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Norway To Ban the Use of Oil For Heating Buildings By 2020 (independent.co.uk)
Norway, which is the largest producer of oil and natural gas outside of the Middle East, is set to become the first country in the world to ban the use of gas to heat buildings. The country plans to pass legislation that will stop the use of both oil and paraffin to warm buildings from 2020 onwards. The Independent reports: Vidar Helgesenlaid, the nation's Environment Minister, laid out the plans in a statement, saying: "Those using fossil oil for heating must find other options by 2020." The country advises its citizens to research alternatives to oil such as heat pumps, hydroelectricity, and even special stoves that burn wood chips. By some stage, the legislation could be widened to include restrictions on using natural gas to heat buildings. The Ministry of Climate and Environment said the ban would apply to both new and old buildings and cover both private homes and the public space of businesses and state-owned facilities. The ministry says the plans are expected to lessen Norway's emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by an estimated 340,000 tons per year, compared to overall national emissions of 53.9 million tons in 2015.
If cutting their emissions by 1% will somehow disproportionately lower global temperature by a noticeable amount, then hooray!
No single measure will have a massive impact on climate change but many of them together will.
Otherwise why take away efficient heating from people in a freezing-cold country? Won't this likely increase the mortality rate among the sick, elderly, etc. come winter?
Welfare in Norway is good enough that this isn't an issue.
So the submitter already has no clue what he's talking about.
Add to that, the title mentions oil, the first paragraph mentions oil and natural gas as being banned. The quote just talks about Oil. So TFS seems to be written by a fool.
Norway has plenty of firewood. No need for all those forests, I'm sure they can spare a couple.
That's not true of most oil furnaces made in last 10-15 years.
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The world's first floating windfarm has taken to the seas in a sign that a technology once confined to research and development drawing boards is finally ready to unlock expanses of ocean for generating renewable power...It is also notable because the developer is not a renewable energy firm but Norway's Statoil, which is looking to diversify away from carbon-based fuels.
For those of us that live in USA, Americans call Parrafin Kerosene.
And is shocking to me that people in Norway heat their homes with camping equipment. At least get a wood stove.
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Portable kerosene (lighter #1 fuel) space heaters do put off an odor due to the unvented nature. On the other hand oil fired furnaces, boilers, and water heaters (which can burn kerosene or #2 fuels such as diesel or #2 heating oil) can be surprisingly efficient and vent their exhaust to the outside of the building usually up via a chimney (except for maybe high efficiency units which may vent closer to ground level).
sudo mod me up
How can a building heated by "special stoves that burn wood chips" possibly have lower emissions than one using heating oil ?
I'm all for fighting global warming ... but surely there's no wave a wood burning stove is going to be as efficient and clean as using heating oil.
I assume lots of people will switch to propane. No, they're not going to shiver.
why take away efficient heating from people in a freezing-cold country?
But it is not efficient. Heat pumps (aka electric air conditioners) are much more efficient, even when using electricity produced by burning gas.
And electric heating allows fossil fuels to be replaced by nuclear (imported from Sweden?) and renewables.
I'm surprised anybody still uses oil for heating. Here in Australia, oil heating has long ago almost disappeared, replaced at the time with piped natural gas and bottled butane or propane. Now they are giving way to efficient reverse-cycle split system air-conditioners. Gas is still economical for cooking and water-heating. (heat-pump water heaters cost much more than space heaters for some reason).
I find most places Sydney and south a freakin' cold in winter. I think that's due to cultural/practical reasons rather than any chosen tech. Its warm enough not to need serious heating but cold enough to be uncomfortable.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
Otherwise why take away efficient heating from people in a freezing-cold country?
