Ban the bulb, in Ireland

taken from recent email from greenpeace:

" Ireland's Environment Minister announced a law yesterday to ban energy-wasting lightbulbs by January 2009. We did it!

The Irish Government's 2009 ban is the most progressive in Europe by far. They still need to really pass the law of course, and we still want at least one more country in the EU to follow suit -- setting the standards for EU legislation on energy efficiency."

Castro inspire us to use smart buildings?

In the article making buildings behave better in the Economist the market failure to reach smart houses is discussed. With smart I mean low over energy cost, ie both constructions and use. Since constructurs do not use the houses they build they also do not have to pay the electricity bills. Hence very little interest (from the constructors) to build smart houses.

In a recent newsletter from TreeHugger it says that "if every computer manufacturer sold sustainable green computers tomorrow, it would take only three years for the great majority to be green. If every car manufacturer sold only energy-efficient cars starting tomorrow, it would take ten years for almost all cars to be green. Yet even if every building was LEED Platinum starting tomorrow it would take a hundred years for the building stock to turn over."

Since the IPCC says that buildings are the biggest household culprit then of course the focus also should be on improving the current buildings ...