[lit-ideas] Re: Portugal opens major solar power plant

"What do you sophisticated Finns use in Finland to heat your houses?  Is it 
oil?  I've learned that oil gets the most BTU's per whatever the measure is, 
dollar I guess."

For sophistication I would look towards Swedes, in Finland we have about half a 
million houses (pop. 5+ million) heated with pure electricity, which the Swedes 
have very sensible simply outlawed. (In a nutshell, burning coal to generate 
heat, turning that heat to electricity, transferring that electricity, and then 
turning back into heat makes no sense economically or ecologically, although it 
is very cheap to install.) On the bright side, good insulation helps, 
triple-glass windows for example are common.

Helsinki like other bigger Nordic cities mainly uses district heating, that is 
houses are heated by waste heat from electricity generation, also known as 
co-generation. While efficient, this usually does mean burning something, 
although bio-fuels or waste can be used too as fuel. Stockholm uses giant ocean 
heat pumps for part of heat generation, Helsinki is experimenting with this too.

For less populated areas, oil and electricity is common, augmented with 
fireplaces. Wood pellets are increasingly popular, because turning an oil 
furnace into a pellet furnace is relatively easy. Pellets are relatively cheap 
and locally available for obvious reasons (basically the country is one huge 
forest). Ground heat pumps are also becoming popular, they do have high up 
front costs though. Swedes are leaders in this area, it took some time for them 
to perfect the technology and figure out the correct way to install them, which 
is why I would carefully check if any US company offering them has the 
necessary experience. Other stuff includes AC systems that capture heat from 
outgoing air and/or heats incoming air with air heat pumps. Check the German 
passivhaus, most of the stuff is pretty much standard in Nordics, 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house

Efficient heating has been for natural reasons always a priority up here, 
although the nature is chancing. We just had a six week winter, it is about 15C 
and sunny outside now (for perspective, two feet of snow isn't that uncommon 
this time of the year.) Which is nice as long as you don't ask why. This year 
is probably an anomaly, but when anomalies pile up year after year, it is a 
trend.

Heating is one of those low hanging fruits when talking about C02 reductions in 
general, it really isn't that difficult to cut emissions from that to say one 
third, given how ineffective current systems in place are. Which is one of the 
reasons I don't get the obsession with "clean tech" energy generation 
technologies in design stage, when energy saving tech exists, has been proven 
to work, and is mostly a sound investment even in purely financial terms.


Cheers,
Teemu
Helsinki, Finland
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