Because oil is more valuable on the global market than to sell domestically (Norway). Making powerful people money has always been more important than keeping the plebs warm in the winter. And in this case, they can paint it as environmentalism, even though they'll still be selling the oil and it will still be consumed somewhere in the world.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I know a lot of people with heat pumps. When natural gas and propane prices spiked heat pumps got real popular here in the Midwest. As popular as they were everyone had a propane or natural gas "backup" furnace. What this meant is for about 2 months per year the heat pump would run, 6 months the furnace would run, and the rest was with air conditioning. It just gets too cold here for heat pumps to keep up. Last I checked Norway was closer to the poles than us.
Then they mention electric heat. I've seen that heat pumps are quite popular in the southern US too. Even then they have an electric resistance heat backup, though they use it much less. Temperatures in these areas rarely get low enough that a heat pump cannot keep up. This also has something to do with a lack of topsoil. It's easy to run natural gas pipes in the Midwest due to the deep layers of soil. When I lived in Texas it was almost unheard of to have this thing called a "basement". The bedrock was under only a couple inches of soil, so electric heat it is.
The only way I see Norway not using some petroleum product to heat their homes is if electricity was really really cheap compared to the USA. A couple quick Google searches tell me that they pay about the same we do, perhaps more after taxes. What's going to happen to those prices once they have a government mandated monopoly on heat in a nation that straddles the Arctic Circle?
So, not going to happen.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Norway has a long history of doing things better and smarter than the US. So yes, it's going to happen.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
just got rid of my oil burner... 20 year old and was running like a champ. It was massively over sized for my house, getting up there in age. There was no natural gas running to the house 4 days ago... now there's a brand new meter out there. Why did I replace it? Well, it was 20 years old, the central air doesn't work, plus with the Cheeto in office, he'll be pissing off some oil country and prices will go thru the roof.
Its warm enough not to need serious heating but cold enough to be uncomfortable.
Yes, most Australians have no central heating (I guess Canberra is an exception?), and often just a lounge-room heater.
Mornings can be cold, which is why we invented ugg-boots. They are really just over-sized slippers, and not to be worn outside the house.
Most homes in Norway are heated by electricity. /. frontpage...
Norway has lots of hydroelectric power.
Interesting that what is a non-issue in Norway gets on the
I did a bit more reading on this and discovered something interesting. Currently about 85% of Norwegians heat with electricity, the balance being oil, natural gas, and wood. I did not see a breakdown of how that 15% is distributed but it is quite clear that the plurality is from wood. So that leaves something like 10% of people heating with petroleum.
What I also saw was that oil and natural gas use is growing quickly. It seems that electricity prices spiked in 2003 and since then non-electric heating has found a new demand. This has lead to plans to install natural gas service to where it was not before. What happens when electric heating starts to see competition? They lobby the government to make the competition illegal of course.
The electric energy sector held a near monopoly on heating for a very long time. This no doubt made them a lot of money. This allowed them to raise prices in recent years. It got to a point that petroleum is now looking attractive for many more people than it did just a few years before. Rather than lowering prices to stay competitive the electric sector turns to the government to protect their monopoly.
The electric energy sector is only doing this now because petroleum is a threat to their profits. They can just veil this with protecting the environment because that is popular right now.
Assuming Norwegians still have the ability to vote they are going to vote to keep their heating costs low. That's what people always do, vote with their wallets. That is why I believe this effort to make petroleum heating illegal will fail.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
That was done many years ago in Norway.
Heat pump is a pretty broad term. All heatpumps work by moving the thermal energy up a gradient. The higher that gradient, the less efficient they are. Air to Air heat pumps do not work worth crap in low temperatures, such as what you have in the midwest. Ground source heat pumps, which I presume this article is talking about, are a very different beast. They offer about a 3:1 energy gain; 1 watt of electrical power in means 3 watts of heat out. Since their heat source coils are buried below the frost-line, there's little variation in performance between summer and winter.
While it doesn't get that cold here in Vancouver, BC, one of the new towers downtown did something pretty cool. When building the foundations for the tower, the bored hundreds of deep wells under the structure and filled them with heat exchanger pipes. During the summer, the building's air conditioning systems sink their waste heat into the block of earth under the tower. In the winter, they heat pump off of that. The AC effectively salts the heat pump source for the winter months.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
As one other commenter has stated: It has more or less happened already.
