Just too be clear, there will be no “Hurricane Ida is climate doom” stuff, not unless I run into something really egregious, really pure moonbat. I’ve seen this all before, as have you. There’s nothing new in their doomsday fearmongering, and we all expected the climate cultists to link/blame Ida on Other People driving fossil fueled vehicles and eating tasty burgers. That’s what cult members do. So, over to California, where even the NY Times notices what climate realists have been saying, namely that the policies cause prices to skyrocket
California’s Plan to Make New Buildings Greener Will Also Raise Costs
California has led the nation in fighting climate change by encouraging the use of renewable energy and electric cars. Now the state is taking on an even harder challenge — reducing emissions from homes, businesses and other buildings that have to be heated, cooled and powered.
This month, state regulators updated California’s building code to require new homes and commercial buildings to have solar panels and batteries and the wiring needed to switch from heaters that burn natural gas to heat pumps that run on electricity. Energy experts say it is one of the most sweeping single environmental updates to building codes ever attempted by a government agency.
But some energy and building experts warn that California may be taking on too much, too quickly and focusing on the wrong target — new buildings, rather than the much larger universe of existing structures. Their biggest fear is that these new requirements will drive up the state’s already high construction costs, putting new homes out of reach of middle- and lower-income families that cannot as easily afford the higher upfront costs of cleaner energy and heating equipment, which typically pays for itself over years through savings on monthly utility bills.
The median single-family home in California sells for more than $800,000 compared to about $360,000 nationwide, and businesses pay more for rent in cities like San Francisco and San Jose than anywhere else in the country. A big reason costs are higher in California is that the state is not building enough homes, something lawmakers tried to address last week by advancing legislation that would allow more than one home on each parcel of land.
Adding solar panels and a battery to a new home can raise its cost by $20,000 or more. While that might not matter to somebody buying a million-dollar property, it could be a burden on a family borrowing a few hundred thousand dollars to buy a home.
“You’re going to see the impact in office rents. You’re going to see it in the cost of the milk in your grocery store,†said Donald J. Ruthroff, a principal at Dahlin Group Architecture Planning in Pleasanton, Calif. “There’s no question this is going to impact prices across the board.â€
Surprise? Of course, it might be nice to have solar in California due to the state’s problem with having enough power, leading to brownouts and blackouts, some of them planned. But, yeah, it is going to cost prices to rise for buildings, which will lead to cost of goods and services to rise. Even more than they already are.
Chris Ochoa, senior counsel for codes and regulatory and legislative affairs at the California Building Industry Association, said the builders support efforts to address climate change. But he believes more needs to be done to retrofit existing buildings with more energy-efficient systems, too. Otherwise, new homes, with more efficient and advanced systems, will become even less affordable to first-time buyers.
Next up, forcing retrofits on existing homes. Who’s going to pay for it?
OK, one bit of crazy from the Washington Post
How climate change helped make Hurricane Ida one of Louisiana’s worst – The Washington Post https://t.co/JwupEiOgYs
— Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) August 30, 2021
Mule fritters.
Last year I replaced all the windows in my house with those expensive double-pane energy efficient kind, and today, I got a call from the contractor who installed them. He was complaining that the work had been completed a whole year ago and I still hadn’t paid for them.
Hellloooo,…………just because I’m blonde doesn’t mean that I am automatically stupid. So, I told him just what his fast-talking sales guy had told me last year, that in ONE YEAR these windows would pay for themselves! Helllooooo? It’s been a year! I told him. There was only silence at the other end of the line, so I finally just hung up.
He never called back. I bet he felt like an idiot.
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When Hurricane Ida entered the warmer waters of the gulf it went from Category 1 to Category 4 overnight, as predicted.
Where I live in north California the damn power is shut off every time a breeze blows in the Summer and every time a tree (that was supposed to be removed) falls down in the Winter. We have a stable power source every May 3rd between Noon and 4p.m.. Good thing I have my trusty propane sucking Generac and enough firewood to keep me in my skivvies all Winter.
That is a problem you have because your power company is a private for profit company whetevprofits are more important than customers
The power companies in the Pyrite State do that because they don’t want to overload the system. If a ‘public’ company ran the system, and left the power on when the system couldn’t handle it, when it failed there would be major power disruptions, lasting for a long time. That has already happened in northern California, which is why they are doing this now.
Hairy, that’s spoken like a true commie pig. Congratulations. BTW, do you work for profits or are your services and your company’s free?
The odd thing about commie pigs is they actually believe that if the government ran it it would be free, just appear out of nowhere and provide free electric over free power lines from buildings and generators that just POOF! appear cause they’re free.
The only thing not “free” with these commie pigs are PEOPLE!
As I read it, “the wiring needed to switch from heaters that burn natural gas to heat pumps that run on electricity” simply means 30 amp, 220 circuits run to where they need to be to power such units. That isn’t that expensive to do during the construction phase, while the walls are open.
Of course, those circuits would be used anyway, since almost all new homes in the Pyrite State are going to have heat pumps for air conditioning.