Siting of panels for solar water heating

On 2006-12-18 02:05:54 +0000, John Beardmore said:

In message , Andy Hall writes On 2006-12-15 02:05:27 +0000, John Beardmore said: In message , Andy Hall writes On 2006-12-03 17:47:04 +0000, usenet@colddrake.co.uk (sarah) said:
The whole premise was to have a range of services from a range of providers so that people can choose what they want and with local authorities taken out of the financial path between customer and supplier. If you want to continue as you are then that is accomodated. But if you want to continue having your waste collected with an environmental impact / footprint that as small as it is now, you may not be, and indeed, there is no guarantee that your existing service provision would be offered.
That would be reasonable
It doesn't seem likely that the existing equipment would be appropriately sized under the new regime.

That would depend on the geographical area being covered.

if the cost is substantially reduced.
You don't even know what it is at the moment !

Because it's hidden from view.....

There already is huge over-regulation in these areas. Adding more is unlikely to alter the behaviour of consumers who want to buy a) on price and b) on the attractiveness of the packaging.
:) Oh I don't know...
I do.
Well - I've not got much sympathy for consumers who buy on the attractiveness of the packaging.

Me neither, but the fact is that people do, or manufacturer's wouldn't spend money on it.

Are you happy to go on paying ever more for ever less?
I didn't say that, but I don't see LAs as doing that.

I do, in almost everything they do. There is huge scope for staffing cutback and reduced involvement in areas that so not require their involvement.

Well - this is indeed the big one ! Is there any centralised reporting and analysis of LCA data broken down by region ? That could certainly inform a more systematic approach.
Perhaps there's a project for you there.
:) Got enough on already thanks !

... and I don't suppose that LAs would be very likely to stump up the cash for something that would almost inevitably lead to the conclusion that they are not adding any value.

Could you do it dispassionately though?
I think the only sensible way to do this stuff is with complete transparency. I don't particularly care who that might embarrass. If people go into it in an honest and open way, nobody need be embarrassed anyway, and if we learn that some things can be done better, that's good.
If we learn that a lot of things can be done better, that's excellent !

Provided that they are viable and people are willing to buy into them of their own free will.

On 2006-12-18 02:19:29 +0000, John Beardmore said:

Or time. But I think there are some things like eating and going to the toilet that we seldom depute to others.
Really? Letting the government run services is exactly doing that - i.e. letting others wipe our arses.
Sorting your own waste takes the process under your control.

I can have control by paying somebody else to do the work

The trouble is that the government always uses Bronco sheets and tells us that it's Andrex.
N/A in this case.

Very applicable.

Maybe sorting our own waste might be seen in that light.
If we are stupid enough to buy into that notion
If it gives the lowest environmental impact, it may not be 'stupid' but 'responsible'.

That's pseudo-moral-highground- not impressed.

On 2006-12-18 02:38:05 +0000, John Beardmore said:

In message , Andy Hall writes On 2006-12-04 13:06:00 +0000, David Hansen SENDdavidNOhSPAM@spidacom.co.uk> said: On Mon, 4 Dec 2006 12:22:26 +0000 someone who may be Andy Hall andyh@hall.nospam> wrote this:-
Perhaps like most things we're not looking for the place to draw a line, but rather painting subtle shades of grey across a wide area :-) The competent and concerned get to do more, the rest follow according to inclination, ability and legislation. surelt the competent have far more useful and important things to with their time, like try to crack technological problems for one example. Precisely.... I doubt if even ten minutes a week would make any difference to the solving of problems by the competent, especially as they can still think about these problems as they do the sorting.
You are missing the points...
Idleness and pride ?

Delegation.

John Beardmore wrote:

In message , Phil Bradshaw philbradshaw@deltasierralima.pipex.charlieoscarmike> writes John Beardmore wrote:
What on earth can you use 486 CPUs for these days ? Especially without the motherboards ?
It was a number of years ago.
Does he want a few more ? Got some pentiums too !
Heh. Most probably not!
Wise man I think...
In some things maybe; doing pretty much all 64-bit these days but earning

hardly a bean from it. Nonetheless doing a fair job of convincing people kubuntu with openoffice isn't such a wrench after Windoze.

