Chronicles in West Coast Socialism - the strict California Energy Building Codes have failed

[bilby]

Energy independence..a bad idea? Max! Wake up! You may just be setting yourself up to have to buy your petrol from a socialist country...after the price goes back up! The reasons for seeking energy independence are many. I think you may prove to be standing alone in the notion we ought to be buying oil from the likes of the Saudis.

Energy independence makes no more sense than that of food independence for Germany or automobile independence for Australia. It is a world market for most goods and services, including oil, natural gas, and coal. From a consumer standpoint, it does not matter if oil is sold to Japan or purchased domestically. Domestic production may provide domestic jobs, but striving to be independent because it is inherently "better" is a fool's errand.

See economics; the laws of absolute and comparative advantage.

Twice in the last century Germany has lost a war, and the German people have suffered widespread privation and hunger, due in large part to blockades preventing imports. The Germans are fully aware of the value of food independence, even if you are not.

Your position would be true, if economics was the only consideration; but unless war ceases to exist, strategic considerations will always need to be taken into account, in addition to, or instead of, any purely economic hypotheses.

 

[Togo]

Poor Max. Another anti-socialism screed failure.

Alas, you've made the same blunder as Togo and Nice Squirrel; you either don't understand the original policy goal OR you're thoughtlessly embracing immaterial and extraneous excuses.

Yes "home energy usage" is far greater today than forty years ago - it is THE POINT of the article. Mandated increased efficiency had two effects: a) it increased the cost of home ownership and then b) it encouraged increased consumption of energy. It did not "save" energy as a whole because of the 'rebound' effect.

Telling us that houses added AC, because of increased efficiency (in the benign climate California) is not an excuse, its a failure of policy.

How did better energy conservation in California increase energy useage in the rest of the country, and overseas?

And why is a policy to conserve energy, that then went on to conserve energy, as stated in the article, a failure? And how does an article that specifically states :

Nothing in here should be taken as evidence that energy-efficient building codes are bad policies

...support your conclusion that the policies were bad?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

When the regulatory state does something people in the majority of this forum approve of, those people say "yay socialism."
Yet when the regulatory state makes a disaster like this, those same people say "I didn't know this was socialism."

Why is that?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Unless such regulations are to prevent fraud or violence, they are.

So it is completely unacceptable for the socialist dictators in the People's Democratic Socialist State of California to force the poor put-upon populace to take steps to ensure that their buildings don't fall down if there is an earthquake.

Instead, they should allow brilliant and super-heroic architects to build superb and completely unregulated buildings, and to occasionally rape people who bear a passing resemblance to Ayn Rand, because she's obviously secretly gagging for it and is turned on my powerful men who take what they want and are beholden to nobody.

And then they can all move to Colorado and let the commies crash trains into each other. Or something.

The problem with the People's Republic of California is that they go too far with their regulations.

Consider their notorious Proposition 65: http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/background/p65plain.html

The idea is to warn people about hazardous chemicals--but the reach is so broad that "WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm." is basically a farce--it's found all over the place on innocent things.

 

[bilby]

So it is completely unacceptable for the socialist dictators in the People's Democratic Socialist State of California to force the poor put-upon populace to take steps to ensure that their buildings don't fall down if there is an earthquake.

Instead, they should allow brilliant and super-heroic architects to build superb and completely unregulated buildings, and to occasionally rape people who bear a passing resemblance to Ayn Rand, because she's obviously secretly gagging for it and is turned on my powerful men who take what they want and are beholden to nobody.

And then they can all move to Colorado and let the commies crash trains into each other. Or something.

The problem with the People's Republic of California is that they go too far with their regulations.

Consider their notorious Proposition 65: http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/background/p65plain.html

The idea is to warn people about hazardous chemicals--but the reach is so broad that "WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm." is basically a farce--it's found all over the place on innocent things.

And that has what to do with the idea that all regulations (unless such regulations are to prevent fraud or violence) are bad? Or is this just an anecdote break, so we can all go to the bathroom before carrying on with the thread? Do you perhaps labour under the misapprehension that if you can show one example of a bad regulation, it will demonstrate that all regulations are bad?

Your logic is broken.

 

[bilby]

When the regulatory state does something people in the majority of this forum approve of, those people say "yay socialism."
Yet when the regulatory state makes a disaster like this, those same people say "I didn't know this was socialism."

Why is that?

