Norway To Ban the Use of Oil For Heating Buildings By 2020 (independent.co.uk) 164
Norway, which is the largest producer of oil and natural gas outside of the Middle East, is set to become the first country in the world to ban the use of gas to heat buildings. The country plans to pass legislation that will stop the use of both oil and paraffin to warm buildings from 2020 onwards. The Independent reports: Vidar Helgesenlaid, the nation's Environment Minister, laid out the plans in a statement, saying: "Those using fossil oil for heating must find other options by 2020." The country advises its citizens to research alternatives to oil such as heat pumps, hydroelectricity, and even special stoves that burn wood chips. By some stage, the legislation could be widened to include restrictions on using natural gas to heat buildings. The Ministry of Climate and Environment said the ban would apply to both new and old buildings and cover both private homes and the public space of businesses and state-owned facilities. The ministry says the plans are expected to lessen Norway's emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases by an estimated 340,000 tons per year, compared to overall national emissions of 53.9 million tons in 2015.
just like a smart drug dealer (Score:1)
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The world's first floating windfarm has taken to the seas in a sign that a technology once confined to research and development drawing boards is finally ready to unlock expanses of ocean for generating renewable power...It is also notable because the developer is not a renewable energy firm but Norway's Statoil, which is looking to diversify away from carbon-based fuels.
Re:just like a smart drug dealer (Score:4, Insightful)
Smart countries have realized that fossil fuels are on the way out. In the Middle East they are mostly investing in tourism as an alternative, and in Europe countries are investing in renewable energy technology that they can export.
Everyone else is missing the boat.
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Thing is, electricity doesn't work well in countries like Canada where the distances are vast The grid can't handle it, it's also more expensive then any other method for heating. It's why charities that exist to pay for heating ran out of money last winter a few months into the winter season, and the people who primarily use them are the ones who use electricity for heating. At 0.185kWh @peak those charities were out of cash by December last year. The winter season in most of Canada runs from mid or l
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Yeah, better to fuck the rest of the world just so you can have cheap energy. Fuck YOU!!!!
You'd better off yourself first, bitter little malthusian.
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Norway has the highest percentage of electric car adoption in the world, so I don't think they are being hypocritical. If they stopped pumping oil ad gas from the North Sea, it would just mean more money going to Russia and Saudi Arabia.
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To be fair, the politicians are being hypocritical (loving taxes off oil sales) while the general Norwegian isn't. Their electric car adoption has little to do with actively choosing to buy EVs and much more to do with legislation (like this oil ban) which causes ICE vehicles to cost 50% more than an electric plus exempts electrics from the majority of other driving expenses (parking, tolls, etc..).
Once Denmark announced the end of their similar programs the sales of EVs plummeted so hard they had to reins
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Norway has the highest percentage of electric car adoption in the world, so I don't think they are being hypocritical. If they stopped pumping oil ad gas from the North Sea, it would just mean more money going to Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Exactly. I don't know why its so hard for some to understand that if a country were to give up it's primary economic driver it would be unable to do the very costly things that are required to significantly reduce carbon emissions. All too often I see folks here completely disregard the socioeconomic factors that MUST be considered in order for the world to change enough to impact AGW. As a global society, we've made essentially ZERO progress in actual carbon reduction, but some countries have some nice sym
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That's not really true, solar panel and wind power are both seeing annual double digit growth, and around 10% of the power generated in Europe now comes from wind. Indeed, already worldwide more than 50% of all new electricity installations, both capacity and delivered energy are now renewable. That means as the existing equipment wears out it's being replaced with much 'greener' equipment. And that can only accelerate. That's not 'token' gestures it's because wind in particular is actually competitive and
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That's not really true, solar panel and wind power are both seeing annual double digit growth, and around 10% of the power generated in Europe now comes from wind.
I was not saying we do not have solar and wind growth. I said global CO2 emission reductions are still negligible.