On 2006-12-18 03:14:14 +0000, John Beardmore said:

That doesn't deal with the notion that sorting at source is the 'least resource' way of getting things sorted. Then you would be welcome to visit and sort through my dustbin each week. It would still be more efficient for you to do it.
No it wouldn't. My work time costs considerably more than what it would cost for me to outsource it to a rubbish collection firm.
Then maybe you should ask if it's over valued ?

The measure of value is whether customers believe that they are getting a good result and return for what they spend.

If I provide you with the service, I introduce overheads like getting your rubbish and me in the same place. You could walk or use your bike. From Derbyshire ??
Nope.
It would still be more efficient for you to do it.
See above.
I'll take that as a 'no'.

Exactly.

I am not willing to spend my time sorting through all kinds of different plastics, metals, paper and all the rest of it. I object to being told that there is only one way that all of this can possibly happen and that I shouldn't have a choice of supplier and the ability to agree my own commercial arrangement with them. I'm sure there are many ways it could happen, but there seems to be one clear winner in terms of environmental performance.
The customer needs to be the winner.
The customer wins if their actions stop, or contribute to stopping, their ecosystem collapsing, though of course, it doesn't all turn on a single banana skin...

This only happens if the customer believes that whatever scheme is worthwhile (and it actually is) and therefore participates.

I think that both notions are bogus. If something relies on only being effective if there is no choice and a specific procedure has to be followed, it is highly questionable and in my view a very dangerous road to be traveling down.
:) This is a bit like saying there ought be a choice about ohms law or the ideal gas equation.
No it isn't.
By your logic above I'm not so sure...

The points are completely clear.

I think sometimes you have to admit that from an environmental perspective there is a clear winner, that it involves a bit of input from you, and that you can't be arsed or want to argue.
It doesn't *require* input from me.
It does if you are going to take the most environmentally benign course of action, i.e. sorting your own waste at source.

Assuming that that is true. There is however a cost to it. People are being expected to donate their work or personal time for free. That time should be accounted for and deducted from what they are paying to the local authority.

OK - I can accept that you don't plan to.

You got that one right.

It's not an issue of "can't be arsed", but an issue of choice and whether I wish to spend my time on one issue vs. another.
Well yes - you can always choose to spend your time on something more important. It must terribly terribly important though !

I don't think that it is necessary for me to sort the rubbish in order for it to be sorted (assuming that that is worth doing in the first place.) In that sense, there are a bunch of other things that I consider have much highr priority. Nevertheless, if there is value in sorting, I think that it is quite reasonable to expect the waste contractor to handle the issue and to offer one price with sorting and one without.

In answer to your other point... no I don'f think that that is a self centred position to take at all; rather the boot is on the other Well I sort my waste. That doesn't feel too self centred here.
For you, that may be the optimal solution. I haven't said that you can't do it. I would also like my optimal solution.
The point is - I can't make you do it, but I can say why I think it's a good idea, and am free to point out when I think your 'reasons' for not doing it are bogus.
That's your choice. I don't accept your limitation of choice or your approach.
And I'm not sure that you should have to. None the less I find the priorities of someone who claims to have so much important stuff to do that they can't spare a few minutes a week to sort their own waste, yet spends ages arguing about it recreationally, more than a little odd.

It's called freedom of choice, John.

On 2006-12-18 03:17:49 +0000, John Beardmore said:

Yes, though there is probably much to be said for education, public health provision, health and safety, environmental protection the police etc... Out of those, the only one that marginally may be worth doing in the public sector is policing and even that is marginal Again - this is your view, and I don't get the feeling that it's widely shared ! It really doesn't bother me. As long as there is freedom of choice, one of the choices can be to stay with the status quo. But the status quo involves one fleet of vehicles run by one contractor doing the whole job. As soon as you move to three services from three contractors, that is lost.
Sigh.... Already covered.
Not adequately.

I think it was.

If it is possible to sort mechanically, or otherwise *some* different types of plastic or metal, then I am sure that given thought and investment, other types can be as well. I doubt it will be cheap, and it's likely to be energy intensive. Let's see what happens when the drongos in the LAs are taken out of the food chain. Let's see what happens when you have the software, circuit diagram and the components list. ?? To sort materials automatically...
That would be something worthwhile striving for rather than wasting millions of peoples' time sorting crap.
Depends on its life cycle environmental impact.

Exactly. That also needs to include the buy in from the customers generating the waste.

