Housing

The value of a well insulated home

While browsing Cleantechnica I found the answer of a key question I have been having ever since writing my Master’s thesis. French houses are leaky ” thermal collanders “ as 20 million accommodations have to be weatherized. Potential savings could be the equivalent of 200 TWh of electricity per annum, knowing that the total electricity

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France unveils new efforts to renovate buildings

It had been a long while since my last post on Cleantechies, as I didn’t post during summer. But I am back with a post on a topic close to my heart as my Master’s thesis was on it. The French residential sector could benefit immensely from energy efficiency efforts and it seems the current

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An innovative idea to push for building retrofits.

Houses and building energy efficiency is a hot topic for me since I wrote my Master’s thesis on it back to 2006. Then I discovered that France had no less than 20 million buildings to insulate ( not bad for a country with 65 million inhabitants ) Now according to the Guardian, the UK Green

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United States on an energy conservation quest

President Obama is willing to save his country a lot of money : $40 billion, or around 30 billion euros, annually. These huge sums of money equal to reducing energy use in commercial buildings 20 percent by 2020. As Elisa Wood wrote on Cleantechies : ” To achieve the goal, the Obama administration in 2011

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Prepare yourself ! Climate resilience

Some people prepare for Judgment Day, some others for a Zombie apocalypse. A few prepare for an alien invasion or when their government will start going dictatorship on them. I won’t discuss here these eventualities. However I seriously advise you to increase your climate resilience. With a warming and weirding climate, as well as with

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The importance of good insulation

My current apartment in Valenciennes – Northern France – is located in a recent building (2000). And far from me the idea of bragging, but until temperatures dropped below zero (Celcius) I almost didn’t not use my electric heaters. My flat has double glazing windows and quite well insulated thick walls. The thermometer located in

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A $370 billion idea for European buildings

Here we go again with a brand new article on Cleantechies. This time, we focus on one of my favorite topics : insulating buildings with a new study on the very matter. Here is the introduction : ” According to a new study presented by the Renovate Europe Campaign, weatherizing European buildings in an important

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