What’s the financial impact of a home’s 50-year operating energy vs. initial cost?
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| Posted in General Questions on
Has a good analysis been done comparing the financial/ environmental impact between the operating energy needed over 50 years ( or longer) and the initial cost/ environmental impact of building a house? This seems like an essential green question to me.
Thanks for any help on this question.
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James
I just reread this article by John Straube that applies to buildings in general...not just residential. He refers to a 1966 study that shows that at that time, operational energy dwarfed the embodied energy costs after fifty years.
http://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-012-why-energy-matters
He says that not much has changed since then...
James,
Many such spreadsheets have been made, and you can create your own if you want. Different spreadsheets get wildly different results, depending on:
1. Assumptions about the rate of inflation for energy prices.
2. Whether the spreadsheet considers opportunity costs (the lost income that might have been achieved had the money used for energy improvements been invested elsewhere).
3. All of the other usual variables: house size, orientation, design details, insulation levels, assumptions about airtightness, assumptions about construction costs, and climate.