On 2006-12-18 21:13:40 +0000, John Beardmore said:

In message , Andy Hall writes On 2006-12-06 13:54:50 +0000, David Hansen SENDdavidNOhSPAM@spidacom.co.uk> said:
On 6 Dec 2006 04:39:40 -0800 someone who may be meow2222@care2.com wrote this:-
and bizarrely, some people want these folk to have a monopoly on their waste services! There is only one "minor" flaw with your assertion. Councils don't have a monopoly. Unlike the situation with gas and electricity bills some years ago any householder can contract with any supplier to deal with their waste. However, as with roads, education, defence and many other things the householder will not get a discount if they don't use the government provided service.
So a monopoly.
Well - I think not. The option to use other services remains.

Oh good grief......

Private armies seem not to be appreciated for some reason, so let's leave that one aside.
However, if I use a toll bridge or toll road I pay for them, otherwise I don't.
Yes - not too keen on that notion either, but that debate is even further off topic !

I can imagine not. I find the French peage system pretty effective. If you want a better service, you pay. If you want cheap, you don't.

On 2006-12-18 21:26:21 +0000, John Beardmore said:

Well that's a matter of opinion, because it seems to me that that no individual can negotiate a relationship to the state, and when we vote, opinion is aggregated. Such aggregations might be regarded as society expressing a view.

No - it's a collection of individuals voting with their pockets and who the liked on the TV.

Well - you've said that the minimum standards imposed by law are a given.
That doesn't not mean that standards will rise, as you yourself have admitted.
Telling me that they are a "given" is disingenuous wibble.

No it isn't. The minimum standards can be legislated.

Environmental decisions are made to support people and the things on which they depend.
Then they should be given the freedom to make them.
If they are properly informed.

By all factions in the debate.

It seems to be born of bloody mindedness rather than any real desire to change in the best way possible. The best way possible meets the objectives while bringing the customer with a choice of solutions. It doesn't come out of presenting one solution and compelling the customer to do that one solution in a particular way or else. Well choice isn't a bad thing except where providing multiple services results in redundant duplicated equipment and journeys. Again. If different operators are offering different services, there is not duplication. Nor is it necessarily lower aggregate footprint.
Nor does it necessarily increase it.
Indeed, though it's not at all easy to see any way it might not.

Geography is but one example.

It may not duplicate services in the same sense that tow bus companies operating on the same route do not duplicate services, but it may travel more road miles and use more man hours even with fewer people on each trip than existing services.
.. and it may not.
Well - if you really believe that, show us how it might not please.

Who's the "us" here?
The amount of waste doesn't change with the method of transporting it. As I've already explained several times, one has t look at the overall picture including fuel use and what is sensibly recovered, which will be more if the services match the customers' requirements.

On 2006-12-18 21:40:56 +0000, John Beardmore said:

In message , Andy Hall writes
Quite amazing. I've always considered education to be about finding out things for one's self, questioning them and sifting the important and influencing from the dross.
If you were observant, you would have noticed that environmentalists do not all sing off the same hymn sheet.

There is a green hill far away..... ?

The last thing that I have felt it to be was being fed a package of goods and treating it as sacrosanct.
This seems to be exactly the way you regard economics.

Not particularly - it's simply a starting point. Experience over millennia shows that if economic criteria are not met, pretty much any exercise will fail.
Therefore, it is necessary to satisfy that first and then to look at what it can buy. Then one can iterate back. If the outcome isn't what was hoped for, can the economic model be adjusted to support it?

I suspect that that is one reason for my not wanting to buy unquestioningly into mindless ecobabble for the sake of it.
Maybe you should take the trouble to learn something meaningful about the work environmentalists have done before you start making assumptions ?

It is very difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff.

While acknowledging that you must comply with the law, attitudinally you seem far more disposed to find justifications for inaction than to see if action is really required. This alone makes me reluctant to support your ill specified commercial proposals.

You are missing the point. I have not said that there should be inaction as long as the proposed action is genuinely worth doing and on the scale that can be realistically achieved actually affects outcome in a worthwhile way. In other words if there is a choice between action A and action B with A resulting in a 0.1% effect and B resulting in a 10% effect, there is little point in doing A unless it is less than a hundredth of the effort or cost.
Now let's say that action B is sorting through plastic bottles and so is worth doing. Then the next question is quite simple. Who is going to do it? If it *requires* me to do it as opposed to paying extra to a contractor t do so, then the whole thing comes into question in terms of whether it was worth doing in the first place.
So if you say to me that I *must* sort the bottles myself and there isn't an option that I can buy at a reasonable price without paying twice, then I am going to say no to it. OTOH, if you offer me price C for the contractor to do it and D if I do it, then there is a basis for it to be done.

