On 2006-12-20 01:14:00 +0000, John Beardmore said:


Well - reducing corporation tax may be a force on the market, but it's
not an expression of, or a response to the will of the consumer, but a
government intervention. I thought that generally you regarded those
as a bad thing ?

Correct. However, customers are not empowered to reduce corporation
tax, the government is. One could argue that by reducing a tax take,
the government would be less interventionist, which of course is a good
thing.


I agree with penalties for trivia, but the effectiveness of legislation
seems to be experienced every day.

Along with the ineffectiveness.


Even so, I'm not at all sure it's right, and as for every kW of
electricity we use, Drax et al push 2 kW up a chimney as 'waste' heat,
consumption at the point of use is a pretty silly way to look at it.
with the PRIMARY energy used to make that electricity.

That's a matter of generation and there are numerous more efficient
ways to do so than to burn fossil fuels at Drax.

Only if you can find a home for the waste heat.

I don't have control over what the power generating companies do with
excess heat, however solutions exist for that as well.




I was, however, referring to energy use in the home.

Well yes, but if you don't take into account of the primary energy used
to deliver electricity, you will paint a very distorted picture.

Actually not. If the house is heated by gas, as a high proportion are,
the proportion of electricity used is a small part of the total in
energy (as opposed to cost) terms. This is even before considering
that heat generated from use of incandescent lighting is mainly added
to the heat requirement for the house anyway, since the larger use for
lighting is during the heating months anyway.




It's really very simple. Add up the number of incandescent bulbs
required in a house with their ratings. Work out the usage pattern.
Calculate the amount of electricity used in kWh averaged over a year.
Then look at the energy bills.
Yes. I suspect it comes out to more than 2% though.

Try working it out.

I did, but it depends entirely on the assumptions you make.

I assumed that as you gave a particular figure, you might have a clue
where it came from.

I do.




They just have a no incentive to, and would rather not bother if not
doing so increases the sale of fittings in the long run.
Exactly. People don't want this stuff and are voting with their money.
OK - a little cynical, but I would expect no less.

So that should give you the clue. Make it attractive and hassle free
to do something and people might just do it.
Force them and you will a) have a battle and b) a poorer result than if
you had spent the money cajoling and policing on incentivising.

I'm not particularly convinced.

I can imagine that.





Lets compare what happens with failed policies in the private business
sector. Either the business corrects it, and they try to, or they cease
being a service provider, and those that come closer to what the buyer
wants stay in business. The motivation to do well is much larger there,
as the individual either prospers or loses it all.
Which is great in those areas that markets address well. The
environment has generally not been one of them.
Then those wishing to promote its maintenance need to go away and
think about how to make
that marketable rather than immediately falling on the easy way out of
forcing unnatural behaviour.
I'm not sure that living sustainably is unnatural, but it's not
something capitalism has been good at.
That's just broad brushed nonsense
It's broad brush, but I can't think of a lot of major environmental
improvements led by industry off the top of my head.
You ?

It doesn't have to be led by, only made attractive enough to win co-operation.

Hmmm... Sounds like woolly broad brushed nonsense to me.

Essentially you are saying that if something is made attractive to
industry it might deign to respond to an emerging mark, but that's
about it isn't
it ? But this is also true of just about anything from atom bombs to
xylophones !

So... It still sounds fair to me to assert that living / acting living
sustainably is not something capitalism has been good at.

You are presenting a circular argument. When policies that don't take
account of the requirements of business are forced on it, it's hardly
surprising if there is little interest in co-operation and effort goes
into avoiding the negative impacts. This comes about when governments
believe that regulation and legislation is the way to achieve
advancement, either because of misguided control games or lack of
competence in running a business.
It's then not reasonable to blame those shortcomings on industry.

I don't believe that operating sustainably has to come about by there
being a reduction in the ability of business to be successful. If
they are not, the economy as a whole is less successful and less money
is available to fund the programs that people would like to have. The
correct action is to incentivise industry to take particular courses of
action. One only has to look at companies moving their operations to
lower tax locations and development areas to figure that one out.




Either marketing or legislation might contribute to getting the job
done. I'm not fussed which, and up to a point happy with both, though
marketing does seem to be the art of selling illusions.

Not sure that makes it the most appropriate tool.
Legislation certainly isn't. Marketing is very effective and
produces sustained results if done honestly and competently.
Where it's done honestly and competently, it's little different from
education. But how often is that ?
Look at government advertising on energy consumption. Terrifyingly
naff !

Terrifyingly wasteful

Quite probably.


as well and focussing on the wrong areas.

Not entirely the wrong areas I think, though out of interest, where do
you think they'd have got a better outcome ?

Refer to the point about lightbulbs. More reasonable expenditure is
around things that do make a worthwhile difference such as reasonable
levels of loft and cavity insulation.



This is something that the green lobby has attempted to do and has
been found out on the first and failed on the second.
Well there are one or two thinks like Brent Spa where there has been
clear misinformation given. I suspect that such cases are rare, and
other state owned companies like BNFL have hardly been squeaky clean in
this area. The asbestos industry lies for the best part of a hundred
years. I don't think industry can lecture the environmental movement
on corporate responsibility !

So honesty needed all round it seems....

Yes !


THe question is how to achieve that.

Indeed.


It's too expensive to police it.

And very tedious and expensive to go to law over anything that might be
seen as misleading or whatever.

Which is exactly why legislation is such a poor instrument in these areas.


Actually - it is interesting that so many students of architecture and
sustainable technologies are Chinese these days !

A supreme irony.



It's interesting to note that groups like Eurosolar seem to sense that
the battle in slowly being won in Europe, and a lot of the active
innovative members have moved on to things like WCRE,

http://www.wcre.de/en/index.php

which is contributing to the debate globally. It's also interesting
that at the one Eurosolar AGM I went to in Berlin, some of the more
innovative material came from places outside the EU like Vietnam.
Technically their contributions were not news, but the interesting
thing was the level of 'buy in' they could get in a community. It
looks as if local social structures can have a very dramatic effect.



Perhaps they should have a word with their immediate neighbours about
building nuclear rather than coal fired power stations.

Perhaps we could have a word with ours about not buying cheap Chinese goods.