5 ms·

>Modern homes with 1kW electrical can heat and cool themselves in the mean for the same country. In single family homes there is typically room to recharge from

>Modern homes with 1kW electrical can heat and cool themselves in the mean for the same country. In single family homes there is typically room to recharge from p.v. cars if you WFH or working in a spread area to recharge them from p.v. at work, the same model. In a dense city most people don't even have a car. I live in an apartment building from the 50's. With just 2 walls of our building retrofitted with insulation I now barely need any heating in winter, try that with a single family home. >Cities demand big harbors, airports, highways You still need them with spread, only more roads to spread everything around.

kkfx 2y ago
> In a dense city most people don't even have a car. Yes, but the city need a far more expensive metro network, surface buses and so on, witch in term of raw materials demand much more than cars and in term of energy demand the same or even more because metros have also stations and even with metros and buses we still need cars and van for a variety of activities, vehicles used for work (like a small Transit for a plumber or an electrician) but also usable for private stuff. The TCO is still not in favor of such model, despite many (from the interested ruling class) claim the inverse... > I live in an apartment building from the 50's. With just 2 walls of our building retrofitted with insulation I now barely need any heating in winter, try that with a single family home. This means that you live in a nice climate, where summers are not too hot and winters are mild. Such areas exists and are typically densely populated also because of the climate but they are a very little part of the inhabited earth, or you are in a less nice climate but being "in the middle" you get "free heat" from some apartments underneath and "insulation" from apartments over yours. Again that's true for some, but in TCO terms it's still not favorable for the humanity at a whole, only for some humans. If you are in mild climate a single family home would barely need heat as well, not if you get free heat from neighbors of course BUT a new single family home in the same climate can thanks to insulation and mere design (compact form, large windows on the southern side, roof/other element shielding the Sun in summer while allowing it pass in the winter etc) and while you might profit from your neighbors they still have to heat/cool anyway, it's good for you but it does not reduce the overall consumption. Just for a personal counter argument: I was living in an apartment from the '60s in a mild climate, it's heated with 24kW methane. I live now in a home twice the size/a bit more than twice the heated volume, in a much colder place and I heat with 1KW most of the time, climbing to 3-4kW few late night and early morning between January and February, the maximum absorption recorded for heating was at the end of January 2017 a single night with a minima of -24.8℃ (-12.64℉) with 6.3kW. In raw material terms electricity here means nuclear (I have p.v. with small storage, but not to heat the home at night) and the grid, gas means a much more raw material and energy hungry distribution network. So again building new home demand energy, but in their useful life we amortize it and we evolve. Remain in old buildings demand still more, many times more in many cases, just to keep them operational and we do not evolve. Can we change them now? A 40 apartment building build today respect of one 40 apartments from the '50s cost at least twice... You need to relocate 40 families for an year instead of putting a small container-home in the garden for two-thee month...
- CorrectHorseBat 2y ago
  >Yes, but the city need a far more expensive metro network, surface buses and so on, witch in term of raw materials demand much more than cars and in term of energy demand the same or even more because metros have also stations and even with metros and buses we still need cars and van for a variety of activities, vehicles used for work (like a small Transit for a plumber or an electrician) but also usable for private stuff. The TCO is still not in favor of such model, despite many (from the interested ruling class) claim the inverse... Source? This says otherwise, especially if you take into account you'll have to do less km in a dense city. If you go by bike it's even less. https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint >in the middle" you get "free heat" from some apartments underneath and "insulation" from apartments over yours. Again that's true for some, but in TCO terms it's still not favorable for the humanity at a whole, only for some humans. In an apartment everyone has at least 1, most people 2-3 neighbors and many even 4. >Just for a personal counter argument: I was living in an apartment from the '60s in a mild climate You're comparing with a new build house, compare with a new/renovated apartment. >You need to relocate 40 families for an year instead of putting a small container-home in the garden for two-thee month... For the most renovations you don't need to move, insulation is added on the outside.
kkfx 2y ago
I reply here since I see no reply under the right message, sorry > Source? This says otherwise, especially if you take into account you'll have to do less km in a dense city. If you go by bike it's even less. Personal considerations and experience, I think no such real study exists mostly because it should be really large. Taking into account all the variable in a real life case ALONE demand much effort. For first you should find data for a significant timeframe, let's say 10 years, measuring the raw materials needed to build a metro in some city, and I think no such data exists, you can get some projects but not a trustable bill of material. Secondly you have to track all buses and trains and their average consumption. Done this you have a generic measure of "how much it cost in capex and opex the public transport system of YouNameIt city", what you miss is a "YouNameIt city" spread equivalent with only private vehicles. In this case you can only measure a large number of people consumption in a spread area, count the cost of the original road network witch likely exists since so much time no one can count and their operational costs. Even if you reach such goal you have just a "first degree measure", you need to take into account resources needed to produce the resources you used to build the city and the spread area transport network, some are easy, let's say cement and sand, some others are far harder, like steel. And so on. You probably need an decade to craft a working model for a state like North Korea (a good one because due to it's politics (Juche) anything there is mostly "domestic", they do commerce of course but much less than other countries and they still have cities and spread are, though get real data on NK might be a bit hard). To cut it short the "carbon footprint" is a nonsense, sometimes useful but not an answer: a train travel it's far less energy intensive on a modern rail than a truck travel, the material travel, but thing change if you have to count resources needed to build and keep rails vs roads, including exchange nodes, because we do not have rails on the home front door or aside of a cultivated field. If you just count how many tons of steel you can start imaging what cost more and what less. At this scale we have no simulation, non real scientific study, only "I like it let's try" without possible comparisons. > You're comparing with a new build house, compare with a new/renovated apartment. I do on purpose because my new home was built in around two months, rebuild the building of my ancient apartment is practically impossible because not only you have to relocate ~53 families for an year or more but also because it's in the middle of a dense EU city where such large demolition than construction size would destroy the traffic of a significant part of the city for an year or more, such EU buildings was simply built considering an eternal useful life, and that's a bubble waiting to explode with damage not much different than those of a nuclear war. In USA something similar have happened with certain big condos collapsed or at least damaged enough to be beyond repair but USA cities tend to be far less dense and younger than EU one so MAYBE some might be rebuilt. The point is essentially that small buildings with enough ground around can be practically rebuilt, dense area can only be rebuilt in batch like relocating all the people from NY to another place and rebuilt the whole NY, witch I bet no one think it's doable or at least reasonable to do... > You still need them with spread, only more roads to spread everything around. Not exactly the same thing, yes, maritime commerce need harbors and having many little harbors and many little ships it's not much sustainable, so you need some "hubs" in the logistic network but having much more room for local production you can do them, and the rest of the logistic network is spread anyway so MUCH simpler and cheaper to be build and evolve. A simple example around me there are enough potential farm to have cows for meat, milk and cheese for the nearby residents, it's definitively not enough for modern living but in a hypothetical spread society it would be normal and actually it was normal in a not so far past where at least milk was generally local instead of import in from 1000-2000km away simply because there it's cheaper than here even with the needed logistic. Do so on scale and it's easy to view you need much less resources. We would anyway import shrimps from South America and India, but the volumes changes much.