On 2006-12-18 21:28:39 +0000, John Beardmore said:

In message , Andy Hall writes
Perhaps that's where you are going wrong. The malaise is in broad daylight for all to see. I know what you mean in some departments, but it's not universal. I'm going to support the people in LAs that are worth supporting.
You must spend a lot of time looking.
Well - you can't do much in the environmental sector without running into them !

That says it all, really, doesn't it......

Well up to a point, but they don't generally encourage the provision of redundant services to gratify and ideological lust for choice where any marginal benefit from the provision of choice is swamped by increasing the environmental footprint of the service provision of a whole.
Not in touch with reality then...
You could say the same of economists total lack of grip on environmental issues.

I could, but I wouldn't

And calling it a "Home Care" package implies that there is more bundled into it than waste collection. I thought you only wanted to pay for what you used ? So create "Home Care" bronze, silver and gold products. Bronze is basic rubbish collection, silver includes collecting additional things such as garden rubbish etc. and gold includes rat catching and wasp nest destruction; or whatever. Just illustrations. Hmmm... The only people to whom this kind of thing seems to appeal are those who seem to be obsessed by the provision of choice a matter of principle. Still - make it an election issue, and see how far you get. It'd be interesting to see.
I think it will....
Go for it then ! Keep us posted please !

Next May is not that far away...

On 2006-12-18 21:54:53 +0000, John Beardmore said:

There is no rant, just an observation on the poor service ethic which is a UK malaise.
When you repeat it so often with no acknowledgement of other views I think it is likely to be seen as a rant.

The trouble is that there is so little evidence to support the notion that LAs are giving good service in most areas.
Fortunately, gradually people are starting to realise that they are being taken for a ride and will not accept rubbish service. However, culturally, most British people don't like to make a fuss or to complain. It's changing, but still has a long way to go.

In terms of public to private sector comparison, the acid test is what happens when there is good service and bad service. Do people get rewarded over and above their basic remuneration for giving good service? Do they get penalised and ultimately fired if not.
Usually in the private sector, then again, sometimes in public sector too.

From observation, it seems that this only happens if fingers have been in the till.

Does the organisation that they work in cease to exist if it doesn't deliver?
They may get kicked out or sideways in the public sector, and companies can take a long time to die in the private sector !

Not any more.

When those fundamental questions are answered, it becomes very clear that for the most part the public sector is not being correctly motivated.
It seems to me that when the people near the top of an LA are well motivated, plenty of opportunities arise for sensible rewarding of worthy efforts.

How?

In either type of organisation, if the top of the organisation looses the plot, the whole thing tends to descent into finger pointing, back biting and arse covering. (Well - you would cover it with all those teeth flying !)

That's true.

On uk.environment, in , "John Beardmore" wrote:
<article not downloaded: http://slrn.sourceforge.net/docs/README.offline>
I've read one of Andy's posts on this subthread.
How typical of Beardmore to be fighting to the death (verbally, anyway...) over something that wouldn't reduce the ecological footprint of this civilization by a measurable percentage.
But he is merely another member of the failed 'environmental movement'. Not unique.
Alan
-- http://home.earthlink.net/~alanconnor/contact.html

