Cap And Trade Rises From The Ashes – It made it into the Senate

It’s Jam Band Friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ16hEpB_Sk

Conventional post election wisdom has the Cap and Trade legislation being declared dead. But, it is sitting in a Senate that the Democrats control. Will they bust it lose during the end of the year session. Who knows, but I think the issue will not go away so sooner or later something will have to be done. I mean Russia caught on fire. How much more does it take than that.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/nov/4/clean-coal-is-as-dead-as-cap-and-trade/

MILLOY: Clean coal is as dead as ‘cap-and-trade’

Mitch McConnell had better study up on the election results

By Steve Milloy-The Washington Times

While we shouldn’t expect our left-wing elitist president to understand Tuesday’s electoral rejection of his “progressive” prescriptions for America, we should expect Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, to get it.

But Mr. McConnell seems to have missed the message, at least when it comes to “cap-and-trade” – odd for a coal-state politician. The day after the election, Mr. McConnell said, “The president says he’s for nuclear power. Most of my members are for nuclear power. The president says he’s for clean coal technology. Most of my members are for clean coal technology. There are areas that we can make progress on for the country.”

Aside from the canard of President Obama sincerely supporting nuclear power and the fact that Republicans ought to avoid the loaded and already co-opted-by-the-left word “progress,” so-called “clean coal” is a form of Obama-think – a discredited cap-and-trade concept that was more trap than sincere policy.

Some in the coal industry and some coal-burning electric utilities had been talked into supporting cap-and-trade, provided that taxpayers and ratepayers forked over billions (if not trillions) of dollars for so-called “carbon capture and sequestration” (CCS) – that is, burying utility carbon-dioxide emissions deep underground and hoping they stay there safely.

But to the extent that any so-called environmentalists paid any lip service to clean coal and CCS, it was only to lure coal and utility suckers into cap-and-trade. Does anyone really believe, after all, that the greens would allow utilities to inject underground billions of tons of highly pressurized carbon dioxide all over the nation? They fought tooth-and-nail, after all, to prevent the storage of sealed casks of spent nuclear fuel one mile underground in the Nevada desert.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm-pFqdqcZY&feature=related

Which would they prefer, a tax on carbon? This guys lists all the reasons for cap and trade mechanisms to be set up by the Federal Government and heavily policed by the Federal Government. Nonetheless he likes carbon taxes because they supply more stability. But his belief that it won’t be passed on to the customer is asinine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSJdjb6K5i4&feature=fvw

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http://www.greenchipstocks.com/articles/cap-and-trade-legislation/810

Cap and Trade Legislation is Fatally Flawed

My First Ever Mea Culpa

By Nick Hodge
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

We may never see cap and trade in this country.

Those are words I never thought I’d write.

In fact, I’ve been touting the benefits of a cap and trade market since 2007. But new ideas, unraveling facts, and recent events have changed my thinking.

So today, I’m publishing my first ever mea culpa.

Cap and Trade Legislation is Fatally Flawed

My First Ever Mea Culpa

By Nick Hodge
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

We may never see cap and trade in this country.

Those are words I never thought I’d write.

In fact, I’ve been touting the benefits of a cap and trade market since 2007. But new ideas, unraveling facts, and recent events have changed my thinking.

So today, I’m publishing my first ever mea culpa.


Carbon Should Still be Priced

To be clear, I’m not saying that carbon shouldn’t have a price. By all means, it should.

What I’m saying is that cap and trade isn’t the way to implement it.

At the end of the day, carbon dioxide is a harmful waste product that needs to be handled. Companies don’t get free passes for treating and disposing of other waste streams their businesses generate. Why should carbon be any different?

Not charging companies for emitting carbon is giving them free reign over something they cannot and will not ever own: the atmosphere.

We don’t let companies freely dump waste into rivers or lakes… We don’t allow companies to dump waste in forests… So why, then, are we still letting companies dump a known pollutant into the atmosphere unchecked?

