Effective January 1, 2013, oil-burning and natural gas furnaces in new homes are forbidden in Denmark. And beginning in 2016, homeowners will not be allowed to replace their old, existing gas or oil burning furnaces with a new one. Hat-Tip: Readers Edition.de/. Read here, in English.
If you think the green movement has gone off the rails in Germany, just look at neighboring Denmark. Reader’s Edition writes:
The ban of a certain type of heating impacts everyone who is planning to build a new home, which is 1-2% of all homes. But at the latest in 2016, owners of older homes will also be affected.”
As is often the case with bureacrats, they failed to think out the possible consequences. Readers Edition reminds us:
This approach is not without risk. The question arises concerning the safety of an existing heater that goes on the blink just after the 2016 deadline. Will there be a huge temptation to continue running the risky furnace?”
It’s not clear on how Danes plan to stay wwarm in the future. District heating is more common in the Nordic country than in other European countries. Yet district heating accounts only for 35% of all Danish homes, and the heat is generated mostly by gas and oil.
There’s no mention how the other 65% of Danes will keep warm after 2016.
If you’re surprised by Denmark’s radicalism, don’t be. This is the same activist country that imposed a tax on fat back in 2011. Danish bureaucrats obviously thought their citizens were too stupid to know how to properly feed themselves, and so needed the nanny hand of a bureaucrat to spoon-feed them. So it really isn’t a surprise they also have to be taught how to stay warm.
Obviously, the Danes believe that their tiny country cutting back on their share of the world’s CO2 emissions (something like 0.2%) and thus theoretically preventing 0.0000001°C of warming by the year 2100 will rescue the polar bears and immunize people against bad weather.
Their fat tax, by the way, was abolished just a year later.
Maybe the Danes will follow the Swedes, and burn carbon-neutral wood.
A more significant contribution would be to shut down their North Sea Oil + Gas business which accounts for 10 % of their GDP.
Very nice from them to not use their own resources but sell it to us.
This brings to mind the “window tax.” European countries tried this and it lasted in one form or another for 150 years. I saw its consequences in Kansas City at a much later date.
Expect a lot of activity before the final ban. Then sales and construction of new houses will crater. Builders, tradesmen, retailers and others will be without employment. Actually results may vary. There will be unintended but not unexpected unknowns.
But they are allowed to install coal fired heaters ?
Some may then have no alternative but to heat either by electricity or wood.
About black carbon:
Source:
18% Residential biofuel burned with traditional technologies
Clack carbon emissions of pellet wood heater in 2005… still about 1000 higher than natural gas heaters.
Climate impact:
1. Forcing 1.1W/m2 (Bond et al 2012), second largest contributor globally. about 2/3 of CO2.
2. Massive additional forcing through albedo on snow ice in the arctic:
The “climate forcing due to snow/ice albedo change is of the order of 1.0 W/m2 at middle- and high-latitude land areas in the Northern Hemisphere and over the Arctic Oce.
3. James Hansen: As a result of this feedback process, “BC on snow warms the planet about three times more than an equal forcing of CO2.
-> Black carbon by far the most important source of arctic ice melt
Public health:
“Einer EU-Studie[22] zufolge sterben jährlich 65.000 Menschen in der Europäischen Union vorzeitig durch Feinstaub. Studien der Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO), der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) und aus dem Ruhrgebiet kommen unabhängig zu dem Ergebnis, dass die aktuelle Feinstaubbelastung die Sterblichkeitsrate erhöht. Die Studien geben im Schnitt für Deutschland eine Verkürzung der Lebenszeit um rund zehn Monate an.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_carbon
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feinstaub
Noun 1. gas furnace – a furnace that burns gas
furnace – an enclosed chamber in which heat is produced to heat buildings, destroy refuse, smelt or refine ores, etc.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/gas+furnace
Am I being a bit thick here, do they want to ban gas central heating????????
@mwhite
Yes, but the requirement is energy neutral.
E.g. if you generate (and feed to the grid) enough electricity; through panels on your roof, or via (a share in) a windturbine mill you can still burn gas as long as the whole is energy neutral.
Also renewable generated gas (there are pilots going on to convert electricity into gas).
I hope that they’re training lots of inspectors.
They only yield about 200 MJ each.
Lets summarize:
They crater home construction.
They crater their GDP.
They crater air quality.
They add to the Arctic ice melt.
They increase winter mortality.
What else could go wrong?
“The energy company EDF is seeking more than £5m in damages from a group of more than 20 activists who occupied one of its power stations for a week last year,”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/20/activists-police-edf-law-suit
Funny. NGO’s operating in Europe get 70% of their money from the EU comission oand act as the shocktroops to scare the populous into supporting our wise masters in Brussels. Usually they go scot-free even when penetrating security perimeters and abseil themselves while heads of states meet – where every normal citizen would already have been blasted to bits by snipers.
Does the commission change its stance and wants the rule of law enforced now – even against their own attack dogs?
What’s up with the Danes?………………..are they all too stupid to see how ridiculous this is?………………….
What are they supposed to install instead, electrical heating?
the article and link don’t say…
In that case they DO heat with natural gas, only at a lower efficiency….sigh
Cow dung fermenters.
In Fairbanks, Alaska, everyone heats with wood in the winter because there is no economical access to gas or oil, and as a result the air quality there is worse than in Beijing.
[…] https://notrickszone.com/2013/02/21/tiny-denmark-bans-oil-and-gas-furnaces-in-new-homes-in-a-bid-to-r… […]
Crazy is as crazy does…. punish the victim
Wood is more reliable than anything piped in and electricity produced by dams is the most carbon neutral. Cold fusion by Black Light Power, Inc. is being sold. There is more competition in this market so maybe we can expand the options.
The newest wood stoves burn much better than ‘clean coal’ which is used in mega tonnage amounts daily, so a few Danes may well be ahead of those carbon polluters like ‘big business’. They also might be producing leaders than know how to read cost benefit analysis documents.
Gas is non renew able, hmmm