I see what you did there; But no, I won't let you pretend that it has been established or agreed that the Building Codes in the OP are "a disaster".

I don't care whether you label this regulation 'socialism' or not; It has not been shown that there is any disaster.

Energy use has gone up. But unless you can show that the increase would not have been even greater in the absence of the regulations, you can't claim that they have failed. I mean, you can CLAIM it, but nobody who doesn't already agree with you is going to change their mind.

 

[laughing dog]

When the regulatory state does something people in the majority of this forum approve of, those people say "yay socialism."
Yet when the regulatory state makes a disaster like this, those same people say "I didn't know this was socialism."

Why is that?

Your straw man is the problem.

 

[maxparrish]

Energy independence makes no more sense than that of food independence for Germany or automobile independence for Australia. It is a world market for most goods and services, including oil, natural gas, and coal. From a consumer standpoint, it does not matter if oil is sold to Japan or purchased domestically. Domestic production may provide domestic jobs, but striving to be independent because it is inherently "better" is a fool's errand.

See economics; the laws of absolute and comparative advantage.

Twice in the last century Germany has lost a war, and the German people have suffered widespread privation and hunger, due in large part to blockades preventing imports. The Germans are fully aware of the value of food independence, even if you are not.

Your position would be true, if economics was the only consideration; but unless war ceases to exist, strategic considerations will always need to be taken into account, in addition to, or instead of, any purely economic hypotheses.

If 20th century Germany and Japan had'nt been empire building, starting and losing imperial wars to achieve food and resource independence, they wouldn't have caused the food and resource blockades they feared. Millions of dead later, they finally learned that lesson.

Energy independence is necessary ONLY in a world that has the ability and desire to blockade and embargo imports to the US. Even if that were possible, it is far easier and more economical secure supply lines through Rapid Deployment Forces, if ever needed.

 

[maxparrish]

True. Such warnings are totally ignored and forgotten - its a kind of official tagging so ubiquitous as to be irrelevant.

 

[bilby]

Twice in the last century Germany has lost a war, and the German people have suffered widespread privation and hunger, due in large part to blockades preventing imports. The Germans are fully aware of the value of food independence, even if you are not.

Your position would be true, if economics was the only consideration; but unless war ceases to exist, strategic considerations will always need to be taken into account, in addition to, or instead of, any purely economic hypotheses.

If 20th century Germany and Japan had'nt been empire building, starting and losing imperial wars to achieve food and resource independence, they wouldn't have caused the food and resource blockades they feared. Millions of dead later, they finally learned that lesson.

Energy independence is necessary ONLY in a world that has the ability and desire to blockade and embargo imports to the US. Even if that were possible, it is far easier and more economical secure supply lines through Rapid Deployment Forces, if ever needed.

The British believed that the Royal Navy would be easily able to secure their supply lines in the two World Wars, and they were wrong - despite the suppliers largely being British possessions or dominions who were unlikely to attempt to join in any blockade - or even to tolerate a blockade by a third party.

Only a few years before the Great War, it was well known in Britain that a war in Europe was impossible, due to the disruption it would cause to trade; that in the highly unlikely event that one occurred, Britain would be largely unaffected as a neutral; That any such war would be short; and that the Royal Navy would have no problem achieving naval supremacy and ensuring supply lines from the empire were barely affected.

Still, if you refuse to learn from history, then it's no skin off my nose when you repeat it.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

When the regulatory state does something people in the majority of this forum approve of, those people say "yay socialism."
Yet when the regulatory state makes a disaster like this, those same people say "I didn't know this was socialism."

Why is that?

Your straw man is the problem.

Tell me about the wonders of Scandinavian socialism.

 

[Juma]

"WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm." is basically a farce--it's found all over the place on innocent things.

Matbe you should rethink what you see as "innocent things"...

 

[arkirk]

I didn't realize building codes meant socialism.

Unless such regulations are to prevent fraud or violence, they are. And they are used to dictates the purchase and consumption habits of society to the subjective liking of the planner, they are.

In any case, even if based on supposed goal of California's energy code, such regulations have failed to deliver.

This is a highly opinionated and uninformed view of regulation. It can occur democratically with consensus agreement. It does not have to dictate, but rather merely describe the desires of the electorate. You have these ideas because our democracy is broken and you think all government and democracy are broken and fatally flawed because it is done by people. The same flaws may be found in Capitalists..who are absolute dictators of their enterprises. Regulatory flaws can be eliminated in democratic government by referendum and by attempting to echo human desires and needs. You simply hate all government.