This is why everyone speaks of how cheap coal is. It’s not really that cheap, we just don’t include the price of carbon in its costs.

Carbon isn’t a business externality — meaning, companies that produce it can shift the cost to society — and it can no longer be treated as such.

The Trouble with Cap and Trade

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You can go to the article for the rest. I personally support a carbon tax. But I have always said that Cap and Trade is what we get because high finance wants it that way. More Monday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdAhR-c–20&feature=related

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The ANWR Is Nothing But One Giant Dry Hole

Oil People are nothing but proven liars. There is always “oil down there” they tell investors. But only 10 or 20 of the holes they drill actually produce any oil, so is it any wonder that they are unprepared when they come in? Especially in the case of the Gulf Spew if they come in violently.

http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/7696-the-peak-oil-crisis-the-leading-edge.html

The Peak Oil Crisis: The Leading Edge

By Tom Whipple
Wednesday, November 03 2010 01:01:22 PM

Do you remember the furor over drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge a few years back? The whole country was up in arms. At various times some 50 to 60 percent of Americans favored drilling in the area as they were told this would result in lower gas prices.

Last week the USGS lowered its estimate of the amount of oil that could be extracted from the region all the way from 10 billion barrels down to less than one billion, making drilling in the area uneconomical. By the way, the amount of crude being pumped down the Alaskan pipeline now has fallen from 2 million barrels a day (b/d) when the pipeline first opened back in the 1970’s to about 600,000 b/d in recent weeks. The trouble is that when the flow of oil falls below a quantity estimated to be 200-300,000 b/d (some say 500,000) the line will have to be closed as there will simply not be enough hot oil being sent down the pipeline to keep it from freezing in winter.

Last week an organization in California, The Post Carbon Institute, released a new book, “The Post Carbon Reader,” which draws a much broader picture of the serious issues facing mankind. With 30 authors, each specializing in some aspect of the multiple troubles we face, the scope of the book touches on nearly every aspect of our civilization that is out of balance, unsustainable, and headed for a fall. The basic proposition of the book is that the world has reached the limits of growth in terms of its population, economic activity, and the ability of the atmosphere to absorb more carbon emissions. Either the world’s peoples must transform themselves into a sustainable number living in a sustainable manner or there will be many dire consequences right up to the possibility that the human race itself could become extinct. Clearly, this is serious stuff.

As long as a problem is perceived as being decades, or even a few years away, it is not a concern.

Some hold that our sustainability problem started when we first started planting crops and domesticating animals 10,000 years ago. This thesis says if we had stuck with hunting and gathering as a race we would have been able to sustain our act indefinitely, but then we would never have had enough surplus energy to learn reading & writing, and to build cities, the Internet and space ships. Our immediate problem, however, started in earnest with the industrial revolution about 200 years ago when we first started digging up prodigious quantities of coal and feeding it into steam engines. It wasn’t long before we struck oil and the rest is history. The world’s population went from an estimated 5 or 10 million when we first started farming, to a billion when we started serious coal digging, to about 7 billion today. We also got incredibly richer in terms of material goods and could sure get around much faster.

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More tomorrow.

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Amish Space Heaters Are Fraud, Edin Pure Heaters Are Fraud, and Ultraviolet Heaters Are Fraud

The reason that the title is true is that they charge like 500 percent too much money. I don’t care what Bob Vila says modern 40 $$$ electric heaters are not dangerous and have temperature controls. So why don’t all of these people go to jail? Well, for one, they change their companies’  names every year so they are hard to track down. But there is an argument in the energy efficiency community about what constitutes saving energy, ie. saving money.

http://www.buyenergyefficient.org/energyefficientspaceheater.html

Energy efficient space heater

Click here to see our selection of energy efficient space heaters.

Overview
Energy efficient space heaters are one of the best ways to cheaply lower your heating bill.  According to US Government statistics, the average American spends $1,900 per year for home energy of which nearly half goes to heating and cooling.  Space heaters can help lower this bill.  Here is the fundamental information you need to make the correct choice for your situation.