/. - it is old news), as nobody cares.
Petroleum for heating homes is rare in Norway. Pretty much all private homes are heated by electricity, with heat pumps being pretty popular.
The ban on heating homes with oil is barely showing up in the headlines (I had forgotten about it when it showed up on
Unlike the US, Norway has heavy royalties that are paid to the state sovereign wealth fund, which benefits all norwegian citizens. It's not just going in to the corporation's pockets.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
And electric heating allows fossil fuels to be replaced by nuclear (imported from Sweden?) and renewables.
Norway is like 98% hydroelectric and have enough of it to export.
Whatever electricity they import from Sweden is mainly to share the power lines since they export more of it than they import.
And it's not like Sweden uses it either, they just pass it on to Finland, Poland, Germany and Denmark.
The Nordic countries had too much access to water to bother with coal when they started to use electricity.
When they talk about using less nuclear it has never been on the table to replace it coal or other fossil fuel.
That is the main reason to why it is so easy for them to take a forward position in climate deals.
When replacing ICE cars with electric ones they won't just move emissions from one place to another, they already have the electricity generation part done.
Ground sourced heat pumps have their limits. One of my brothers lived in a house that had a ground source heat pump where he used to live, and the house had an electric resistor backup heat. When he moved in he defeated the resistance heat because he didn't want to "pay that bill". He paid for it another way in a few chilly days in his house. I have to wonder if he actually saved any money by disconnecting the resistance heat, at some point the only heat in that system is coming from the (admitted large) electric motors running the pumps.
I'm not mocking the use of heat pumps. I'm mocking the claim that they think heat pumps will replace petroleum use.
Here in the Midwest I've seen a mix of air and ground sourced heat pumps. Newer houses tend to have the ground sourced kind because installing them after the house is built is much more expensive. Air sourced heat pumps are the norm in the southern US, as far as I've seen. I assume this has much to do with the winters not being as cold as much as it does with having little topsoil in many areas. Even then you will almost always see electric resistance backup. It might be switched off like what my brother did but it's there. Wood, propane, natural gas, and so on also apply as backup based on local availability of fuel.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Thanks, but I think I'll keep the comparison at a nation to nation level, since the relevant decisions are being made at the national level. And Norway's situation presents many challenges the well-run states don't face, such as a miniscule population scattered over an area that would extend pretty much from Maine down to Florida. If Norway is "a speck", so is your eastern seaboard.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
What does the future of Norway electricity use look like? I assume that their demand for electricity is growing. I assume that after decades of using hydro power that they are running out of good places to put dams.
A quick Google search tells me that Noway is increasingly relying on natural gas and imports for electricity. Seems to me that they've pretty much maxed out their ability to grow hydro power. More efficient uses of their existing electricity supply can stretch that out some, which includes using heat pumps over resistance heating when practical.
If trends continue Norway is going to have to burn more natural gas (and natural gas derived electricity for heat is always going to be more expensive than burning it for heat directly), import more nuclear power from Sweden or...?
The electricity sector in Noway cannot simply ban competition from natural gas because people will vote with their wallets and overturn this ban. I don't see that happening with the possible exception of nuclear power providing an out. This could be Swedish nuclear power or Norwegian nuclear power, but it will be natural gas or nuclear power to fill that gap. Personally I'd like to see growth in nuclear power but I also have nothing against natural gas.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Norway, which is the largest producer of oil and natural gas outside of the Middle East...
Not even close.
But nice try in order make their "sacrifice" seem bigger than it is.
The article is probably confusing "producer" with "exporter" and "Middle East" with OPEC - being a small country with low domestic consumption, it would rank significantly higher in such a ranking.
The policy isn't new, and the use of oil for heating is low - the main heating is provided by electricity (directly, or used in heat pumps, but some is also provided by District Heating and firewood.