Thank you Beavis.
-- <article not downloaded:
Info about "Alan Connor"
Alan "The Usenet Beavis" Connor is a good friend of Bigfoot: http://tinyurl.com/23r3f
A couple of years ago he was kidnapped and raped by Xena, the Warrior Princess: http://tinyurl.com/2gjcy
Beavis believes that the MSBlast virus of yesteryear was explicitly targeting him, for some inexplicable reason: http://tinyurl.com/ifrt
Beavis belongs to a UFO cult: http://tinyurl.com/2hhdx Beavis's life in a UFO cult: http://tinyurl.com/24jqm Beavis knows all about network security: http://tinyurl.com/5qqb6 And he's also a search engine expert: http://tinyurl.com/9pjnt
"But if you must know, Alans' name is Bruce Burhans, and he lives in Bellingham WA. To his hippie friends he calls himself "Tom Littlefoot" **Google Tom Littlefoot, Bruce Burhans and "Wildwood"**.
Bruce has some serious mental problems and spends a lot of time as an in-patient at the big mental hospital in Bellingham, when he's not hospitalized, he posts to usenet. In every group he posts to he comes off as some sort of expert in the subject at hand, and when anyone disagrees (and they will, he sees to that) he starts in on his trollery.
Again, Bruce is a true Professional Usenet Troll. It is his entertainment and it's what he lives for."
http://www.pearlgates.net/nanae/kooks/ac/fga.shtml http://groups.google.com/groups/profile?enc_user=MQ9uxRYAAAAX2tAp-itjMPAOxLgFwCc3_gRbb05PKyTO4L-MEqh3HQ&hl=en http://www.pearlgates.net/nanae/kooks/ac/ http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Mail/challenge-response.html http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/329.html#CR http://www.gatago.com/authors_pgs/13650.html http://blog.bananasplit.info/?p=84 http://tinyurl.com/ifrt http://tinyurl.com/3h6a5 http://tinyurl.com/ys6z4
Also in the headers for alan to read.

In message , Andy Hall writes

On 2006-12-18 01:43:59 +0000, John Beardmore said: In message , Andy Hall writes
So it should be made incentive and not penalty. How did you have in mind ? There are plenty. Reductions in corporation tax for businesses implementing a relevant environmental policy would be but one. OK - a start, though this is hardly a market force. More of a 'financial instrument applied'.
It's exactly a market force. Make an action attractive and people buy.

Well - reducing corporation tax may be a force on the market, but it's not an expression of, or a response to the will of the consumer, but a government intervention. I thought that generally you regarded those as a bad thing ?

Improvement in environmental reality won't happen to any worthwhile degree until and unless the economic realities are addressed. Hence the point about incentive rather than bullying. Hmmm... There will always be a sense in which the prolong absence of a carrot will be seen as a stick. I'm not sure that these things can always be 'happiness led'.
It certainly won't work to always lead with the negativity of legislation and penalties for trivia.

I agree with penalties for trivia, but the effectiveness of legislation seems to be experienced every day.

Then to take it further, this failed policy is not repealed but continued! A policy that wastes energy and costs money is continued. Not totally convinced it has failed... It is focus on the irrelevant. In a typical house, lighting accounts for 2% of energy consumption. I seriously doubt that's true, at least unless they use low energy light bulbs, heat electric, cook electric and have TIG welding as a hobby. Care to cite a source ? I said energy consumption, not electricity consumption. Even so, I'm not at all sure it's right, and as for every kW of electricity we use, Drax et al push 2 kW up a chimney as 'waste' heat, consumption at the point of use is a pretty silly way to look at it. with the PRIMARY energy used to make that electricity.
That's a matter of generation and there are numerous more efficient ways to do so than to burn fossil fuels at Drax.

Only if you can find a home for the waste heat.

I was, however, referring to energy use in the home.

Well yes, but if you don't take into account of the primary energy used to deliver electricity, you will paint a very distorted picture.

It's really very simple. Add up the number of incandescent bulbs required in a house with their ratings. Work out the usage pattern. Calculate the amount of electricity used in kWh averaged over a year. Then look at the energy bills. Yes. I suspect it comes out to more than 2% though.
Try working it out.

I did, but it depends entirely on the assumptions you make.
I assumed that as you gave a particular figure, you might have a clue where it came from.

They just have a no incentive to, and would rather not bother if not doing so increases the sale of fittings in the long run. Exactly. People don't want this stuff and are voting with their money. OK - a little cynical, but I would expect no less.
So that should give you the clue. Make it attractive and hassle free to do something and people might just do it. Force them and you will a) have a battle and b) a poorer result than if you had spent the money cajoling and policing on incentivising.

I'm not particularly convinced.

Lets compare what happens with failed policies in the private business sector. Either the business corrects it, and they try to, or they cease being a service provider, and those that come closer to what the buyer wants stay in business. The motivation to do well is much larger there, as the individual either prospers or loses it all. Which is great in those areas that markets address well. The environment has generally not been one of them. Then those wishing to promote its maintenance need to go away and think about how to make that marketable rather than immediately falling on the easy way out of forcing unnatural behaviour. I'm not sure that living sustainably is unnatural, but it's not something capitalism has been good at. That's just broad brushed nonsense It's broad brush, but I can't think of a lot of major environmental improvements led by industry off the top of my head. You ?
It doesn't have to be led by, only made attractive enough to win co-operation.