Potential Savings

By lowering your home thermostat only 5 degrees and employing the use of energy efficient space heaters in frequently used rooms you can lower your heating cost by 10% and eliminate 800 pounds of C02 emissions from the environment.  Space heaters will re-warm your space for a fraction of the cost associated with running the central heating.  But, to make sure you get the most savings, you have to select the space heater that is right for you and your home.  Numerous choices exist including Convection, Micathermic, Ceramic, Radiant, Kerosene, Wood Burning and Gas.  With so many choices, we recommend doing your research before making a purchase.   No one choice is the correct choice.  It will depend on your needs as to what the correct type of space heater is best for you.

Factors to Consider

The first, and obvious factor, is temperature.  You will probably want to exclude any that don’t have automatic temperature control as the space you are attempting to heat will either be too hot or too cool and you will constantly have to be monitoring the unit and turning it on or off.  This is both uncomfortable and time consuming.

Everyone is well aware of the effect of temperature on comfort.  However, the second, and less discussed component of comfort is relative humidity.  Relative humidity is the percent of water vapor in the air at a specific humidity.  In simple terms, a dry house with 20 percent relative humidity will need a higher temperature to feel as warm as a home with medium humidity of 60 percent.  That is because your body is giving up heat by the process of evaporation.  The lower the relative humidity the faster your body gives up this heat as the higher moisture of your body evaporates to the atmosphere.

A third factor to consider is wind speed.  As the air in your house moves it affects the rate at which your body gives up its heat.  This is due to the process of convection which is the attraction of hot air to colder air.  A house in which the heat is constantly running feels cooler.  This is one of the reasons the old steam style radiant heaters felt so warm.  There is little wind speed when compared to a centralized blower.  It’s also the reason a fan feels so good in the summertime.

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http://www.nlcpr.com/Deceptions4.php

Deceptive and Overpriced
Radiant Space Heater Scams

There are a number of companies selling electric heaters that imply that you will save a great deal of money, some even claim you will cut your costs by 50%. This is extremely misleading. It is sort of like claiming “Save 100% on your heating bills*” where * = “don’t turn it on”. It isn’t a fraud, but is certainly misleading.

Examples are EdenPure, iHeater, so called Amish heaters, the chinese made Heat Surge Roll-n-Glow (their marketing material is the most honest of the bunch).

All portable electric heaters consume electricity and degrade it into heat. All are 100% efficient for one obvious reason. The heat has nowhere else to go except into the room. Anyone that makes a claim otherwise, especially outrageous ones like “10x more efficient than a space heater”, is making a fraudulent claim.

In the images below, cut from an advertisement by Krystal Planet, we see some typical claims — let’s examine them:

a) no combustion, flames or fumes.This is true of all electric appliances,including your coffee maker unless something is terribly wrong.

b)less electricity than a coffee maker. If this is true, then it will give off less heat than your coffee maker. Can you heat your house with a coffee maker? If you can, I’d like to hear about it 🙂

c)Does not dry out the air. Of course not. Electric heaters never dry out the air. How could they? Where would the water go? No matter how you heat up the air in a room, the warmer air can hold more moisture so the relative humidity will go down — unless you want to use a humidifier, vaporizer or keep the kettle boiling on the stove.

d) healthy comfortable infrared heating. Infrared is radiated heat, like you get from a heat lamp or the sun. The product details below imply that the heat source is four 375W heat lamps, but if they are inside the wooden looking box in the picture, then they are not shining on you. They would heat the box and the box in turn would heat the air nearby, which is called convection.

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So do they make a natural gas space heater that is safe to use indoors?  I have no idea. More tomorrow.

