Yep, the standards for energy efficiency in homes is just barely above being non-existent. We spent decades with cheap energy so no one cared if every house leaked like a sieve. Now that's coming back to bite us.
chaosmarine92
joined 4 months ago
I have an air source heat pump for my house and a heat pump water heater. Even in the dead of winter at 0F it kept my house just as warm as always and my water was hot. Heat pumps are not "shitty alternatives" any longer. Maybe in Alaska they would struggle but anywhere else and they work just fine.
If we want to honestly improve the climate then it is REQUIRED that we become carbon negative, not just net zero. And every little bit of emission that is prevented is a lot of power that isn't needed later on to suck that carbon back out of the air.
You can complain that big companies aren't doing enough to cut emissions and I agree, but that doesn't mean we should wait till they clean up their act to start working on ours.
That is already a thing and it's called concentrated solar power. Basically aim a shit load of mirrors at a target to heat it, run some working fluid through the target and use that to make steam to turn a turbine. There are a few power plants that use it but in general it has been more finicky and disruptive to the local environment than traditional PV panels would be.