Earth4Energy Review – Just How Good Is It?

4 Comments

1. naga says:

   December 7, 2010 at 1:01 pm

   From Kum Dollison on November 9, 2010 at 11:10 pm:
   1) Oil hit $147.00/barrel in 2008, and crashed the global economy.
   Actually the crash came from underlying weaknesses. Didn't you hear about the mortgage crisis? People with marginal finances got homes. Then gasoline prices rocketed up. Those who drove long commutes were hit hard. A few were actually losing money by keeping a job (figuring in day care expenses along with transportation, etc). More figured out they'd have more money on hand collecting unemployment and staying home, I heard of a few who volunteered to be laid off first. Then there were the higher home energy costs. Mortgages didn't get paid, foreclosures went up… And the housing bubble didn't burst, it exploded, as it was formed from the smelly gas coming from a rotting mass that shouldn't have been allowed to form from the start.

   And with the mortgage crisis, plus other exposed weaknesses, the US economy went down, the world economies went down as demand collapsed, etc.

   The oil prices triggered it, but it was inevitable it would have happened sometime. Before it blew up, analysts were saying the market could bear the higher prices, and we were headed to $4 a gallon gas and $200 a barrel crude looked possible to likely.

   Meanwhile, assorted Green activists and politicians were (and still are?) pointing to how well US drivers bore those higher prices for so long as proof we can withstand a $1 a gallon tax to fund Green projects and more social spending while reducing consumption to reduce carbon emissions….
   2) We don’t have any more oil now than we had then.
   In the ground, we actually have less since we've been pumping it out. But we have discovered more of it, drilled more wells, done more research on extracting it from pump-able and non-pump-able sources (shale, tar sands etc). We're making it from coal and other sources (Fischer-Tropsch etc).

   In real terms of the amount of oil available to us for immediate use, we have more now than we did fifty years ago, may have more in the future than we do now, might even have more now than we did in 2008.

   Less in the ground, sure. But as technology moves on, we may end up “creating” more oil and oil products than was ever in the ground. It's possible, and getting more possible all the time.
2. Juliet Fogarty says:

   January 16, 2011 at 4:35 pm

   Wow, its awesome to hear about such an innovative initiative. We here in the States are also encouraging “green” initiatives. According to several county officials in Florida are even advocating tree-planting as a means of combating high home energy costs as well as benefitting the environment. Hopefully other states will follow the lead.
3. cmcbutler76 says:

   February 18, 2011 at 11:33 pm

   While it is understandable that retro-fitting can be a pain, the payoff is sometimes subtle. For the person who spends several thousand dollars and then does not see energy consumption costs go down they feel taken by the hype but don't look at their bills and see that their costs stayed the same DESPITE RISING energy costs.

   The real, long term answer is to have better built houses that have R-40 walls and R-60 ceilings and to get away from fiberglass and stick-built homes. Homes consume over 40 percent of energy in America and bulidings in general use 60 percent. Using Pasive House technology and more energy efficient built houses can cut home energy costs to 1/4 of what they are for a conventional built house.

   While we may not freeze in the dark, if we don't find real solutions soon, it will get more expensive and the risk will be with our grandchildren.
4. maxwells says:

   February 19, 2011 at 9:25 am

   Realistica­lly, after such low hanging fruit’s been picked clean, the paybacks get longer, the labor/hass­le factor gets bigger, and the dollars invested get sizeable. Again, most Americans can readily attain a 1/3rd cutback in home energy costs through judiciousl­y taken measures.