Blogroll
- ASPO The official site of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas.
- Energy Bulletin Clearing house for news regarding the peak in global energy supply.
- PowerSwitch Dedicated to raising awareness & discussion of the impending & permanent decline of cheap oil & gas supply.
- ODAC Oil Depletion Analysis Centre working to raise awareness and promote better understanding of the world's oil-depletion problem.
- Global Public Media Public service broadcasting for a post carbon world.
- Post Carbon Institute Learning to live in a low energy world.
- PeakOil.com US site and forum to educate and promote awareness of global hydrocarbon depletion.
- FEASTA The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability
- Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs) This website describes an effective and fair response both to climate change and oil/gas depletion
Other Blogs
User login
Personnel
Editors
Contributors
Peak Oil Primers
Archives
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
Vital Trivia
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
In the UK we need some form of house heating about 1/2 the time - agreed?
We have 2 usual choices: electric or piped gas.
Back in the 50s, coal gave way to seperate gas fires in rooms.
Then the fashion for gas central heating arrived in the 60s/70s based on 2 things:
1] cheaper North Sea gas than electric
2 central timing control for the whole house. This coincided with 2 adults working lifestyles, where the old coal fire would have been impractical [too slow to start]
The downside of GCH is the impracticality of gas pipes, CORGI, water pipes, motors, boilers, pilot lights [or worse - new systems require electric supply], control panels, header tanks [ball valves], seized taps, bleeding gas out of radiators, sludge, cutting floorjoists, weeping connections..etc. We put up with all this rubbish because of 1] and 2] above.
Well, 2] doesn't require gas. There are people who make centrally managed electric [though it's rare stuff] and it makes more sense than an internet connected fridge.
My point is that at some transition, gas heating will inevitably fall out of favour as the price rises versus electricity.
When this begins, we WILL see an unfixable runaway electricity supply crisis unless the population decreases.
I left UK in 1984... and often fondly (NOT!!) think back to those days of "hydronic/wet" central heating systems... being awoken by the creaking and banging as hot water made it's way around the pipes & radiators of my Victorian terrace. And as for those ugly radiators taking up one wall of every room... (not to mention trying to "wallpaper" round them!!)
However, life in the New World is no better... with their forced air systems. Recently designing a new house only to find that all my ceiling heights were screwed because of the installation of huge forced air ducts... (the guys even custom-bash the "tin" as they are installing it... it's like a trade from the Victorian era). And now instead of rumbling pipes I have the "jet engine effect" every time the heating/AC kicks in.
And it is not that I didn't try for 21st Century technology... I am using a "geothermal" heat pump... (horrendous up-front cost but ultra-cheap to run) but you still need forced air...
The solution?? As I see it a modern heating system should follow the German "passive-haus" design... start with a super-insulated shell, install heat retrieval system... any minimal extra heating would be underfloor electric...silent & invisible.
Of course this doesn't help retrofitting all that crummy British housing stock... nor all the new "Wimpy houses" (do they still build those?)
Maybe there comes a point where it is just better to start from scratch???
Electicity is, of course, very inefficient for heating houses v piped natural gas. Chris V doubtless has better numbers but I suspect the combination of power generation and transmission losses result in around 30 - 40% overall efficiency for electric home heating. By contrast burning gas via a conventional home boiler is around 80 - 85% efficient...and more like 90% for a condensing boiler. Btw these are unresearched numbers I've read somewhere; maybe someone can correct them if they are badly adrift. On this basis a big switch to electricity for home heating does not look a good idea....even if the existing grids could handle the extra load (and I strongly suspect they couldn't).
On a personal basis I'm in the process of ordering a 2nd wood stove to reduce my oil dependency, there being no gas supply in this area. Those of us who read this site regularly are doubtless making individual arrangements so as to be 'ahead of the pack' when fuel prices enforce transition. We are, however, only a tiny percentage of the UK population and the vast majority are almost certainly totally unprepared for a situation which looks increasingly inevitable.
Hi canbrit - yes they still make 'xxxxx houses' and other tasteless shoeboxes in the UK. Its the only new house option for people who don't want the maintenance and heating bills of an older house [our house is the creaking victorian type]. Radiators! how did I miss them off my 'pain ita' list..? I think there there is a critical mass of people who would love to live in a better house, but choice is not available in the UK.
zceb90, electric losses before the meter will be of no interest to someone who is spending £1000s replacing worn out central heating and is trying to guess gas prices for the next 20 years. The cost and supply of gas vs electricity are the only factors. A full blown GCH could be £5000. That buys a lot of electricity for the cost difference even today.
