Jun
19
Green Buildings, from Henry Gifford
June 19, 2008 |
There seems to be something odd going on with German real estate. People are clamoring for 'energy efficient' apartment/office blocks that are near the city centre, whereas many older buildings in the outskirts have a low rate of occupancy. (From a British friend visiting Germany).
The clamor for "green" property in Germany is driven by social pressures, not economic pressures, even though they have been much, much better at energy efficiency than the rest of the Western world for decades.
Immediately after WW2 the Germans started doing serious, formal research into how to make existing or new buildings energy efficient, while most of the rest of the world was mostly not thinking much about it. About 15 years ago some of them realized that a graph of the increased construction cost to make a building more energy efficient vs. the payback is not a straight line - it has many bumps in it. One major bump occurs where the building is energy efficient enough to not need a heating system. Spending slightly less on efficiency means buying a boiler, heaters, piping, etc, and spending slightly more means greatly diminished return on investment. Ironically, in researching these ideas they came primarily to the US, where we've built 2 or 3 such houses per decade for years. The Germans wrote a standard for how to do this, and as of 10 years ago they had built 6 such buildings, all single family residences. Now they have well over 10,000 built new and renovated, not only houses but sports facilities, office buildings, schools, apartment buildings, etc., often for lower cost than normal buildings, because of the decrease in construction cost associated with skipping the heating system.
Perhaps their culture has something to do with it, and with our attitude too, as our parents' generation came to literally rule the world by controlling access to oil in WW2 (the fighting in Burma was not about palm trees, ditto for Romania, the SouthWestern USSR soviet oil fields, etc.) The Japanese sent the world's largest battleships out to fight without enough fuel for a return trip, and when the Germans made the world's first jet fighter planes they were rumored to be towing them to the runway with horses to save fuel, but that was not true. The army had all the horses, the air force used cows. Now Germany and Japan are the most energy efficient countries in their hemispheres, while Russia and China and the US, who won the war, are the least fuel efficient.
In the US we've been responding by clamoring for "green" buildings which in fact use more energy than comprable buildings (on average), but with almost nobody asking to see utility bills and almost nobody showing bills, worse and worse buildings become more and more popular. Ditto in Germany, as the image of environmental friendliness sells much better than actual environmental friendliness in the form of energy efficiency or any other form.
Certainly an example of the lack of counting having a huge effect, and the public paying more than they deserve to pay to end up with something that has less real value than simply buying nothing.
Comments
WordPress database error: [Table './dailyspeculations_com_@002d_dailywordpress/wp_comments' is marked as crashed and last (automatic?) repair failed]
SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_ID = '2992' AND comment_approved = '1' ORDER BY comment_date
Archives
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- 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
- Older Archives
Resources & Links
- The Letters Prize
- Pre-2007 Victor Niederhoffer Posts
- Vic’s NYC Junto
- Reading List
- Programming in 60 Seconds
- The Objectivist Center
- Foundation for Economic Education
- Tigerchess
- Dick Sears' G.T. Index
- Pre-2007 Daily Speculations
- Laurel & Vics' Worldly Investor Articles