kkfx 2y ago

> In a dense city most people don't even have a car. Yes, but the city need a far more expensive metro network, surface buses and so on, witch in term of raw materials demand much more than cars and in term of energy demand the same or even more because metros have also stations and even with metros and buses we still need cars and van for a variety of activities, vehicles used for work (like a small Transit for a plumber or an electrician) but also usable for private stuff. The TCO is still not in favor of such model, despite many (from the interested ruling class) claim the inverse... > I live in an apartment building from the 50's. With just 2 walls of our building retrofitted with insulation I now barely need any heating in winter, try that with a single family home. This means that you live in a nice climate, where summers are not too hot and winters are mild. Such areas exists and are typically densely populated also because of the climate but they are a very little part of the inhabited earth, or you are in a less nice climate but being "in the middle" you get "free heat" from some apartments underneath and "insulation" from apartments over yours. Again that's true for some, but in TCO terms it's still not favorable for the humanity at a whole, only for some humans. If you are in mild climate a single family home would barely need heat as well, not if you get free heat from neighbors of course BUT a new single family home in the same climate can thanks to insulation and mere design (compact form, large windows on the southern side, roof/other element shielding the Sun in summer while allowing it pass in the winter etc) and while you might profit from your neighbors they still have to heat/cool anyway, it's good for you but it does not reduce the overall consumption. Just for a personal counter argument: I was living in an apartment from the '60s in a mild climate, it's heated with 24kW methane. I live now in a home twice the size/a bit more than twice the heated volume, in a much colder place and I heat with 1KW most of the time, climbing to 3-4kW few late night and early morning between January and February, the maximum absorption recorded for heating was at the end of January 2017 a single night with a minima of -24.8℃ (-12.64℉) with 6.3kW. In raw material terms electricity here means nuclear (I have p.v. with small storage, but not to heat the home at night) and the grid, gas means a much more raw material and energy hungry distribution network. So again building new home demand energy, but in their useful life we amortize it and we evolve. Remain in old buildings demand still more, many times more in many cases, just to keep them operational and we do not evolve. Can we change them now? A 40 apartment building build today respect of one 40 apartments from the '50s cost at least twice... You need to relocate 40 families for an year instead of putting a small container-home in the garden for two-thee month...