Wood stoves if you have endless supplies are great for the individual, but what of 50 million 'townies'?
I too read those numbers of 89% [my exact Potterton model] for gas boilers on that database someone linked last time I brought this up. Personally I think thats comparing apples and oranges.
The manuf will write whatever tripe he can. Maybe 89% of the heat from burning gas reaches the water - so what? An electric fire is 99% efficient. Even a filament light bulb is a 98% efficent heater with about 1 - 2% light output.
My modern '89%' efficient boiler requires a constant electric standby wasted, electric ignition, and an electric pump for both hot water and heating. So the old boiler used more gas and less electricity..thats progress!
I can see the changeover to electric creeping up on our gov who, I think we largely agree, seems unprepared for every national resource planning from water to climate change. Zceb90, yes I fear the electric suppliers could not cope with the demand [the grid presumably is matched to their outputs and would be OK]
cheers all.
I could understand a switch to electric power for domestic heating generated from combination of renewables, coal or nuclear but all 3 have major problems. Renewables are growing from a tiny base and wind and wave power alone cannot provide a constant base load on calm days. There a major CO2 issues with coal and, unless UK revives its coal industry in a big way increasingly expensive imports are required. Nuclear power has a long lead time and it's unlikely that the first batch of new builds (which are not even at the planning stage yet) could do any more than replace plant being decomissioned up to around 2020.
My view is that the most likely course of action will be for trends to occur whereby the number of rooms in houses being heated will reduce, heating will be run upon occupation as opposed to 24/7, number of occupants per house will increase, temperature settings will reduce and more clothing will be worn. A big program of insulation for existing houses would be an ideal step but I'm rather afraid that Gov'ts will wait until a full blown crisis is upon us before acting by which time financial resources (in the inevitable recession) will be a limiting factor.
I appreciate wood stoves are only an option for a tiny minority; I just happen to live in a very rural area with no natural gas supplies where, at present, large quantities of wood are available free of charge to me. The local council advises the nearby estate that they have to remove unwanted wood and they find it much cheaper to deliver it to me v hauling it further away.
You have hit the nail right on the head. My in-laws lived in a very large house. When they retired, they shut down a number of rooms to cope with heating costs. Ultimately, they moved.
The Brits, over the last 4 decades have become used to shirt sleeve order, even in December, January and February.
This will change with time.
The deregulation of the energy market has reduced prices up until now. From last winter onwards we will start to examine more closely our efforts to 'gather winter fuel'.
Most households can slash fuel budgets by 15% over night. With thought, by as much as 25%.
But, and this is the biggest BUT of our times, will those who can afford fuel conserve? OK , so a fixed income pensioner cannot do anything but switch it off and thereby freeze and die, But will an upper middle class family behave in the same way?
Regrettably, I think not. The people who can afford to burn gas and electricity will continue to burn it. Until they, in turn can no longer afford to burn it.
Rationing by price will kill the fabric of our society. Just now, on the news, Teachers, Police, health workers are being priced out of Cities in England. Add heating and transport fuel costs to this, and the fabric irretrievably erodes.
And we get to the 'great unwinding'
In all the excitement (?) about the Dear Leader's apparent change of heart re nuclear power, this simple irreducible fact seems to have have escaped scrutiny - what will happen of course is that current stations will , by waving a magic wand in Whitehall have their working lives extended beyond design life to fill the gap - as has already happened I think with Dungeness B. Let us hope that such decisions are based upon a proper scrutiny rather than simply by desire.
What frightens me is that we have had under this lot of myopic midgets, no serious attempt to grasp the energy requirements of a cold wet island off the western coast of Europe for the next 50 years. One example, Pilkington's Glass has been taken over within last 2 months ( whopping £1.8BN cash deal !!) by JPG, (incidentally they with other Japanese co.Asahi Glass have 80 /90% of worlds flat glass capacity) - it is evident they intend to move production within say 3/4 years to Poland - making sense of cost , security of energy supply, lower labour costs in addition.
Aluminium smelter powered by Wylfa will close and production fed by Dubai , now world's largest smelting capacity - again plus lower labour costs.
These iterative decisions driven by enery cost/securty will naturally affect the core manufacturing economy - with all that it entails - Chris is right to point to energy poverty.
This is happening (with a vengeabce) in the US , especially in the Mid West - see this
http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/library/energy/homelessness.cfm