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Energy Efficient Doors – They save year round

http://www.homedoctor.net/doors-windows/residential-doors/energy-efficient-doors

Energy Efficient Doors

If you live in a cold climate, chances are that your home is equipped with a variety of defenses against the frigid air outside. A sufficient amount of insulation and storm windows throughout the home are just a few ways to keep the interior of the home warm and cozy. But because a third of heat loss typically occurs through windows and doors, energy efficient doors are among the best defenses against heat loss.

Making Your Current Doors Energy Efficient

Energy efficient doors are insulated and sealed tightly to prevent cold from entering and warm air from leaking out. Regular doors can also become energy efficient doors by adding a few simple weatherproofing accessories, including bottom sweeps, typically made from vinyl, and magnetic weatherstripping.

Energy Efficient Material of Choice: Wood

Energy efficient doors are made from a variety of materials, but wood is considered an excellent insulator. According to professionals, wood is 2,000 times more efficient as an insulator than aluminum, 415 times more efficient than steel, and 16 times more efficient then concrete. For additional energy efficiency, storm doors may be added as well. Storm doors work by trapping air between the main door and the storm door.

High-Quality Materials for Energy Efficient Doors

A good energy efficient door will have high quality hardware. It will also have the best weatherstripping, which offers the best seal. When choosing a door made of materials other than wood, make sure it has a finish that won’t rust. If you are purchasing weatherstripping or replacing your existing hardware, choose the highest quality products you can find. High quality products will not only provide the best seal, but they will also last much longer than lower quality products.

Energy Efficient Doors and Savings

Energy efficient doors provide a wide variety of benefits. Because they keep warm air in and cold air out, you will use less artificial heat; the same is true for the warm summer months. Instead of running the air conditioning all day, you will use it less as more cold air will stay inside.

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More tomorrow.

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Global Resource Depletion OR Recycling A Waste Of Time – Which is it

shhh It’s Jam Band Friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hntXAO_Rq7c

OK so which is it, are we running out of stuff or not? Is 6 Billion people too many or not? Have we cut down way too may trees or not? I believe these answers are knowable. Are the Ocean’s fished out or not?  Is Global Warming happening? The issue seems to be Price. If Global Warming were happening then carbon would be expensive. But what if price isn’t the issue when capitalists and nations treat resources as if they were “free”.

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http://www.planetthoughts.org/?pg=pt/Whole&qid=3267

Blog item: Recycling? What A Waste.

By Jim Fedako

This fall, school kids across the country will again be taught a chief doctrine in the civic religion: recycle, not only because you fear the police but also because you love the planet. They come home well prepared to be the enforcers of the creed against parents who might inadvertently drop a foil ball into the glass bin or overlook a plastic wrapper in the aluminum bin.

Oh, I used to believe in recycling, and I still believe in the other two R’s: reducing and reusing. However, recycling is a waste of time, money, and ever-scarce resources. What John Tierney wrote in the New York Times nearly 10 years ago is still true: “Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America.”

Reducing and reusing make sense. With no investment in resources, I can place the plastic grocery bag in the bathroom garbage can and save a penny or so for some more-pressing need. Reducing and reusing are free market activities that are profitable investments of time and labor.

Any astute entrepreneur will see the benefit of conserving factors of production. Today, builders construct houses using less wood than similar houses built just 20 years ago. In addition, these houses are built sturdier; for the most part anyway.

The Green’s love for trees did not reduce the amount of wood used in construction; the reduction was simply a reaction to the increasing cost for wood products. Using less wood makes financial sense, and any entrepreneur worth his profit will change his recipe to conserve wood through better design or by substituting less dear materials for wood products.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pojL_35QlSI&feature=related

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http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-10-20/global-resource-depletion

Published Oct 20 2010 by The Oil Drum: Europe, Archived Oct 20 2010

Global resource depletion

by Ugo Bardi

André Diederen’s recent book on resource depletion

I have been thinking, sometimes, that I could reserve a shelf of my library for those books which have that elusive quality that I could call “modern wisdom”. Books that go beyond the buzz of the media news, the shallowness of politicians’ speech, the hyper-specialization of technical texts. That shelf would contain, first of all, “The Limits to Growth” by Meadows and others; then the books by Jared Diamond, James Lovelock, Konrad Lorenz, Richard Dawkins, Peter Ward and several others that have affected the way I see the world.

