Top Europe court chides Switzerland in landmark climate ruling
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phys.org
Another case: you aren’t allowed to have the kitchen exhaust go outside in newer buildings. As a result, people keep their windows open when cooking which is very inefficient in winter time.
I can go on and on, I have a half dozen examples.
Making laws which favor climate is good but there should be a process to regularly review these laws to make sure they are working as intended.
A typical US vented dryer has a 5500 watt element, although it doesn't use that amount of power continuously since it cycles on and off.
I have no idea how much power a typical dryer uses in Switzerland, but the heat pump ventless dryers you can get in the USA now typically use around 1000W when they are running. They typically take around 90-120 minutes to dry a load depending on how big it is and how much water there is to evaporate.
This white paper has a nice graph that shows power usage over time: https://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/pt_awards/SEDI_Fact_S...
You may notice that, while the heat pump dryers take longer to dry, they use so much less power that it more than offsets.
I’m not even sure how true that is with the latest all-in-one washer/dryer combos. The ones released in the U. S. just this year, one of which we have (GE) can do a full load wash and dry in about two hours, which is probably about how long our old separate units would take. Or at least close enough that we don’t notice or care. A load of blankets might be 2.5 hours.
And if takes a few minutes longer, the lack of a vent and the fact that it runs on a 120V plug more than makes up for it.
Haven't used all-in-ones, but one possible concern: lack of pipelining (to use a CPU term).
I wash darks first, and when they finish washing I put them in the dryer. While darks are drying, I can put whites in the washer. When the darks are dry, I remove them, and then put in whites to dry. (Continue for any further cycles/types of clothing.)
With an all-in-one I have to wait for darks to completely finish before anything can be done with white (etc). Is this a problem for you?
Anyway most washing machines (those who also dry and those who only wash) and dishwashers absorb around 2kW when they heat the water, for washing machines typically only one time (two if they also dry) for dishwashers 2 or 3 times. Running time depends of the program you choose: the quickest wash in general is 15' as the quickest dry, a typical wash for misc clothes is 1h/1h30', drying is 20' (much depend on how quick you can run the washer spin cycle, at 1500rpm 15' drying is enough in most cases). A dishwasher takes typical cycle is 1h30'.
Of course professional dishwashers run in few minutes, and they are far larger than the "standard 60x60x90 cm size", washing machines and dryer take the same times even at nearly-industrial product.
Apparently, the central heating system takes ~24h to heat up (floor based, heated water pump), so they can’t adjust the temperature on an hourly/daily basis (it’s set and forget).
1. the loss from people opening their windows because it's too hot is still actually less than the loss of having a per-unit heating system.
2. the expense of adapting the system to allow per-unit controls is actually higher than the loss of people opening their windows because it's too hot.
I mean, it's also possible that the decision to centralize it was based on false assumptions, and that it actually is less efficient. But never underestimate the power of efficiencies of scale.
The central heater have a job: keep hot water at a certain temperature, the distribution system have a job: keep hot water flowing at a certain rate, so you can get more or less water per unit issueless (at least in a certain range, projected up front where pumps are dimensioned), individual thermostat valves have a job decide how much water have to flown locally in an apartment or depending on the heating element per-room.
The issue happen with badly designed systems. There was an era in the '60s where heating fuel (oil at that time) was so cheap that builders decide it was cheaper to heat much and open the windows as needed instead of design a proper system with margins. Back than there was not much climate analysis when you project a new building. Most condos was built just for speculation, with little attention to the tech. Most buyers do not care much even today.
https://www.angloinfo.com/how-to/switzerland/family/pets-ani...
It's forbidden to flush the toilet in condos during night hours.
Re that flushing, I heard it so many times. Never, ever had I faced it, neither in Zurich, Lausanne, Geneve or rural Vaud where we live now, 14 years here. 1am showers and flushing were not rare.
It must be true, I heard expats on forums complain about this a lot (top complain along with churches going mental 24h, this I saw only in Zurich, never in french Romandie where I lived), but somehow I managed to avoid them. Generally cities are easier with these.
Probably why most pet owners in CH elect to keep cats instead.
I support dog policies like cleaning after crapping, leash walking in public, maybe even barking hours, but dog licenses? License numbers? Mandatory insurance? Dog tax? This is a bit too much. What about working dogs, like sheep herding dogs? Switzerland is definitely not for me, even though it's nice to be able to vote minarets out of Geneva. I live in a country where dog ownership laws are not enforced and there are incidents every couple of years with people getting mawed or killed by stray dog packs. You also get to be chased or harassed by free roaming dogs as a cyclist or hiker, so it's a good idea to have pepper spray or hiking poles on you.
What about churches?
I was ready to question the court's decision. How much impact could a 8.7M nation living in a pristine country with a lot of train and bicycle usage for transportation have on GHG emissions, right? Then I saw the first post and thought about it, maybe the court was right?
Is that because of energy efficiency? That's impressively stupid. At least they could have some sort of a switch that opens/closes the flap.
In the UK a lot of housing comes with the extractor fans above the cooker that just use a filter and vent everything inside the kitchen itself.
These usually pull from the kitchen area (and bathrooms) to create a directional flow of fresh air through the house.
The extra cooker specific filter prevents the main filter getting clogged with fat. Previously people tried systems with a way to bypass the filters when the cooker hood was on.
Can’t imagine anyone would want that to be ‘recirculated’.
I'm not denying that poor laws and regulations exist and have negative consequences, just that the probability that any specific example exists, compared with it being an example of someone who learned about it from a focebook meme or hard-right newspaper opinion column and decided to repeat it on the internet in an angry game of telephone, is quite low in my experience.
But, you never know, maybe I can Google it and an actual reputable source that genuinely cares about the effectiveness of climate change legislation will have reported on this.
That's assuming the laws even have anything to do with climate change. Commonly laws intended to do one thing are re-interpreted as failures to do another completely different thing.
> The Swiss association of Elders for Climate Protection—2,500 women aged 73 on average—had complained about the "failings of the Swiss authorities" in terms of climate protection that could "seriously harm" their health.
Is this “interpretation” of the ECHR really as disconnected from the plain meaning of the words as it sounds? What sort of beneficial government policy would the judges be unable to order?
[...] nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
Personally, I agree with both results, but not the process, since they're both judicial overreach.
And that's where naming ECHR “top Europe Court” is a bit of a problem because for non-EU countries, this is in fact the only European court (and as such saying it's the “top court” is “technically correct” but misleading) and for EU members, there's no hierarchy between ECHR and CJEU, which is the Union's top court, but the later's actual coercive power is much higher, making the “top court” qualifier misleading when talking about the former.
What you say is true, but useless on its own. Whole world knows that, its perfectly logical, but thats about it.