Hmmm... Sounds like woolly broad brushed nonsense to me.
Essentially you are saying that if something is made attractive to industry it might deign to respond to an emerging mark, but that's about it isn't it ? But this is also true of just about anything from atom bombs to xylophones !
So... It still sounds fair to me to assert that living / acting living sustainably is not something capitalism has been good at.

Either marketing or legislation might contribute to getting the job done. I'm not fussed which, and up to a point happy with both, though marketing does seem to be the art of selling illusions.
Not sure that makes it the most appropriate tool. Legislation certainly isn't. Marketing is very effective and produces sustained results if done honestly and competently. Where it's done honestly and competently, it's little different from education. But how often is that ? Look at government advertising on energy consumption. Terrifyingly naff !
Terrifyingly wasteful

Quite probably.

as well and focussing on the wrong areas.

Not entirely the wrong areas I think, though out of interest, where do you think they'd have got a better outcome ?

This is something that the green lobby has attempted to do and has been found out on the first and failed on the second. Well there are one or two thinks like Brent Spa where there has been clear misinformation given. I suspect that such cases are rare, and other state owned companies like BNFL have hardly been squeaky clean in this area. The asbestos industry lies for the best part of a hundred years. I don't think industry can lecture the environmental movement on corporate responsibility !
So honesty needed all round it seems....

Yes !

THe question is how to achieve that.

Indeed.

It's too expensive to police it.

And very tedious and expensive to go to law over anything that might be seen as misleading or whatever.

Education about environmental issues, in as quantitative a way as possible seems to be the better long term strategy, and that is something I'm happy to invest effort in. That is reasonable, provided that it is even handed and facts are separated from guesses and agendas. Nobody is free of agenda, and there are significant errors likely to be embedded in current climate models, environmental predictions and economic predictions of all kinds. A large part of education is learning to react sensibly to uncertainty, while at the same time trying to establish a more rigorous understanding of complex systems.
.. and addressing the areas that actually do make a difference. Has anybody in the West had a word with the Chinese lately?

:) ! Another of Alan Connors better points.
Actually - it is interesting that so many students of architecture and sustainable technologies are Chinese these days !
It's interesting to note that groups like Eurosolar seem to sense that the battle in slowly being won in Europe, and a lot of the active innovative members have moved on to things like WCRE,
http://www.wcre.de/en/index.php
which is contributing to the debate globally. It's also interesting that at the one Eurosolar AGM I went to in Berlin, some of the more innovative material came from places outside the EU like Vietnam. Technically their contributions were not news, but the interesting thing was the level of 'buy in' they could get in a community. It looks as if local social structures can have a very dramatic effect.
Cheers, J/. -- John Beardmore

On 2006-12-20 01:14:00 +0000, John Beardmore said:

Well - reducing corporation tax may be a force on the market, but it's not an expression of, or a response to the will of the consumer, but a government intervention. I thought that generally you regarded those as a bad thing ?

Correct. However, customers are not empowered to reduce corporation tax, the government is. One could argue that by reducing a tax take, the government would be less interventionist, which of course is a good thing.

I agree with penalties for trivia, but the effectiveness of legislation seems to be experienced every day.

Along with the ineffectiveness.

Even so, I'm not at all sure it's right, and as for every kW of electricity we use, Drax et al push 2 kW up a chimney as 'waste' heat, consumption at the point of use is a pretty silly way to look at it. with the PRIMARY energy used to make that electricity.
That's a matter of generation and there are numerous more efficient ways to do so than to burn fossil fuels at Drax.
Only if you can find a home for the waste heat.

I don't have control over what the power generating companies do with excess heat, however solutions exist for that as well.

I was, however, referring to energy use in the home.
Well yes, but if you don't take into account of the primary energy used to deliver electricity, you will paint a very distorted picture.

Actually not. If the house is heated by gas, as a high proportion are, the proportion of electricity used is a small part of the total in energy (as opposed to cost) terms. This is even before considering that heat generated from use of incandescent lighting is mainly added to the heat requirement for the house anyway, since the larger use for lighting is during the heating months anyway.

It's really very simple. Add up the number of incandescent bulbs required in a house with their ratings. Work out the usage pattern. Calculate the amount of electricity used in kWh averaged over a year. Then look at the energy bills. Yes. I suspect it comes out to more than 2% though.
Try working it out.
I did, but it depends entirely on the assumptions you make.
I assumed that as you gave a particular figure, you might have a clue where it came from.

