The Greatest Grift of All (3): Thermal Renovations and 'Scenario'-based = Wishful Planning
With no data on cost/benefits of Norway's climate policies admitted to by the Finance Ministry, it's unlikely that we'll ever find out how much is stolen by these con-racketeers in Green
When suicidal empathy meets virtue-signalling delusions, you’ve arrived…in Norway.
This is the second instalment of a series on how ‘good intentions’ are wrecking regular people’s minds, wallets, and lives.
For parts one and two, please see here:
Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine.
Money Thrown Out the Window
The Gov’t Encourages People to Change their Windows: But What’s in it for Home-Owners?
By Håvard Nyhus, NRK, 3 Jan. 2025 [source]
The answer is always the same: ‘You have to buy something, because then it’s a win for the climate’, says Jens Frøne, adding:
It doesn’t matter what it is. As long as you become a customer in one place, you have contributed [that notion is also—and esp. so—valid for EVs].
Frøne is a carpenter and master-builder, and has seen trends come and go:
New kledding [the wooded, outer façade of Nordic houses], new windows, new control systems and new ventilation systems.
‘If I can guarantee anything, it’s that most investments are misguided in one direction or another,’ he notes, adding:
‘With the exception of loft insulation and new sealing strips, it’s best not to do anything if you want to save the planet.
In 2024, 700,000 windows were sold to Norwegian homeowners.
That’s a lot of money, but according to the authorities, low-energy windows are a ‘Kinder Egg measure’ with three benefits:
New windows reduce utility bills and are thus saving Norwegian consumers money
Lower demand frees up power for ‘better’ purposes in the green shift
The new low-energy society is crucial for national climate resilience and a prerequisite for Norway to fulfil its part of the Paris Agreement.
[don’t forget that per capita energy consumption and prosperity go hand-in-glove; put differently, there’s no rich, low-energy society]
Norwegian Consumers are Being Fooled
‘It’s the big window scam’, says Ole Thorstensen.
He is a carpenter and has written several books about the systematic devaluation of the practical and manual skills of Norwegian craftsmen.
He believes that the drive to change out windows that has swept through our country is motivated by two factors:
An industry that makes good money by ‘pushing new windows on Norwegian homeowners’
A politically controlled sales organisation that wants to make a name for itself
‘Norwegian consumers are confused as to whether they are doing this for the climate or for their wallets’, he says.
So he has more understanding for those who change their windows to increase comfort or the value of their home, even though reports show that home buyers emphasise window standards to varying degrees when investing in a new house.
In a calculation example on the website of Enova, a single-family house with 27 square metres of window area will save NOK 3,240 a year by replacing the old windows.
If we assume that the new windows plus installation costs amount to NOK 100,000 [divide by 12 to arrive at approx. US$ or € values], it will take just over 30 years before the investment is ‘recouped’.
In the calculation, the energy price is set at NOK 1/kWh. In 2024, the average price in the most expensive part of the country (NO2) was 58 øre/kWh [what’s being off by 42% among climate-smart friends?].
The calculation also assumes that 40% of heat loss in a building comes from the windows [huhum, that energy saved model is but 42% off from reality, perhaps there’s no heat loss?]
Nat’l Heritage Board: Estimate Are Too High
In the article ‘Why you should keep the old windows’, [orig. Kvifor du bør behalde dei gamle vindauga], Marte Boro at the Nat’l Heritage Board [orig. Riksantikvaren] makes the point that older windows have a higher aesthetic and cultural value [fair point].
She also points out that the [sic, I’d go for ‘any potential’] energy gain [which we’re not sure actually exists] does not compensate for the footprint of producing new windows, which also have a shorter shelf life [it’s called energy returned on energy invested, or EROEI].
The Gov’t Doesn’t Know the Math
‘Replacing older windows is a bad climate measure’, says Ola Fjeldheim of Fortidsminneforeningen [something like National Heritage Trust] of Norway.
He says that the climate emissions associated with the transport and production of new window curtains ‘are in most cases so high that they will not be compensated within their lifetime’ [ooopsie, is that something any politico™—esp. of the ‘Green’ garden variety—omitted to tell you?]
He adds:
Environmentally, the maths becomes even clearer: New windows require a lot of resources and generate a lot of construction waste.