If cutting their emissions by < 1% will somehow disproportionately lower global temperature by a noticeable amount, then hooray! Otherwise why take away efficient heating from people in a freezing-cold country? Won't this likely increase the mortality rate among the sick, elderly, etc. come winter?
It's not efficient, and not widely used. The main heating is provided by electricity (directly, or used in heat pumps, but some is also provided by district heating and firewood.
The government makes the money instead of a corporation? Do you really fail to see that there is no difference. Powerful people operate every government, and if they bring a benefit to their people to stay in power that is of course good, it's their job and a sign of a functional democracy. But do you also fail to see the hypocrisy of this faux environmentalism? Since Norway is a democracy does that mean I get to blame every citizen of Norway instead of their leaders? Unlike other nations where we can point to obvious corruption at the top, the lack of corruption in a government doesn't mean there is no one to blame for wrong behavior.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
There are hundreds of years of fossil fuels left at our current rate of consumption. We'll die choking on the atmosphere long before we run out of oil to drill.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
they also have shitloads of hydroelectric. if they use that hydroelectricity for heating instead and export the oil, it's a win on the national deficit/surplus for them.
but anyways. oil is not gas so wtf the article stub is even talking about is a bit of a mystery.
oil is a liquid. the oil is similar to diesel. it goes into a burner and that heats up water and that circulates around in tubes in the house to make it warm. it's not natural gas, propane or whatever, it's not petrol..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
A couple of points - natural gas has not been growing as a heat source, it has always been irrelevant. Norway does not have an infrastructure for it. Oil has been dropping steadily for a long time. Electricity (cost: about 10 cents/kWh) is the main energy source, used directly or through a heat pump. There is also a large use of district heating, and some use of firewood. Usually not alone, but as a cosy supplement to the primary heat source.
The electricity sector is not lobbying for this, this is caused by Norway looking for ways to lower emissions in order to meet certain goals and this is a low hanging fruit which doesn't hurt much and has been gradually introduced.
It's not going to fail either, as the parties not in government are not against this - if anything, most of them are attacking the government for not doing enough overall to reduce emissions.
It's not just the distance to the north pole.
The gulf-stream keep Scandinavia hotter than other places at the same latitude.
What does the future of Norway electricity use look like? I assume that their demand for electricity is growing. I assume that after decades of using hydro power that they are running out of good places to put dams.
A quick Google search tells me that Noway is increasingly relying on natural gas and imports for electricity. Seems to me that they've pretty much maxed out their ability to grow hydro power. More efficient uses of their existing electricity supply can stretch that out some, which includes using heat pumps over resistance heating when practical.
If trends continue Norway is going to have to burn more natural gas (and natural gas derived electricity for heat is always going to be more expensive than burning it for heat directly), import more nuclear power from Sweden or...?
The electricity sector in Noway cannot simply ban competition from natural gas because people will vote with their wallets and overturn this ban. I don't see that happening with the possible exception of nuclear power providing an out. This could be Swedish nuclear power or Norwegian nuclear power, but it will be natural gas or nuclear power to fill that gap. Personally I'd like to see growth in nuclear power but I also have nothing against natural gas.
Actually, the forecast is an increasing surplus in of electricity in Norway, even after electrification of the transportation sector (goal: all new small cars should be zero emission by 2025).
There is no use of natural gas in power production in Norway today, with the exception of off shore oil platforms. There was one plant, but it closed down.
Oil has been dropping steadily for a long time.
What has been replacing oil? The answer is natural gas. In 1980 natural gas made up only 3.5% of energy produced in Norway, in 2010 it was 20%. Hydro has remained steady at about 40% of energy produced. Those numbers are from International Energy Agency.
Oil is easy to export, natural gas is not. The infrastructure to distribute natural gas may not be all that large right now but it's been growing for 40 years now.