I think I’ll never set up such a shelf, I have too many books and too few shelves; many are packed full with three rows of books. But, if I ever were to put these books together, I think that the recent book by André Diederen “Global Resource Depletion” would make a nice addition to the lot.

The subject of resource depletion, of course, is well known to readers of “The Oil Drum”. So well known that it is difficult to think of a book that says something new. Diederen, indeed, succeeds in the task not so much in reason of the details on the availability of mineral commodities that he provides, but for the innovative way he describes our relation to the subject. In other words, Diederen’s book is not a boring list of data; it is a lively discussion on how to deal with the implications of these data. It is a book on the future and how we can prepare for it.

To give you some idea of the flavor of the book, just a quote:

(p. 43) “… it isn’t enough to have large absolute quantities (“the Earth’s crust is so big”) and to have all the technology in place. (p. 33) … we have plenty of water in the Mediterranean or Atlantic Ocean and we have ample proven technologies to desalinate and pipe the water to the desert, so, why isn’t the Sahara desert green yet?”

This is, of course, the crucial point of resource depletion: what counts is cost, not amounts (I plan to use this example in my next talk!). Diederen is an unconventional thinker and he goes deeply into matters that, in some circles would be thought to be unspeakable; for instance (p. 41)

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Price? Really. More next week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a9mx1IVZzU&feature=related

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Train Keeps Arolling All Night Long – Well part of the night anyway

Here is the invite for the next “Open House” for high speed rail.

www.springfieldrailroad.com

http://www.vectorstl.com/

Springfield Railroad Corridor Study
c/o Vector Communications
701 N. 15th Street, Mailbox 43
St Louis, MO 63103

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I know that the above image is not screen centered, but you can see the important stuff and you can go to the websites listed above to see the whole thing.  More tomorrow.

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Residential Geothermal Is The Way To Go – Damn the cost…full speed ahead

One of the best purveyors of geothermal in the country and it is right next door in Fort Wayne.

Save energy with water furnace, geothermal, or geoexchange systems.

Choosing a Residential WaterFurnace Comfort System Is Simply Smarter

WaterFurnace manufactures and sells more geothermal systems for homes than anyone else in the business. Why? Because we offer a wide variety of residential geothermal products. Our dealers and installers are the most highly trained in the industry. And we are wholeheartedly committed to customer support. All that makes us the first—and smartest—choice for a residential WaterFurnace system: the system that’s “Smarter from the Ground Up.”

Geothermal vs. Ground Water vs. Water Furnace
Geothermal energy has been used to heat and air condition buildings for several decades, and, during that time, these geothermal systems have been called many different things. Some of the more popular variations include geo-thermal, geoexchange, ground-water, ground-water assisted, ground-water-source, water-to-water, and even our company name, water furnace heating and cooling.

All of these terms, though, convey the same thought: use of geothermal heat pump technology to tap the energy in the earth’s surface and drive a heating and air conditioning system for both residential and commercial uses. The result is a green or natural heat pump that saves energy and benefits the environment.

For more information on geothermal technology, go to How it works.

Geothermal Heat Pumps
Cleanest, Safest, Most Reliable choice.
Savings Calculator
Keep more of what you earn.
Literature
Product Brochures & Technical Literature

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More tomorrow

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Energy Conservation According To Google – Mixed record

Google has this Feeling Lucky button that just sucks when it comes to energy issues. The company itself has a mixed bag. They helped push an energy fuel cell of a dubious nature by installing 3 of them on their main campus. They do like solar and wind and have both in operation or have bought energy from those sources. But this button is just rotten. I am usually bored with posting when I do this now, but in the beginning I was excited. I know you say, “How could Doug be bored with the exciting field of residential conservation”? I guess I want another oil spill or maybe Russia to catch fire again. Sick isn’t it. The first three you get if you used the regular search are not much better:

  1. Residential Energy Efficiency

    www.ServiceMagic.com Get an Energy Audit For Your Home. Free Auditor Listings. Search Now!?