[here follows an info box about how Norwegian consumers could obtain subsidies for upgrading their windows, which I omit from this piece; I didn’t know anything about it when we changed the windows of our house in 2022]
This happened in the days when the TEK standard [the Norwegian building code] was amended to incorporate reductions of energy consumption in Norwegian buildings.
The first step took place when Jens Stoltenberg was prime minister in 2010, and since then TEK10 has morphed into TEK17.
But if you’re wondering how much it has cost to raise the standard—in the form of demolition, replacements and other upgrades—the answer is that the authorities don’t know [let’s ‘do something™’, the gov’t spake].
They Simply Don’t Have That [or any] Figure
We do not currently have a modelling system for estimating the overall costs and benefits of Norway’s climate policy.
Thus wrote the Ministry of Finance as recently as 2020.
A report from Asplan Viak (2018) nevertheless provides some points of reference:
For the new building, it takes more than 50 years for the initial emissions from construction to be outweighed by the effects of lower in-use energy consumption [I’ll cite some more passages from this piece below].
A similar study from 2021 showed that refurbishing an old timber house yielded higher climate benefits than building a new passive house.
Profitable for Both Your Wallet and the Climate
Frank Ivar Andersen led the Norwegian Federation of Master Builders between 2007 and 2021, and he is currently a political advisor at Bygghåndverk Noreg [the carpenter’s trade association]:
‘Our position is that replacement is profitable both for your wallet and for the climate when it’s time for maintenance’, he says.
He recognises that energy and climate interests do not always play together.
When the requirements became stricter, the main focus was on energy efficiency. And not so much on the climate impact of production, transport, and waste from the products being replaced.
Seen in this light, Ole Thorstensen has a point.
However, his biggest concern is that Norwegian homeowners have a tendency to choose the cheapest option when replacing windows.
‘Unfortunately, the situation is that only 40% of the new windows that are installed are of the best quality.
This is regrettable since the price difference between the best and second-best windows is small, and the windows that are installed remain in the façade with poorer energy efficiency for many years [this is so true: we replaced the 30-50 year-old windows when we moved in and now have triple-pane, wood-frame windows, and the price tag difference between these top-shelf products and lower-quality ones was some 1,000 euros for 13 custom-made windows plus a new front door]
Hilde W. Wibe is the managing director of the industry association Norwegian Woods [orig. Norske trevarer], which organises Norwegian window suppliers.
She would like to see a situation like in Denmark, where the authorities demand that only low-energy windows are sold [ah, it’s called a market-based economy where all decisions are pre-made for you]:
This is our biggest concern: that when people first make the big investment, they choose windows other than those with the greatest energy-saving effect [can we measure these savings?]
She says that the window industry strives to use as much locally sourced wood as possible, and that the industry has been a driving force in establishing a return scheme for old windows.
‘We definitely believe that replacing windows is both an energy and climate measure’, Hilde W. Wibe says, adding that ‘people will also save money on electricity bills’ [which is—an after-thought].
The ‘Experts™’ Did a Study
Here’s a bit more from the paper with the title ‘Life cycle assessment and historic buildings: energy-efficiency refurbishment versus new construction in Norway’ by Berg & Fuglseth, which appeared in the Journal of Architectural Conservation, vol. 24 (2018). In it, the authors present
results from a Norwegian life cycle assessment (LCA) comparing the net climate benefits from the refurbishment of a historic residential building from the 1930s with the construction of a new building in accordance with modern building codes.
The results are quite…something. One of their case-studies—a single-family home from the 1930s—is described as follows:
Refurbishment measures included the installation of a large wood stove, which supplies most of the heating required, supplemented by a heat pump. The residents of Villa Dammen make use of temperature zoning during heating season as well as reducing the set temperature of the building when they are not at home. Such measures are not considered standard in energy consumption simulations [oh, how about that? I relate to this practice, by the way: while we don’t have a heat pump, we use the wood stove to increase indoor temperatures if needed: you experts™ are now seriously telling me that variable isn’t in your shiny models?]. Consequently, actual measured energy consumption in Villa Dammen over the two years after refurbishment is significantly lower than the estimated energy consumption from Simien simulations which were used as the basis for the LCA [oh, the models are using a bunch of other numbers—how off are they? Sadly, the paper is silent on that]. Scenarios, where actual measured energy use was used, were, therefore, also investigated in the study as an additional scenario [I’m out of words here].