If the goal is to reduce CO2 production then continued growth in the use of natural gas is a good way to do that, since it's been displacing oil and coal. That's how the USA has been reducing it's CO2 production.
The electricity sector is not lobbying for this
I don't believe you. That's not saying you are lying or being misled. It's just difficult to imagine that the electric sector can remain silent on this and not advocate for government policies in it's favor.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I was talking in the context of energy consumption for heating buildings - the topic of the article - and here, oil usage has fallen.
Energy production in total is a completely different cup of tea - most of the energy produced is oil and gas, that is exported. This includes gas, as there are many large gas pipelines from Norway to UK and the continent.
Norway has the highest percentage of electric car adoption in the world, so I don't think they are being hypocritical. If they stopped pumping oil ad gas from the North Sea, it would just mean more money going to Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Oil heats most of New England and is still the number one heat source in new construction.
Here in Ontario Canada, we also use electric resistance for back up with ground source heat pumps. Some times we get winters with -30C or even colder. In these few days of the year, the electric heat can come on. It's a very rare occurrence most of the time. Your brother's system might not have kept up without the electric resistance but if it was sized properly then it wouldn't have happened except on the very coldest of days in the winter. The ground is always around 50F/10C so even in the dead of winter you can still heat your house off of that. You can also put the ground heat exchanger in a pond if you have one. Ponder looking out to your frozen over pond and then imagine that you're heating your house from the water in that pond. That is a reality with ground source heat pumps. Air source heat pumps are a lot better than they used to be these days but they still struggle in the very cold winters.
Seems hypocritical for a country that owes most of its current and future wealth to its oil and gas industry.
Oil and gas have their merits in certain fields. That doesn't mean one should use it everywhere it's possible.
such an American answer.
Welfare in Norway is good enough that this isn't an issue.
It's not even a question of that, but of cost. Heating oil in Norway is considerably more expensive than electricity, and having travelled and worked in Norway I can't remember when I saw something other than electricity (radiator or under floor heating), though of course wood (often in the form of pellets) is also popular.
Electricity is dirt cheap in Norway, so people even typically don't have a heat pump (like we do in Sweden), but just heat directly with electricity. As an example, for a 600 sq foot apartment with three outside walls, in the "cold" part of the country (two hours north of Oslo) I paid about $50 USD per month for electricity. That includes heating. In winter. Rent was $750 USD/month, so heating/electricity didn't add much.
In the Nordic countries we haven't installed oil fired boilers since before the energy crisis in the seventies. It's only houses with a very old heating system that burns oil these days. A system that should be well past its replacement days.
So that's why the Norwegians make this rule now. Usage is already virtually nil, so banning them won't have any real effect. Furthermore a typical oil fired boiler can be converted to burn wood pellets for, say $1000 USD or so, so even though a cheap conversion like that has it's disadvantages, it's not exactly a deal breaker if you own a house.
Stefan Axelsson
Smart countries have realized that fossil fuels are on the way out. In the Middle East they are mostly investing in tourism as an alternative, and in Europe countries are investing in renewable energy technology that they can export.
Everyone else is missing the boat.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Electricity isn't particular expensive in Norway: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/s...
They are transitioning towards electricity for everything, e.g. transport where they have a lot of electric cars and boats.
Heating in particular is subsidised. Some people get it for free as a byproduct of some other process. The government makes sure people are warm.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's designed this way on purpose.
It would be too expensive to built a heat pump powerful enough for the few days it gets under say, -25 C.
So the resistive heater is not just a backup for cases when the heatpump fails. It's being used to supplement the heat pump when it's too cold. As energy prices continue to rise, people will built heat pump which are more powerful and won't require/use their resistive heater as much.
Rant all you like, but pellet burners != wood stoves.
Oh, and quoting the daily mail for anything except "$celeb boob flash at $function" is likely peddling 'fake news'.