  2. Residential Energy Efficiency

    www.Dow.com/HealthyHome Show Us How By Sharing a Video. Win A Renovation Makeover Package!

  3. Energy Efficient Building

    www.energyefficientbuilders.com Green construction & contracting Save 50-80% on heating and AC

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I mean DOW?

And too my surprise you can not even use the get lucky button anymore. Really? Why do they even have it up there. Apparently the “read your mind” algorithm they just introduced broke the get lucky thingie because as soon as you type in a single letter that option goes away. But when you just click on it empty it thinks you want to get lucky about the google LOGO. These people are dorks.

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-just-effectively-killed-the-im-feeling-lucky-button-2010-9

Google Just Killed The “I’m Feeling Lucky Button”

Nicholas Carlson | Sep. 8, 2010, 1:35 PM
Google just effectively offed one of it’s oldest, quirkiest features – the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.

The good news is that in the process, Google added at least another hundred million dollars in revenue.

It used to be that you could go to Google.com, type a search query into the search box and then, by clicking “I’m feeling lucky,” go directly to the page that would have been listed as the top search result.

But then today happened, and Google announced “Google Instant.” Now, when you go to Google.com and start typing a search into the search bar, Google instantly begins showing search results. Users no longer have a chance to click the “I’m Feeling Lucky Button” before they begin seeing search results. Yes, the button is still there on Google.com – but essentially, the feature is dead.

So, how does killing the “I’m feeling lucky” button gain Google more than $100 million?

In 2007, Google search boss Marissa Mayer estimated that 1% of all Google searches go through the I’m Feeling Lucky button – skipping Google’s search results pages entirely

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More Tomorrow

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Foam Roofs – They’re better than tar and gravel

This is so cool in so many ways. No heat absorption. High insulation values. Walkable. Why would anybody do anything else.

http://www.getwithgreen.com/2007/11/11/roofing-looking-for-an-eco-friendly-alternative-for-a-flat-roof/

ROOFING: Looking for an eco-friendly alternative for a flat roof?

November 11 2007

Do you have a flat roof, or an area of your roof that is flat?   Some of us do, and when you talk to almost any roofer they will give you standard options such as tar and gravel, or large asphalt sheets.  Both of which are not good for decreasing urban heat.   Well there is an option that is a bit greener.  Foam.  Yes a foam roof.

Cedric, and his wife Mai, in Redwood Shores, CA, recently installed their foam roof as an alternative to tar and gravel.  Using a product from Sierra Spray Foam Roofing the couple simply removed the gravel from their existing room, and applied the foam product from Sierra Spray.

spray foam green roof spray foam green roof alternative
OLD ROOF                                                              NEW ROOF

GetWithGreen.com does not know the chemical breakdown (environmental friendliness) of the actual foam contents itself, or its sustainability, but we like the other eco-friendly positives that Cedric and Mai talk about in their blog:

  • We didn?t need to rip out the existing roof, just to remove the gravel
  • The roof is white so it is a ?cool roof?, keeping our house cooler in summer and avoiding the ?urban heating? effect of dark roofs
  • The foam material provides both water-protection and insulation, thus improving the energy efficiency of our house
  • In 10 to 15 years when the roof needs to be redone, we simply need to add another layer of foam to give it another 10 to 15 years of life!

Cedric also tells GetWithGreen.com that the insulation value of the foam roof is extremely high because there is no air circulation at all — the whole roof is one piece.  The effective insulation of this roof is much higher than equivalent R value using traditional technologies that let some air circulate at the junctions between the insulation boards.   The roof can also be walked on.

Pricing:  $6 per square foot

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More tomorrow.

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