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Renewables have already flattened off the CO2 emissions curve, and from here on out, the CO2 emissions curve will go down.
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Renewables have already flattened off the CO2 emissions curve, and from here on out, the CO2 emissions curve will go down.
No. Another increase is predicted when they bring the next nuclear unit offline, and then each unit after that. 'Flat emissions' are as much or more a result of efficiency gains and economic slowing than anything.
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Yeap, they'll be puffing a cloud of smug just like New Zealand did when it shut down its last coal fired plant, but still sells it to who ever us willing to buy it and burn it. Very responsible.
If everyone on the planet stopped selling coal today, we'd have a lot worse problems than coal pollution to deal with.
How does this get posted? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the submitter already has no clue what he's talking about.
Add to that, the title mentions oil, the first paragraph mentions oil and natural gas as being banned. The quote just talks about Oil. So TFS seems to be written by a fool.
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Also, too, and either... heat pumps are a sound option where only electric heat is an option, but pale in comparison to gas/oil heat where available.
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Even electric can be competitive with gas where heat pumps can be used, depending on climate and local electricity vs gas prices.
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So the submitter already has no clue what he's talking about.
The submitter left out a key word. Norway is the largest producer of Oil per capita outside the middle east by quite a significant margin.
But yes a poorly written summary in general.
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Re:How does this get posted? (Score:5, Informative)
Add to that, the title mentions oil, the first paragraph mentions oil and natural gas as being banned. The quote just talks about Oil. So TFS seems to be written by a fool.
The article is probably confusing the terms "exporter" and "producer" (the US produce more oil, but consumes even more - Norway exports almost everything we produce), and "middle east" with OPEC [wikipedia.org]. Norway used to be #2 there, not sure if it still is.
The ban is on oil furnaces. Gas is irrelevant here, it's not used for heating and cooking here - we mostly use electricity, generated from hydropower.
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The article is probably confusing the terms "exporter" and "producer" (the US produce more oil, but consumes even more - Norway exports almost everything we produce), and "middle east" with OPEC [wikipedia.org]. Norway used to be #2 there, not sure if it still is.
If Norway really wants to change the world, why doesn't it stop extracting oil/gas from the ground?
It's reasonable to assume that every barrel of oil that's extracted is burned somewhere. If this is a global problem, then banning the burning of oil within the borders of Norway will have very little effect if the same amount of oil still gets burned elsewhere.
I understand the economic incentive to extract and sell the oil, but isn't that a bit hypocritical while they're claiming to place such a high priority on reducing their carbon footprint?
There is no shortage of oil for the time being - the OPEC countries have plenty of spare capacity. Thus, the way to reduce pollution is to reduce the demand side.
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ie Norway is not the top producer outside the Middle East. And fwiw, Norway produces about 1/6th as much oil as the top non Middle East producer.
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Where is the list for "oil and gas"? You can't compare "apples" to "apples and oranges".
Going back to firewood I reckon (Score:2)
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Back in the 70's there used to be bumper stickers that read:
Split Wood, Not Atoms.
Parrafin = kerosene (Score:2)
For those of us that live in USA, Americans call Parrafin Kerosene.
And is shocking to me that people in Norway heat their homes with camping equipment. At least get a wood stove.
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What make all this confusing is that that white wax is what I'd call paraffin in Sweden too ..
Seem hard to find what is actually burned (one page seemed to suggest paraffin and kerosene was basically the base except for grade of refining too.) Can it be that our old tractor could run on both diesel and kerosene? Or different depending on temperature? Or different between two tractors? =P
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Re:Parrafin = kerosene (Score:4, Informative)
And is shocking to me that people in Norway heat their homes with camping equipment. At least get a wood stove.
Kerosene, in this sense, is basically the same thing as heating oil as used in the US northeast. Kerosene, Diesel, Heating oil, RP-1 rocket propellant, and Jet fuel are all closely related. The main difference is the specific fraction and how much control is put on some of the components.