Have a nice day :-)
I was talking in the context of energy consumption for heating buildings
So was I.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
>The electricity sector in Noway cannot simply ban competition from natural gas because people will vote with their wallets and overturn this ban
There is no ban on natural gas, but for home use, there is simply no infrastructure for it. Around where I live, it was offered as an option in some small areas being built (a few hundred houses), but the interest was very limited, and I have not seen any discussion around it since then.
To be fair, the politicians are being hypocritical (loving taxes off oil sales) while the general Norwegian isn't. Their electric car adoption has little to do with actively choosing to buy EVs and much more to do with legislation (like this oil ban) which causes ICE vehicles to cost 50% more than an electric plus exempts electrics from the majority of other driving expenses (parking, tolls, etc..).
Once Denmark announced the end of their similar programs the sales of EVs plummeted so hard they had to reinstate the program with a extended phase out period.
The people are more than happy to buy gas powered cars and probably more than happy to continue buying heating oil; the politicians, on the other hand, are quite willing to tax everything oil related out of existence all the while making billions off of exporting it.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
The Norwegian Minister of Climate and the Environment's current minster isn't named Vidar Helgesenlaid.
But Vidar Helgesen.
And as that is said, something more interesting:
http://www.dinside.no/okonomi/...
http://www.ost-varme.no/starts...
http://www.husogheim.no/1/1_3....
Summarized: Assuming you already have a installation, and are a consumer, in Norway
-Heat pump is calculated to be at 0.3-0.4per khw, but its still limited by how far down the pump goes before it can't supply(somewhere after freezing, some can even go to -25C). Earth installation will offset that.
-Gass costs about 0.5kr per kWh
-Propane costs about 0.5 per kWh
-Pellets costs about 0.6kr per kWh
-Oil costs about 1kr per kWh
-Wood cost sabout 0.8kr per kWh
-Paraffin cost sabout 1.3kr per kWh
That said, for comforts sake, using those systems into water carried heat is the more stable and comfortable heating option. And another limit is how good the insulation of the house is: getting better windows(number of layers, insulation quality), as well as replacing to significantly higher quality glass wool.
"Kulde er Guds måte å fortelle oss at vi burde brenne flere katolikker."
or maybe
"Kulde er Guds beskjed til oss om å brenne flere katolikker."
Or something like that. First one is more directly translated, but adds a "should"(burde) because otherwise I felt the sentence was weird. Last one is slightly altered, but sounds better imho.
-- Linux user #369862
Coincidentally, 2020 is the year when the EU directive on passive houses jumps onto the housing scene like the proverbial 800 lbs gorilla. So perhaps there's some connection between the two. Norway isn't strictly in the EU but many measures are going to be similar.
Ezekiel 23:20
Norway has the highest percentage of electric car adoption in the world, so I don't think they are being hypocritical. If they stopped pumping oil ad gas from the North Sea, it would just mean more money going to Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Exactly. I don't know why its so hard for some to understand that if a country were to give up it's primary economic driver it would be unable to do the very costly things that are required to significantly reduce carbon emissions. All too often I see folks here completely disregard the socioeconomic factors that MUST be considered in order for the world to change enough to impact AGW. As a global society, we've made essentially ZERO progress in actual carbon reduction, but some countries have some nice symbolic windmills and solar panels to point to as 'feel good' icons. Unless we address the socioeconomic challenges and accept what the facts tell us, we will continue to stagnate.
Yeap, they'll be puffing a cloud of smug just like New Zealand did when it shut down its last coal fired plant, but still sells it to who ever us willing to buy it and burn it. Very responsible.
If everyone on the planet stopped selling coal today, we'd have a lot worse problems than coal pollution to deal with.
Heating with oil is a poor use of resources. It is far better to design the buildings to work with the climate. This is how I designed and built both my home and my butcher shop. Neither one requires heating or cooling to stay comfortable. Neither one is actually earth bermed either which would boost performance even more - both are strong enough to be earth bermed though.
