/ERVs are not specialized knowledge, they are just uncommon knowledge at the moment. They are even simpler to install than heating/cooling systems, as there is no fuel or refrigerant to deal with. Many are even DIYable.

orev 4y ago

The people who build the homes are almost never the ones living in them and paying the energy bills.

denkmoon 4y ago
This decoupling of capital for building houses and those who "consume" the housing is only going to increase this problem. My apartment tower has broke garbage disposal chutes on _every single floor_. That is, the building's waste disposal system is entirely broken. For 2 years now. Nobody can get it fixed because by my estimate under 20% of residents are owner-occupiers.
- rdtwo 4y ago
  Don’t you have a HOA that can vote to make it happen?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - denkmoon 4y ago
    Structured slightly differently in Australia but yes there is a voting body of owners. Problem is the owners don't live here and don't give a shit if I have working waste disposal outside of receiving their rent payment. That's the entire point of my post :) People who own things (and therefore control them) and people who use them are becoming less aligned. Real Estate agent says to contact building management, building management ignores you, real estate agent says there's nothing they can do about that. Perfect denial of responsibility. Move elsewhere? It's all the same in other buildings.

m463 4y ago

the thing is to incentivize the right things.