Please illuminate me (Score:1)
How can a building heated by "special stoves that burn wood chips" possibly have lower emissions than one using heating oil ?
I'm all for fighting global warming ... but surely there's no wave a wood burning stove is going to be as efficient and clean as using heating oil.
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Wood is a renewable resource.
Also, when trees are planted to make the wood chips, said trees consume carbon dioxide. Trees and other plants have always done that.
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Wood is a renewable resource.
Technically, so is coal.
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No, it's not.
Charcoal is, though.
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You're probably thinking that coal is just old forests that got buried. If we wait a few million years some of our current forests should turn into coal.
Unfortunately, it's not going to happen. The current forests will decay into carbon dioxide too quickly. Why didn't that happen millions of years ago? The decay agents of the time weren't as efficient as today's.
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It isn't just trees making coal, then or today.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/... [abc.net.au]
I'm not claiming we are going to use coal that is starting its transformation now. But it is happening.
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Some disagree.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/... [abc.net.au]
Re:Please illuminate me (Score:5, Informative)
How can a building heated by "special stoves that burn wood chips" possibly have lower emissions than one using heating oil ?
Large/mid-scale hog fuel/chip boilers can be extremely efficient and clean. They work by burning the wood chips at high temperatures in an oxygen deprived atmosphere. This produces significant quantities of Carbon Monoxide, Hydrogen, and other flammable gasses. These gasses move to the other part of the boiler, where they are combusted with forced air, heating the water. A portion of the exhaust gasses are then cycled back into the primary combustion chamber, where they serve to reduce the oxygen content and keep the chip bed hot.
Because the majority of the energy comes from combustion in the gas phase, they are extremely clean and low emissions. What ash is produced can be filtered out relatively easily.
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Large/mid-scale hog fuel/chip boilers can be extremely efficient and clean.
That said, smaller installations, like in a house, aren't that efficient, even though they've become much more advanced (with fans, lambda sensors and whatnot) in the last couple of decades.
Instead, what is typically meant is CO2. A wood fired boiler will of course have much lower net CO2 emissions as they don't burn fossil fuel.
When it comes to particulate matter and a few other nasties, smaller wood installations are actually pretty bad. Esp. in our cities.
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How can a building heated by "special stoves that burn wood chips" possibly have lower emissions than one using heating oil ?
Think about what happens with atmosperic CO2 during production of wood chips.
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First of all active heating (e.g., burning wood, oil, natural gas, etc) isn't really necessary even in cold climates if the buildings are properly designed and you're willing to live in a slightly cool building which is better for your health as well.
Second, burning wood when properly done is very efficient and produces less pollution than burning petroleum.
Third of all the wood is a renewable resource.
Fourth of all the wood is a tight carbon cycle as opposed to the millions of years long carbon cycle of bu
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I've done both conventional construction and the type of ultra efficient construction I did for my butcher shop and my home. The conventional construction came out more expensive. I built my home for $7,000 in materials. It is a small house at 252 sq-ft plus a loft in the front and back. At that price it is highly affordable. An added benefit is that maintenance on this type of structure is also far lower than with conventional construction by more than an order of magnitude.
Heat pumps? Not happening (Score:2)
I know a lot of people with heat pumps. When natural gas and propane prices spiked heat pumps got real popular here in the Midwest. As popular as they were everyone had a propane or natural gas "backup" furnace. What this meant is for about 2 months per year the heat pump would run, 6 months the furnace would run, and the rest was with air conditioning. It just gets too cold here for heat pumps to keep up. Last I checked Norway was closer to the poles than us.
Then they mention electric heat. I've seen
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Norway has a long history of doing things better and smarter than the US. So yes, it's going to happen.