I do.

They just have a no incentive to, and would rather not bother if not doing so increases the sale of fittings in the long run. Exactly. People don't want this stuff and are voting with their money. OK - a little cynical, but I would expect no less.
So that should give you the clue. Make it attractive and hassle free to do something and people might just do it. Force them and you will a) have a battle and b) a poorer result than if you had spent the money cajoling and policing on incentivising.
I'm not particularly convinced.

I can imagine that.

Lets compare what happens with failed policies in the private business sector. Either the business corrects it, and they try to, or they cease being a service provider, and those that come closer to what the buyer wants stay in business. The motivation to do well is much larger there, as the individual either prospers or loses it all. Which is great in those areas that markets address well. The environment has generally not been one of them. Then those wishing to promote its maintenance need to go away and think about how to make that marketable rather than immediately falling on the easy way out of forcing unnatural behaviour. I'm not sure that living sustainably is unnatural, but it's not something capitalism has been good at. That's just broad brushed nonsense It's broad brush, but I can't think of a lot of major environmental improvements led by industry off the top of my head. You ?
It doesn't have to be led by, only made attractive enough to win co-operation.
Hmmm... Sounds like woolly broad brushed nonsense to me.
Essentially you are saying that if something is made attractive to industry it might deign to respond to an emerging mark, but that's about it isn't it ? But this is also true of just about anything from atom bombs to xylophones !
So... It still sounds fair to me to assert that living / acting living sustainably is not something capitalism has been good at.

You are presenting a circular argument. When policies that don't take account of the requirements of business are forced on it, it's hardly surprising if there is little interest in co-operation and effort goes into avoiding the negative impacts. This comes about when governments believe that regulation and legislation is the way to achieve advancement, either because of misguided control games or lack of competence in running a business. It's then not reasonable to blame those shortcomings on industry.
I don't believe that operating sustainably has to come about by there being a reduction in the ability of business to be successful. If they are not, the economy as a whole is less successful and less money is available to fund the programs that people would like to have. The correct action is to incentivise industry to take particular courses of action. One only has to look at companies moving their operations to lower tax locations and development areas to figure that one out.

Either marketing or legislation might contribute to getting the job done. I'm not fussed which, and up to a point happy with both, though marketing does seem to be the art of selling illusions.
Not sure that makes it the most appropriate tool. Legislation certainly isn't. Marketing is very effective and produces sustained results if done honestly and competently. Where it's done honestly and competently, it's little different from education. But how often is that ? Look at government advertising on energy consumption. Terrifyingly naff !
Terrifyingly wasteful
Quite probably.
as well and focussing on the wrong areas.
Not entirely the wrong areas I think, though out of interest, where do you think they'd have got a better outcome ?

Refer to the point about lightbulbs. More reasonable expenditure is around things that do make a worthwhile difference such as reasonable levels of loft and cavity insulation.

This is something that the green lobby has attempted to do and has been found out on the first and failed on the second. Well there are one or two thinks like Brent Spa where there has been clear misinformation given. I suspect that such cases are rare, and other state owned companies like BNFL have hardly been squeaky clean in this area. The asbestos industry lies for the best part of a hundred years. I don't think industry can lecture the environmental movement on corporate responsibility !
So honesty needed all round it seems....
Yes !
THe question is how to achieve that.
Indeed.
It's too expensive to police it.
And very tedious and expensive to go to law over anything that might be seen as misleading or whatever.

Which is exactly why legislation is such a poor instrument in these areas.

Actually - it is interesting that so many students of architecture and sustainable technologies are Chinese these days !

A supreme irony.

It's interesting to note that groups like Eurosolar seem to sense that the battle in slowly being won in Europe, and a lot of the active innovative members have moved on to things like WCRE,
http://www.wcre.de/en/index.php
which is contributing to the debate globally. It's also interesting that at the one Eurosolar AGM I went to in Berlin, some of the more innovative material came from places outside the EU like Vietnam. Technically their contributions were not news, but the interesting thing was the level of 'buy in' they could get in a community. It looks as if local social structures can have a very dramatic effect.

Perhaps they should have a word with their immediate neighbours about building nuclear rather than coal fired power stations.
Perhaps we could have a word with ours about not buying cheap Chinese goods.