On October 10th, Air Flow hosted a class about all-electric building design. Heat pumps, low water temperature heating systems, low-lift/high-efficiency design, displacement, facades, etc. I know, pretty fancy.
One of the class attendees shared that their company just completed an all-electric design.
“What was the system?” I asked, hopefully.
Rooftops with electric heat. VAVs with electric heat. Electric baseboard heat. COP of 1 everywhere. 67% wasted energy getting the power there.
Oh man. That hurts my heart. And I threw up in my mouth a little bit too.
“Why?” I asked emphatically, knowing full well what the answer would be.
“It’s a developer building. They are not paying the utility bill. Rising interest rates forced them to cut costs.”
Ouch.
Blame the developer? Hardly. Why is our code so loose? The residential building code is even worse.
I’m not going to be a person who just beefs about a problem. I’ll put my money behind it.
Let’s chip in and hire a lobbyist to improve our short-sighted code and raise the standards around here.
Minnesota is going to be carbon neutral by 2030 and it’s THE LAW. And it’s not like their economy is suffering. Is cheap the way we want to distinguish ourselves?
Shoot, on some fronts Illinois is ahead of us. Illinois?!!?
Wisconsin has a piece of legislation that is ‘would be nice by 2050’ with no teeth.
It doesn’t really matter how you feel about climate change, beneficial electrification, or heat pumps. Wisconsin should have higher standards than ‘it’s too expensive’ no matter what the system is.
The race to the bottom makes us all losers.
Tom Gelin
Air Flow Inc.
8355 West Bradley Road
Milwaukee, WI 53223
414-351-1999