I live in a climate quite similar to Norway - I'm in the central mountains of northern Vermont. It regularly gets to -25ÂF in the winter and it has gotten as low as -45ÂF many years. We also have high winds. By proper siting and the use of insulated high mass masonry construction my buildings act as giant thermal flywheels storing summer's warmth to use during the winter and winter's coolth to use during the summer.
It works. It's not expensive to build and it uses no petroleum for eating. I do burn about 0.75 cord of wood (a very small amount) in the house for cooking and for my wife's pleasure but the house will stay at reasonable temperatures even without that wood burning - the wood is sustainable dead wood from our forest.
Electricity is not particularly expensive in the USA either.
https://www.eia.gov/electricit...
Google tells me that one euro equals about $1.13. If the average in the USA is $0.10. then that's about 0.09 euro per kWh. Norway pays what? The chart is hard to read but it looks like about 0.16 or 0.17, with the EU average above 0.20. The US government makes sure people are warm too, you think we don't subsidize energy here? I thought energy subsidies were a bad thing, judging by so many comments on here lately.
Tell me something, what do you think would happen to our electricity prices if the government said that Americans could no longer use cheap natural gas to heat their homes? Would not rates go up? How is this not different than anticipating the electric rates would go up if people were barred from using natural gas heat in Norway? While natural gas heating is rare now the elimination of the competition from natural gas heating by government fiat will mean that the electricity sector will lose a very important incentive to keep prices low.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The US allows far greater levels of pollution / health damage though, so of course it's cheaper. How much do you pay for health insurance to cover that? How much worse is your environment because of it?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
plus they insulate their houses to the extreme to prevent heat loss and this keeps their usage down. pity all houses are not done this way, during the winter it keeps the heat and during the summer keeps the heat out.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
How much do you pay for health insurance to cover that? How much worse is your environment because of it?
Why didn't you look that up and tell me the answers? I can make big claims too without citations like that if we add up the savings on fuel costs that we can put that money saved towards better health care, and still come out ahead.
I'm not making big claims about environmental impacts and pollution, only that without the competition from natural gas electricity price will most likely rise. As people see their immediate costs of energy rise there will be push back on the self imposed ban on natural gas heating.
Tell me something, can you tell me what is a greater threat to the individual, pollution and global warming, or the inability to pay for heat?
Sure, you can subsidize heat for those unable to pay for it but socialism only works until you've spent everyone else's money.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Thing is, electricity doesn't work well in countries like Canada where the distances are vast The grid can't handle it, it's also more expensive then any other method for heating. It's why charities that exist to pay for heating ran out of money last winter a few months into the winter season, and the people who primarily use them are the ones who use electricity for heating. At 0.185kWh @peak those charities were out of cash by December last year. The winter season in most of Canada runs from mid or late october until april or may. Charities that supply wood on the other hand barely squeaked by. On top of that this was a mild winter, it was also a mild Nov-December period this year.
It's the same reason why my sister's electricity bill went from $80/mo to $260/mo with the same usage, when the Alberta NDP shut down all the coal power plants. Gee that's a brilliant idea, we're literally swimming in coal, it produces cheap energy but fuck you! You're gonna get screwed over to boot. Now the kicker, when they have those randomly high winds and storms which knock out power for days on end. Their little shithole of a town which had electricity no longer does. They truck in diesel fuel to keep the government offices, fire hall, and mall open and heated so people don't freeze to death when it hit's -42C.
It's the same in Ontario, where the liberals blow $1B on two ridding seats to shut down a natural gas power plant, pay producers to not produce electricity, sell it for pennies to the US, and on top of that implement a "green energy" act that drives the price through the roof. Yeah the top two concerns in Ontario for the last few years are "high electricity prices" and jobs. Great combination.
Om, nomnomnom...