CorrectHorseBat 2y ago
>Yes, but the city need a far more expensive metro network, surface buses and so on, witch in term of raw materials demand much more than cars and in term of energy demand the same or even more because metros have also stations and even with metros and buses we still need cars and van for a variety of activities, vehicles used for work (like a small Transit for a plumber or an electrician) but also usable for private stuff. The TCO is still not in favor of such model, despite many (from the interested ruling class) claim the inverse... Source? This says otherwise, especially if you take into account you'll have to do less km in a dense city. If you go by bike it's even less. https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint >in the middle" you get "free heat" from some apartments underneath and "insulation" from apartments over yours. Again that's true for some, but in TCO terms it's still not favorable for the humanity at a whole, only for some humans. In an apartment everyone has at least 1, most people 2-3 neighbors and many even 4. >Just for a personal counter argument: I was living in an apartment from the '60s in a mild climate You're comparing with a new build house, compare with a new/renovated apartment. >You need to relocate 40 families for an year instead of putting a small container-home in the garden for two-thee month... For the most renovations you don't need to move, insulation is added on the outside.

kkfx 2y ago

I reply here since I see no reply under the right message, sorry > Source? This says otherwise, especially if you take into account you'll have to do less km in a dense city. If you go by bike it's even less. Personal considerations and experience, I think no such real study exists mostly because it should be really large. Taking into account all the variable in a real life case ALONE demand much effort. For first you should find data for a significant timeframe, let's say 10 years, measuring the raw materials needed to build a metro in some city, and I think no such data exists, you can get some projects but not a trustable bill of material. Secondly you have to track all buses and trains and their average consumption. Done this you have a generic measure of "how much it cost in capex and opex the public transport system of YouNameIt city", what you miss is a "YouNameIt city" spread equivalent with only private vehicles. In this case you can only measure a large number of people consumption in a spread area, count the cost of the original road network witch likely exists since so much time no one can count and their operational costs. Even if you reach such goal you have just a "first degree measure", you need to take into account resources needed to produce the resources you used to build the city and the spread area transport network, some are easy, let's say cement and sand, some others are far harder, like steel. And so on. You probably need an decade to craft a working model for a state like North Korea (a good one because due to it's politics (Juche) anything there is mostly "domestic", they do commerce of course but much less than other countries and they still have cities and spread are, though get real data on NK might be a bit hard). To cut it short the "carbon footprint" is a nonsense, sometimes useful but not an answer: a train travel it's far less energy intensive on a modern rail than a truck travel, the material travel, but thing change if you have to count resources needed to build and keep rails vs roads, including exchange nodes, because we do not have rails on the home front door or aside of a cultivated field. If you just count how many tons of steel you can start imaging what cost more and what less. At this scale we have no simulation, non real scientific study, only "I like it let's try" without possible comparisons. > You're comparing with a new build house, compare with a new/renovated apartment. I do on purpose because my new home was built in around two months, rebuild the building of my ancient apartment is practically impossible because not only you have to relocate ~53 families for an year or more but also because it's in the middle of a dense EU city where such large demolition than construction size would destroy the traffic of a significant part of the city for an year or more, such EU buildings was simply built considering an eternal useful life, and that's a bubble waiting to explode with damage not much different than those of a nuclear war. In USA something similar have happened with certain big condos collapsed or at least damaged enough to be beyond repair but USA cities tend to be far less dense and younger than EU one so MAYBE some might be rebuilt. The point is essentially that small buildings with enough ground around can be practically rebuilt, dense area can only be rebuilt in batch like relocating all the people from NY to another place and rebuilt the whole NY, witch I bet no one think it's doable or at least reasonable to do... > You still need them with spread, only more roads to spread everything around. Not exactly the same thing, yes, maritime commerce need harbors and having many little harbors and many little ships it's not much sustainable, so you need some "hubs" in the logistic network but having much more room for local production you can do them, and the rest of the logistic network is spread anyway so MUCH simpler and cheaper to be build and evolve. A simple example around me there are enough potential farm to have cows for meat, milk and cheese for the nearby residents, it's definitively not enough for modern living but in a hypothetical spread society it would be normal and actually it was normal in a not so far past where at least milk was generally local instead of import in from 1000-2000km away simply because there it's cheaper than here even with the needed logistic. Do so on scale and it's easy to view you need much less resources. We would anyway import shrimps from South America and India, but the volumes changes much.