 

[SimpleDon]

No one ever bloody reads these documents further than the title, do they?

from page 4, the section entitled What These Findings do not Mean

Because I recognize the potential for controversy, let me be clear about what this paper does not say. Nothing in here should be taken as evidence that energy-efficient building codes are bad policies

The author isn't arguing the energy efficient buildings are bad, or don't work, he's arguing that states with such policies are overstating the energy actually saved. He acknolwedges that energy efficient buildings use less energy (duh), but he's saying that:

1) having an energy efficient house increases the propensity to use energy
2) Building codes are not adhered to in practice

It's worth noting that energy useage in homes has increased over time in much of the western world. Homes are made warmer in cold times and hotter in cold times than used to be the case. The author's study doesn't mention that as an effect.

Thank you. I was really wondering if anyone had read the article.

Homes built recently are not using 80 percent less electricity than homes built before the California standards were first enacted in 1978; they are using more.

Well duh.

They also seem to be comparing 1978 construction to today's. So many factor would play into this including site placement, technology and current maintenance.


There are a lot of problems with the paper, but I would say that it is because there are too many variables involved. I give it a B+.

And a side note for those who don't know: most building codes are written by industry (aka free enterprise) and adopt by government.

You are correct. I was on the National Electrical Code committee. The NEC is the electrical code used in the vast majority the country. New York, LA and Chicago have their own codes because their codes predate the national. The national owes a lot to these city codes though, because they were written before the national code.

Anyone who wants to modify, add to or to remove a part of the code can submit a proposal to the code committee. The NEC is re-issued every three years with the changes that are accepted.

There is a subcommittee for every section of the code. The proposals for changes are sent to appropriate subcommittee,

The subcommittees are made up from all of the interested parties, contractors, engineers, equipment manufacturers, the IBEW (the electrical craft union), owners, code enforcement, etc. In my experience including a term as a subcommittee chairman it is hard to get this diverse group of interests to agree on any change. Usually an especially major change had to be considered for at least one cycle, three years, before it was approved.

The electrical code is written under the National Fire Protection Association and is the default electrical code for the country. Any local government can write local exceptions to the NEC but they have write them specifically as exceptions to the national code. That is they must say that in addition to the NEC requirements of section X,XX we require additionally Z.

The reason for the code is personnel safety and fire prevention. It is a minimum requirement and we always recommended that specifying engineers quote the appropriate IEEE recommended practices for the type of construction they were working on for a more complete installation. The NEC cable sizing for example would result in a safe installation but the recommended practice is to oversize a frequently fully loaded cable to conserve energy. A NEC sized cable might run at a 130° C, safe but a large waste of electrical energy.

 

[SimpleDon]

The paper is pretty much useless. The main reason for building energy codes is to improve the building's insulation and the building's sealing. The improvements would show up in reduced space heating requirements. He should have compared gas consumption, not electrical power use.

He created a strawman and proved that it wasn't true. He said that the building code improvements were suppose to reduce the energy consumption of the new buildings by 80% and since the electrical power consumption in the new buildings was not improved by that amount the code was a failure.

The energy consumption for air conditioning is not improved a great deal by increasing the insulation in the building. This is because the differential temperature between the inside and the outside average daily temperature isn't very large. The improved sealing would help in theory in an area with high humidity removing the latent heat but in California that is not the case.

He compared the electrical power consumption of an older building today with a new building today. He didn't account for any electrical efficiency improving efforts in the old buildings. Any replacement air conditioning units in the older buildings installed in the last 40 years would have been more efficient than the ones that they replaced because of government requirements.

He should have compared the gas consumption of building today with the gas consumption of building 40 years ago.

It is very hard to build an energy efficient building using the stick built construction that is used to build the vast majority of homes, apartments and light commercial buildings in the US. It requires a lot more attention to details to seal up the typical stick built home than most contractors are willing to put in. If you build a home require a fan test and IR scanning of the outside walls to check the insulation after the house is built and before the final payment is made.

 

[SimpleDon]

The default position of libertarians and conservatives that regulations like building codes aren't generally needed and shouldn't be written by a central authority, the evil federal government, where they are needed is wrong on both counts.