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Thanks, but I think I'll keep the comparison at a nation to nation level, since the relevant decisions are being made at the national level. And Norway's situation presents many challenges the well-run states don't face, such as a miniscule population scattered over an area that would extend pretty much from Maine down to Florida. If Norway is "a speck", so is your eastern seaboard.
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It's a lot more complicated than that. Does hydro produce cheap, renewable power? Often times, yes. Does hydropower have significant environmental and social impacts? Sometimes, yes. Is hydropower susceptible to climatic changes? Often times, yes. Just ask Brazil, Venezuela, and southern Africa for recent examples about that.
One of these days, can we please stop talking in generalities and extremes and assuming they are valid for specific projects? It makes more sense to carefully study things on a
Re: Heat pumps? Not happening (Score:1)
Sorry, but wtf are yoy talking about? Speaking as a Norwegian closing in on 40, I've never seen a home heated by a petroleum product. Almost everything here is electricly heated (abd power is hysro). Most homes in my area have a heat pump. I have a heat pump and a wood stove. The wood stove is never used, it's just there in case of power failure.
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I did a bit more reading on this and discovered something interesting. Currently about 85% of Norwegians heat with electricity, the balance being oil, natural gas, and wood. I did not see a breakdown of how that 15% is distributed but it is quite clear that the plurality is from wood. So that leaves something like 10% of people heating with petroleum.
What I also saw was that oil and natural gas use is growing quickly. It seems that electricity prices spiked in 2003 and since then non-electric heating ha
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A couple of points - natural gas has not been growing as a heat source, it has always been irrelevant. Norway does not have an infrastructure for it. Oil has been dropping steadily for a long time. Electricity (cost: about 10 cents/kWh) is the main energy source, used directly or through a heat pump. There is also a large use of district heating, and some use of firewood. Usually not alone, but as a cosy supplement to the primary heat source.
The electricity sector is not lobbying for this, this is cause
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Oil has been dropping steadily for a long time.
What has been replacing oil? The answer is natural gas. In 1980 natural gas made up only 3.5% of energy produced in Norway, in 2010 it was 20%. Hydro has remained steady at about 40% of energy produced. Those numbers are from International Energy Agency.
Oil is easy to export, natural gas is not. The infrastructure to distribute natural gas may not be all that large right now but it's been growing for 40 years now.
If the goal is to reduce CO2 production then continued growth in the use of natural gas is
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I was talking in the context of energy consumption for heating buildings - the topic of the article - and here, oil usage has fallen.
Energy production in total is a completely different cup of tea - most of the energy produced is oil and gas, that is exported. This includes gas, as there are many large gas pipelines [wikipedia.org] from Norway to UK and the continent.
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I was talking in the context of energy consumption for heating buildings
So was I.
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Electricity isn't particular expensive in Norway: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/s... [europa.eu]
They are transitioning towards electricity for everything, e.g. transport where they have a lot of electric cars and boats.
Heating in particular is subsidised. Some people get it for free as a byproduct of some other process. The government makes sure people are warm.
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Electricity is not particularly expensive in the USA either.
https://www.eia.gov/electricit... [eia.gov]
Google tells me that one euro equals about $1.13. If the average in the USA is $0.10. then that's about 0.09 euro per kWh. Norway pays what? The chart is hard to read but it looks like about 0.16 or 0.17, with the EU average above 0.20. The US government makes sure people are warm too, you think we don't subsidize energy here? I thought energy subsidies were a bad thing, judging by so many comments on here late
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The US allows far greater levels of pollution / health damage though, so of course it's cheaper. How much do you pay for health insurance to cover that? How much worse is your environment because of it?
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How much do you pay for health insurance to cover that? How much worse is your environment because of it?
Why didn't you look that up and tell me the answers? I can make big claims too without citations like that if we add up the savings on fuel costs that we can put that money saved towards better health care, and still come out ahead.
