Mostly Economics digs up this tidbit from Larry Summers’ speech at a New Delhi think tank:
(When I was President of Harvard), we made no effort in assessing the cost of the buildings to build in the life cycle costs of the buildings, whatever it cost to heat them in the winter or whatever it cost to cool them. So what happened?
People built the buildings in ways that invested as little as possible in insulation so that they could succeed and quite consciously chose to forgo opportunities to invest in energy saving that would pay itself back in three or four years when we were able to change that focus by providing special loans and such we produced a somewhat better outcome.
Mostly Economics uses this admission to propose default rules for economically efficient environmental architecture. Read the post here.
Tags: default rules, environment
July 8, 2009 at 6:03 am |
I think it is fantastic how the stimulus funds are making a difference. They are being taken advantage of all the time with the installation of geothermal heat pumps to replace high energy heating and cooling systems.