Current planning laws define required energy efficiencies, building details and so on. While they’re a million miles better than they were years ago, I’m not sure how they stand up to the extremes we’re discussing here.
I think it’s probably a reasonable safe assumption to assume that anything built before 10-20 years ago needs a look at. That’s scary! Then you’ve also got a whole raft of properties where little bits have been done but given their age they are still miles off.
My own property being a prime example. Not sure how I can rectify a lot of that. Trying for the big hitters I guess.
I was just trying to deduce what the E standard was in the MEES (the minimum for a rental, though there appear to be a huge number of exemption bases). In particular, what the relative weightings are - measures that save electricity such as LED lighting count toward improving the score, but not much use in this context.
There is significant administrative cost in applying qualification limits for these sorts of programs. Add in that the limits are often arbitrary and not well aligned with who really needs the benefit, and they just don’t make much sense outside of it being something that seems like it should be sensible policy
Yeah. I remember discussing it with the person doing our energy rating. It meant we qualified for a new boiler. Most welcome, but they said others qualified for simply some LED bulbs.
Honestly kind of useless to them, but I assume their property was in a far better energy rating band than ours.
The issue I had with it was unless you know the full construction of the property it very quickly becomes a guess.
Not remotely a surprise, as this accelerating feedback loop is well understood and seen elsewhere in the North, but this analysis puts some hard numbers to it. Ice sheet is being replaced by wetlands, and methane embedded in the soil since before the last ice age is being released.
I think there’s quite a difference between an Etsy style business and one that can scale. A friend of my wife used to make bespoke cuddly toys (really unique things - we have a plushy shrimp that she made). She did try to sell the ideas to a toy manufacturer but they deemed the designs too complicated. They wanted something that could be mass produced in a factory in China. As far as I know she still does bespoke toys but it is very much a one woman business, not one that requires investment.
Yep, I get that.
But this girl wanted a small investment which wouldn’t have made a fortune, but didn’t sound like it would have lost Meaden money.
She put making money ahead of her hollow principles.
Sickening patroniser
I’ve been watching with interest the impact of El Nino and warmer temps on ski resorts across Europe and the US / Canada. Not great.
Not a great season for many, especially the lower altitude ones. Interesting to see how next year fairs in comparison. It almost feels like the end game in many places.
It is mindblowing to me that our snow cover is disappearing this early. High today is 4 C (average high is -4 C), although it is whipsawing down to -20C tonight and it will be cold all day tomorrow. But Monday-Wednesday all have forecast highs of 5 C. That will be just about it for the snow cover. The base never got very thick, and tonight will turn everything into ice.
This past Monday was a holiday here, went skiing for the day. Conditions were perfect, fresh snow, probably the best day of the entire season as it turns out. In the past we had whole months like that. I won’t be investing in new skis anytime soon.
Similarly, the Rideau Canal historically averages just under 60 days of solid ice conditions. The longest season ever was 95 days. It never opened in 2023, this year it has been open for 8 days, my guess is it will close Monday when it warms up.
I’ll be having a go next weekend onwards. Thankfully chose a high altitude resort but even at 1600m altitude conditions look a bit sparse. More higher up obviously, but even then I’ve been hearing that conditions are getting a bit slushy. it is snowing this weekend thankfully.
Western electricity prices are going to go through the roof this year. You are insulated in BC to some degree, but it would not surprise me to see the BC Hydro/PowerEx dividend paid to the Crown shrink dramatically.
They will be keeping the reservoirs as high as possible this year. As long as we get some rain in the summer, we may be okay. But am not hopeful of this