I'm not making big claims about environmental impacts and pollution, only that without the competition from natural gas electricity price will most likely rise. As people see their immediate costs of energy rise there will be push back on the self imposed ban on natural gas hea
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So last March I paid 9.57 cents/kWh for electricity supply and delivery combined (yes, they're separate charges ever since "deregulation") but 13.4 cents/kWh i
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Heat pump is a pretty broad term. All heatpumps work by moving the thermal energy up a gradient. The higher that gradient, the less efficient they are. Air to Air heat pumps do not work worth crap in low temperatures, such as what you have in the midwest. Ground source heat pumps, which I presume this article is talking about, are a very different beast. They offer about a 3:1 energy gain; 1 watt of electrical power in means 3 watts of heat out. Since their heat source coils are buried below the frost-line,
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Ground sourced heat pumps have their limits. One of my brothers lived in a house that had a ground source heat pump where he used to live, and the house had an electric resistor backup heat. When he moved in he defeated the resistance heat because he didn't want to "pay that bill". He paid for it another way in a few chilly days in his house. I have to wonder if he actually saved any money by disconnecting the resistance heat, at some point the only heat in that system is coming from the (admitted large
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It's designed this way on purpose.
It would be too expensive to built a heat pump powerful enough for the few days it gets under say, -25 C.
So the resistive heater is not just a backup for cases when the heatpump fails. It's being used to supplement the heat pump when it's too cold. As energy prices continue to rise, people will built heat pump which are more powerful and won't require/use their resistive heater as much.
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Petroleum for heating homes is rare in Norway. Pretty much all private homes are heated by electricity, with heat pumps being pretty popular.
The ban on heating homes with oil is barely showing up in the headlines (I had forgotten about it when it showed up on
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It's not just the distance to the north pole.
The gulf-stream keep Scandinavia hotter than other places at the same latitude.
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What does the future of Norway electricity use look like? I assume that their demand for electricity is growing. I assume that after decades of using hydro power that they are running out of good places to put dams.
A quick Google search tells me that Noway is increasingly relying on natural gas and imports for electricity. Seems to me that they've pretty much maxed out their ability to grow hydro power. More efficient uses of their existing electricity supply can stretch that out some, which includes us
Re: Heat pumps? Not happening (Score:5, Informative)
What does the future of Norway electricity use look like? I assume that their demand for electricity is growing. I assume that after decades of using hydro power that they are running out of good places to put dams.
A quick Google search tells me that Noway is increasingly relying on natural gas and imports for electricity. Seems to me that they've pretty much maxed out their ability to grow hydro power. More efficient uses of their existing electricity supply can stretch that out some, which includes using heat pumps over resistance heating when practical.
If trends continue Norway is going to have to burn more natural gas (and natural gas derived electricity for heat is always going to be more expensive than burning it for heat directly), import more nuclear power from Sweden or...?
The electricity sector in Noway cannot simply ban competition from natural gas because people will vote with their wallets and overturn this ban. I don't see that happening with the possible exception of nuclear power providing an out. This could be Swedish nuclear power or Norwegian nuclear power, but it will be natural gas or nuclear power to fill that gap. Personally I'd like to see growth in nuclear power but I also have nothing against natural gas.
Actually, the forecast is an increasing surplus in of electricity in Norway [www.dn.no], even after electrification of the transportation sector (goal: all new small cars should be zero emission by 2025).
There is no use of natural gas in power production in Norway today, with the exception of off shore oil platforms. There was one plant, but it closed down [wikipedia.org].
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There is no ban on natural gas, but for home use, there is simply no infrastructure for it. Around where I live, it was offered as an option in some small areas being built (a few hundred houses), but the interest was very limited, and I have not seen any discussion around it since then.
Error in source, summary copy maintained error (Score:2)
The Norwegian Minister of Climate and the Environment's current minster isn't named Vidar Helgesenlaid.
But Vidar Helgesen.