The results will shock you, I think:
Over 60 years, net life cycle emissions for the new construction scenario are only some 8% lower than for the refurbished Villa Dammen scenario…
Correspondingly, the time needed for the effect on emissions of lower annual energy consumption in the new building to outweigh the emissions caused in the construction process, when compared to the upgraded Villa Dammen, is around 52 years.
Yes, you read this correctly: it takes 52 years for the emissions of a new, sooper-dooper ‘Green™’ building to be ‘amortised’ compared to the upgrading of existing stock.
And then there is this gem:
Actual measured energy use in the refurbished building is, as previously noted, much lower than the energy use estimated using Simien—almost 50% lower than the estimated energy use for the scenario without refurbishment, as a consequence of the systematic energy conserving behaviour of its inhabitants. If actual measured energy use is used as the base for comparing the refurbished Villa Dammen with the new building, as opposed to standardised energy use estimates, net life cycle emissions are 10% higher for the new building over the 60-year period of analysis.
So, your behaviour does play a role well in excess of anything, it would seem, that modern technology can do.
The best case is conscious decisions about living, being consequential about it, and have this reality be factored into ‘politicking’, which is what’s lacking in so many, if not all, of these climate policy things.
Our study thus also confirms what previous studies also have indicated, that the refurbishment of historic buildings can make them perform on par, or even better, with respect to reducing GHG emissions compared to constructing new buildings. This indicates that the continued use of historic buildings should be better advocated for in building codes and environmental policies and that the notion of building conservation has a research role in translating climate change policy into strategic options for decisions makers.
Oh, politicos™, bid farewell to the nice g[r]ifts from the construction industry.
Bottom Lines
Painful, isn’t it? That realisation that politicos™ and experts™ have told you one thing, patted you on the back for doing what they said—only to realise it’s all a kind of scam.
Consumers do make rational choices (prices), and those who’d (literally) make up new rules are doing so based on—nothing.
Hence, the Ministry of Finance’s admission:
We do not currently have a modelling system for estimating the overall costs and benefits of Norway’s climate policy.
But we’re quadrupling down on them, just in case.
The people paying for it are the likes of you and me, not the politicos™ and the experts™.
There’s lots and lots of profiteers, ranging from politicians to media people to academia to all the industry suppliers, as well as all those ‘Green™’ advisers and consultants.
Their pockets is where the proceeds from higher prices for everything go.
In the final analysis, these bums should all be thrown out for gaslighting the public with (near) certainties for decades when, in fact, there’s but a bunch of ‘scenarios’.
That admission will make for a very rude awakening.
On the surface none of what they are doing makes sense, when judged from the People’s perspective, but they are guided by an entirely different perspective. Their agenda can be easily discerned by analyzing the real fruits of their labor. When we realize that their interests have utterly diverged from our interests, and that their agenda is anti-human in nature, then we begin to see what is happening and where they are leading us. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people are no longer capable of the most simple analysis. The ignorant set coupled with the technocratic servant set are the enablers without which the system could not function.
It's a scam, it's a grift and it's marketing to sell unnecessary products. Building a new house or rebuilding/heavy renovation, sure you should put in new windows made to fit the new building, since certain techniques go best together - but in older houses?
No, nei, ei, ikke, nyet, nicht, rien!
Ours are from 1922, window, panes, spröjs and so on. Come May we take out the inner windows and store them, come late Oktober we put them in and paper the gaps shut (and put small cups with salt in, in-between the outer and inner ones). New insulation strips, new kitt, new paint - and it's good for a couple of decades more.
Can't get more climate friendly than stuff built to last.
But what about loss of heat? See, if you insulate a wooden house too much/the wrong way, it'll start to retain moisture too which leads to obvious problems (especially for people putting up extra layers of wall indoors, for that purpose). It needs to be able to breathe. That's why you have small crawlspaces on the upper floor and less insulated rooms upstairs.
Socks, slippers and a vest/sweater is a far better investment than new windows, money- and climate-wise.
But capitalism needs to move product. Ideally, it'll be like in the movie THX1138 where a worker picks up the latest "thing" on his way home and once home immediately puts it in the trash, so he can buy a new one the next day.