The building codes are written to provide the public a home or commercial building that meets certain minimum standards. They are written assuming that the average building owner doesn't have the required knowledge of civil, mechanical and electrical engineering required to evaluate the quality of the construction they are buying, to save the owners the costs of hiring the required expertise to separately inspect and evaluate every building built in the US, and to protect the general public from the problems with faulty construction of the buildings they are in every day.

It is important for building codes to be the same across the country so that architects, engineers, contractors and workers don't have to learn different codes across the country and to avoid the time and the expense of each jurisdiction writing their own codes. You can have decentralized government or you can have small government but you can't have both at the same time.

The national building code is the Uniform Building Code, the UBC. Just like the National Electrical Code any local authority can modify the UBC to suit local conditions but they have to write them as additions or exceptions to the UBC.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

Consider their notorious Proposition 65: http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/background/p65plain.html

The idea is to warn people about hazardous chemicals--but the reach is so broad that "WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm." is basically a farce--it's found all over the place on innocent things.

Yes. The label on chemicals has totally placed me in a state of bondage akin to slavery.

 

[laughing dog]

Your straw man is the problem.

Tell me about the wonders of Scandinavian socialism.

Given your straw man and your response, it would more sense to tell about a course in basic reasoning or the wonders of bittersweet chocolate ice cream.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

You are telling us that the rise of the cost of "home ownership*" over the last 35 years is due to increased energy efficiency standards?

No, I said that energy related building codes increased the cost of building a home in 1980 by 10 percent - its in the paper. Therefore it increased cost (selling price) to the consumer (and/or decreased the growth rate of new housing supply).

Interesting relationship between costs and price. Do you have any idea how the real estate market actually works? Do you know how home prices are set?

Also, have you ever hear the term "stagflation" or know about the 1982 recession?

Just because a cost increases by 10% doesn't mean that prices will rise by the same amount. There were many outside factors at play during this time in the housing market.

You are also telling us the policies encourages the consumption of energy? Please tell us exactly how a energy efficient building code encourages consumption of energy? (I can think of one example in commercial buildings, but want you to come up with the ones on your own.)

Its also known as the rebound effect - when efficiency is increased the cost of use drops - then consumers use more of it. Individuals add and leave on interior and exterior house lights and entertainment centers; add home office equipment, add appliances and fixtures; they add HVAC and condition more spaces and leave heat/cooling on during daily absences (etc.).

In sum, energy efficiency makes doing the activities that cause the imagined problems cheaper, which encourages more of those activities.

So they are being more efficient?

Also please tell us the original goal, because I understand the original goal to be related to geopolitics politics that brought about these codes - which included the malaise of the economy in the 1970 and acute energy shortages of that time. It was seen as a matter of national security. Are these not the reasons? Or were the reasons more nefarious such as the secret liberal cabal finding ways to subvert our freedoms. Please tell us the TRUE reasons for these codes.

As usual, politicians thought they could "solve" a sudden price shock during the Arab oil embargo and cartel by commanding consumer economics.

Have you ever heard of Iranian Revolution?

The actual problem is that energy efficiency is a faith based sacred cow among environmentalists. So much so they really don't care that it addresses a non-problem. They don't care if it does not mitigate pollution or global warming. They don't care if it does not actually save money on a cost-benefit basis. They don't care if carbon taxes, which ration through price rather than "energy regulation" ACTUALLY reduces energy usage.

I'll tell that to the facilities managers and owners who want efficient buildings because of operating costs. Once again what you prescribe to some evil liberal cartel is done by free enterprise.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem with the People's Republic of California is that they go too far with their regulations.

Consider their notorious Proposition 65: http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/background/p65plain.html

The idea is to warn people about hazardous chemicals--but the reach is so broad that "WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm." is basically a farce--it's found all over the place on innocent things.

And that has what to do with the idea that all regulations (unless such regulations are to prevent fraud or violence) are bad? Or is this just an anecdote break, so we can all go to the bathroom before carrying on with the thread? Do you perhaps labour under the misapprehension that if you can show one example of a bad regulation, it will demonstrate that all regulations are bad?

Your logic is broken.

The problem is you are assuming a binary state: that regulations are good or that regulations are bad.

What some of us are saying is that California goes too far with it's regulations.

Take, for example, that Proposition 65 that I mentioned--it results in so many warnings that it makes people ignore warnings. (Admittedly, it was a ballot initiative rather than the legislature. They haven't fixed the farce, though.)