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[top right photo by Rolf Oeser, bottom right photo by Laura Pedrick]
It's fascinating to me that the Times would run these two articles on the same day, with each failing to mention the other. The first article looks at how some Germans are heating their houses without furnaces--"passive houses"--and the second article is about how some Americans are heating their house by burning coal, like it's the 1950s (or 1850s) again.
Passive houses work by providing a well-sealed environment, so that a little naturally-occurring heat from the sun, and even the body heat of the house's occupants, goes a long way. Air is kept fresh by a high-tech circulating system that loses very little heat while swapping warm inside air with fresh outside air.
Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann's new "passive house" and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer.
Best of all, the Germans have it down so that a passive house only costs about 5%-7% more to build than a conventional home, and with no heating bill to pay, one can quickly recoup the extra cost.
America, meanwhile, is seeing an uptick in the amount of people using coal to heat their homes. Why?
...On average, a ton of coal contains about as much potential heat as 146 gallons of heating oil or 20,000 cubic feet of natural gas, according to the Energy Information Administration. A ton of anthracite, a particularly high grade of coal, can cost as little as $120 near mines in Pennsylvania. The equivalent amount of heating oil would cost roughly $380, based on the most recent prices in the state--and over $470 using prices from December 2007. An equivalent amount of natural gas would cost about $480 at current prices.
It's true that the overall amount of coal-burning is small: U.S. residential use of coal is less than 300,000 tons a year, compared with 50 million tons a year in 1950. But it's kind of pathetic that we Americans are seeing an uptick in this environmentally-unfriendly practice while the Germans (and the Swedes, and others, we're sure) are hard at work on what should be the heating technology of the future.
As an American, I can say our country's been going to Hell for a while; I guess I oughtn't be surprised that American Hell is heated with coal.
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Comments
In hack journalism like the Times, what you don't say is just as important as what you do say. It's only interesting that the Times didn't mention the continuous uptick in American homes that are using greener methods to generate heat. They only mention the uptick in coal burning homes. Hmmm. Also interesting is how the Times gives the impression that most European homes are using this passive heating method. In Socialist countries it's very easy for the government to fix prices for things like this. Do you really think they have the cost down to 5-7% additional costs? How profitable is it really for the company adding these features? Due to government restrictions, this may be all that the contractor is allowed to recover.
50 million tons of coal burning down to 300k tons. It's not perfect but its an improvement and until America becomes a Socialist country like most of Europe, including Germany and Sweden, where bureaucracies can impose unrealistic building codes on private sector businesses, however financially unrealistic, we'll have to learn to get by with a few poverty-stricken families who can only afford to survive the winter with coal furnaces.
America isn't going to hell because the government allows people to survive by whatever means they can, it's going to hell because of self-righteous people who are unwilling to impart of their substance to those poor families who must get by with "substandard" living practices. Or the self-righteous people who assume that everyone can afford better technology.
As an American, I've always thought that America is moving forward for better things. Is Capitalism perfect? Maybe not, but it's better than Socialism. Maybe we really are going to hell, but it's not being heated with coal, it's being feuled by insensitive, intolerant, hate-America speech like the drivel that spews from the Times. You've gotta either be ignorant or just blind to think that we're not working for a better alternatives. If you want to change the world, go buy one those American families living in poverty a passive home.
For a home comparison of our new national hero Al Gore, click here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp
This article is skewed to a ridiculous degree.
My parents live in Pennsylvania,
within a few hundred miles of the coal mines,
in a beautiful German brick farmhouse,
that was built in the 1850's.
My parents cannot afford to throw down and build a new house. This 5-7% price increase actually becomes 105-107%, since it would require the construction of an entirely new home. This construction is much less 'eco friendly' than continuing their current heating plan. Realistically, they are in the 'second half' of their life, so the two of them burning coal will hardly amount for the carbon footprint of building a new home to shelter them for the new X amount of years.
I agree with the first commenter here... 50,000,000 tons down to 300,000 tons is a huge improvement. Why isn't this article boasting "America has arrived! Coal is on its way out!", etc, BS anyway. Certainly there are environmentally friendly heating practices and methods popping up all over the US, but not so much as mentioned in the article. And Germany, being around for quite a bit longer than the States, has a similar situation with their old homes as my parents. Old and new. Consumer style thinking. Old is obsolete, throw it away, buy new, repeat. At most, these new passive homes account for .05% maybe 1% of all homes in Germany. The rest, are using traditional and familiar methods of heating.