And as that is said, something more interesting:
http://www.dinside.no/okonomi/... [dinside.no]
http://www.ost-varme.no/starts... [ost-varme.no]
http://www.husogheim.no/1/1_3.... [husogheim.no]
Summarized: Assuming you already have a installation, and are a consumer, in Norway
-Heat pump is calculated to be at 0.3-0.4per khw, but its still limited by how far down the pump goes before it can't supply(somewhere after freezing, some can
Good - go passive solar and thermal mass (Score:2)
Heating with oil is a poor use of resources. It is far better to design the buildings to work with the climate. This is how I designed and built both my home and my butcher shop. Neither one requires heating or cooling to stay comfortable. Neither one is actually earth bermed either which would boost performance even more - both are strong enough to be earth bermed though.
I live in a climate quite similar to Norway - I'm in the central mountains of northern Vermont. It regularly gets to -25ÂF in the wi
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Sticking it to homeowners? (Score:2)
And I'm way South of Norway. Norway is cold.
Re:Pffft (Score:5, Informative)
If cutting their emissions by 1% will somehow disproportionately lower global temperature by a noticeable amount, then hooray!
No single measure will have a massive impact on climate change but many of them together will.
Otherwise why take away efficient heating from people in a freezing-cold country? Won't this likely increase the mortality rate among the sick, elderly, etc. come winter?
Welfare in Norway is good enough that this isn't an issue.
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Welfare in Norway is good enough that this isn't an issue.
It's not even a question of that, but of cost. Heating oil in Norway is considerably more expensive than electricity, and having travelled and worked in Norway I can't remember when I saw something other than electricity (radiator or under floor heating), though of course wood (often in the form of pellets) is also popular.
Electricity is dirt cheap in Norway, so people even typically don't have a heat pump (like we do in Sweden), but just heat directly with electricity. As an example, for a 600 sq foot apar
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"Kulde er Guds måte å fortelle oss at vi burde brenne flere katolikker."
or maybe
"Kulde er Guds beskjed til oss om å brenne flere katolikker."
Or something like that. First one is more directly translated, but adds a "should"(burde) because otherwise I felt the sentence was weird. Last one is slightly altered, but sounds better imho.
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why take away efficient heating from people in a freezing-cold country?
But it is not efficient. Heat pumps (aka electric air conditioners) are much more efficient, even when using electricity produced by burning gas.
And electric heating allows fossil fuels to be replaced by nuclear (imported from Sweden?) and renewables.
I'm surprised anybody still uses oil for heating. Here in Australia, oil heating has long ago almost disappeared, replaced at the time with piped natural gas and bottled butane or propane. Now they are giving way to efficient reverse-cycle split system air-con
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Re:Pffft (Score:4, Informative)
Its warm enough not to need serious heating but cold enough to be uncomfortable.
Yes, most Australians have no central heating (I guess Canberra is an exception?), and often just a lounge-room heater.
Mornings can be cold, which is why we invented ugg-boots. They are really just over-sized slippers, and not to be worn outside the house.
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And electric heating allows fossil fuels to be replaced by nuclear (imported from Sweden?) and renewables.
Norway is like 98% hydroelectric and have enough of it to export.
Whatever electricity they import from Sweden is mainly to share the power lines since they export more of it than they import.
And it's not like Sweden uses it either, they just pass it on to Finland, Poland, Germany and Denmark.
The Nordic countries had too much access to water to bother with coal when they started to use electricity.
When they talk about using less nuclear it has never been on the table to replace it coal or other fossil fuel.
T
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You could go ground-source coupled heat pumps to avoid most of that, though more expensive to install, it could be worth it. Norway apparently has low electricity prices, though, so I don't think it would be worth it in most cases.
(I left of the "and sometimes worse" because if the heat pump doesn't switch to pure resistive heat when the heat pump + defrost cycle would use more energy
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But if burning gas for electricity is so efficient, why did all our gas powered power plants go bankrupt despite the very high tax paid subsides?
Hard to say without knowing what country are you in, dumbass.