That's not really true, solar panel and wind power are both seeing annual double digit growth, and around 10% of the power generated in Europe now comes from wind. Indeed, already worldwide more than 50% of all new electricity installations, both capacity and delivered energy are now renewable. That means as the existing equipment wears out it's being replaced with much 'greener' equipment. And that can only accelerate. That's not 'token' gestures it's because wind in particular is actually competitive and solar is becoming ever more so. Even in America, which is moving slowly, the same economic forces are playing out and coal mines are closing.
The cost of electric car batteries are dropping at a similar rate.
A lot of people think that there's a difference between primary energy and electricity, but actually electricity has low entropy; watt for watt electricity is much more valuable than primary energy. So even though electricity is greening up, it's tending to replace primary energy; you need a lot less energy to drive an electric car than a fossil car, and electric cars are almost completely nicer to drive.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Freeze them out!
You could go ground-source coupled heat pumps to avoid most of that, though more expensive to install, it could be worth it. Norway apparently has low electricity prices, though, so I don't think it would be worth it in most cases.
(I left of the "and sometimes worse" because if the heat pump doesn't switch to pure resistive heat when the heat pump + defrost cycle would use more energy, then it wasn't designed for the climate it's installed in.)
The post you were replying to was about Norway's oil, not the world's fossil fuels.
Oil production in the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) peaked at 2.9 million barrels per day (Mb/d) in 1999, while the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) peaked at 3.4 Mb/d in 2001.
Norwegian spending on exploration and field development in 1H 2015 fell 18% from 1H 2014, while spending on shutdown and removal rose 70% over the same period
Prime Minister of Norway Erna Solberg has reportedly told Sveriges Television (SVT), the Swedish national public TV broadcaster, that Norway only has 80 years of oil supply left.
Statoil operates to varying degrees in Algeria, Angol, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Latvia, Libya, Nigeria, and the UK.
So yes, Norwegian businesses have their fingers in the world's fossil fuels.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
That's not really true, solar panel and wind power are both seeing annual double digit growth, and around 10% of the power generated in Europe now comes from wind.
I was not saying we do not have solar and wind growth. I said global CO2 emission reductions are still negligible.
Based on my Illinois bill compared to your link, the listed USA average 10.41 cents per kWh (which you rounded down to 10) does not appear to cover some taxes, meter fees, and other costs, some of which are not charged based on kWh. looking at one of my bills, those costs averaged out to almost 4 cents / kWh in a typical, non-air conditioning month.
So last March I paid 9.57 cents/kWh for electricity supply and delivery combined (yes, they're separate charges ever since "deregulation") but 13.4 cents/kWh including all costs, while your chart says Illinois has an average cost of 9.4 cents / kWh.
Still looks a little cheaper than Norway, though.
Yeah, better to fuck the rest of the world just so you can have cheap energy. Fuck YOU!!!!
You'd better off yourself first, bitter little malthusian.
Om, nomnomnom...
But if burning gas for electricity is so efficient, why did all our gas powered power plants go bankrupt despite the very high tax paid subsides?
Hard to say without knowing what country are you in, dumbass.
And I'm way South of Norway. Norway is cold.
It's a lot more complicated than that. Does hydro produce cheap, renewable power? Often times, yes. Does hydropower have significant environmental and social impacts? Sometimes, yes. Is hydropower susceptible to climatic changes? Often times, yes. Just ask Brazil, Venezuela, and southern Africa for recent examples about that.
One of these days, can we please stop talking in generalities and extremes and assuming they are valid for specific projects? It makes more sense to carefully study things on a case by case basis, including all possible options, and looking at all possible positive and negative impacts. Then people can make informed decisions and take responsibility for the inevitable trade-offs.
"Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist." -Indiana Jones
Renewables have already flattened off the CO2 emissions curve, and from here on out, the CO2 emissions curve will go down.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Renewables have already flattened off the CO2 emissions curve, and from here on out, the CO2 emissions curve will go down.
No. Another increase is predicted when they bring the next nuclear unit offline, and then each unit after that. 'Flat emissions' are as much or more a result of efficiency gains and economic slowing than anything.