Re:Pffft (Score:4, Funny)
Otherwise why take away efficient heating from people in a freezing-cold country?
Because oil is more valuable on the global market than to sell domestically (Norway). Making powerful people money has always been more important than keeping the plebs warm in the winter. And in this case, they can paint it as environmentalism, even though they'll still be selling the oil and it will still be consumed somewhere in the world.
Re:Pffft (Score:4, Interesting)
Unlike the US, Norway has heavy royalties that are paid to the state sovereign wealth fund, which benefits all norwegian citizens. It's not just going in to the corporation's pockets.
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The government makes the money instead of a corporation? Do you really fail to see that there is no difference. Powerful people operate every government, and if they bring a benefit to their people to stay in power that is of course good, it's their job and a sign of a functional democracy. But do you also fail to see the hypocrisy of this faux environmentalism? Since Norway is a democracy does that mean I get to blame every citizen of Norway instead of their leaders? Unlike other nations where we can point
Re:Pffft (Score:4, Informative)
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There are hundreds of years of fossil fuels left at our current rate of consumption. We'll die choking on the atmosphere long before we run out of oil to drill.
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The post you were replying to was about Norway's oil, not the world's fossil fuels.
Oil production in the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) peaked at 2.9 million barrels per day (Mb/d) in 1999, while the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) peaked at 3.4 Mb/d in 2001.
Norwegian spending on exploration and field development in 1H 2015 fell 18% from 1H 2014, while spending on shutdown and removal rose 70% over the same period [crystolenergy.com]
Pri [dailysabah.com]
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Statoil operates to varying degrees in Algeria, Angol, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Latvia, Libya, Nigeria, and the UK.
So yes, Norwegian businesses have their fingers in the world's fossil fuels.
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If cutting their emissions by < 1% will somehow disproportionately lower global temperature by a noticeable amount, then hooray! Otherwise why take away efficient heating from people in a freezing-cold country? Won't this likely increase the mortality rate among the sick, elderly, etc. come winter?
It's not efficient, and not widely used. The main heating is provided by electricity (directly, or used in heat pumps, but some is also provided by district heating and firewood.
Re: Pffft (Score:2)
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Portable kerosene (lighter #1 fuel) space heaters do put off an odor due to the unvented nature. On the other hand oil fired furnaces, boilers, and water heaters (which can burn kerosene or #2 fuels such as diesel or #2 heating oil) can be surprisingly efficient and vent their exhaust to the outside of the building usually up via a chimney (except for maybe high efficiency units which may vent closer to ground level).
Propane (Score:2)
I assume lots of people will switch to propane. No, they're not going to shiver.
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Norway has lots of hydroelectric power.
Interesting that what is a non-issue in Norway gets on the
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Norway, which is the largest producer of oil and natural gas outside of the Middle East...
Not even close.
But nice try in order make their "sacrifice" seem bigger than it is.
The article is probably confusing "producer" with "exporter" and "Middle East" with OPEC [wikipedia.org] - being a small country with low domestic consumption, it would rank significantly higher in such a ranking.
The policy isn't new, and the use of oil for heating is low - the main heating is provided by electricity (directly, or used in heat pumps [wikipedia.org], but some is also provided by District Heating [wikipedia.org] and firewood.
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they also have shitloads of hydroelectric. if they use that hydroelectricity for heating instead and export the oil, it's a win on the national deficit/surplus for them.
but anyways. oil is not gas so wtf the article stub is even talking about is a bit of a mystery.
oil is a liquid. the oil is similar to diesel. it goes into a burner and that heats up water and that circulates around in tubes in the house to make it warm. it's not natural gas, propane or whatever, it's not petrol..
Re: (Score:2)
Rant all you like, but pellet burners != wood stoves.
Oh, and quoting the daily mail for anything except "$celeb boob flash at $function" is likely peddling 'fake news'.
Have a nice day :-)