Rebate for home improvement

Event 1:
President Obama is on a tour across the southern USA right now promoting his plans for getting the country back to work. The number one program he highlighted? "Cash-for-Caulkers," a $6 billion proposal to provide cash rebates to people who improve the energy efficiency of their homes. That's right: getting America and the world back to work means investing in clean energy programs that save cash and the climate.

“This is not a Democratic idea or a Republican idea,” Obama told his audience. “This is a common-sense approach that will help jump-start job creation while making our economy stronger.”


Comment 1:
Why doesn't politicians here in Norway do the same?

• the last few weeks have shown us what happens when the demand for electricity exceeds supply (prices go sky-high). Electrifying the oil-fields and the transport sector will further increase demand and it is much cheaper and makes more sense to reduce energy demand in draughty houses than to invest in more electricity generation capability.      
• Norway also needs more activity in the building- and construction sector (unemployment is high on the political agenda)  

Yes, we have Enova and they provide some grants, but only small amounts and not for any of the measures we have implemented in our "Jahus" (balanced ventilation, air-to-air heatpump, improved isolation and replacing old windows/doors).

Our Finance Minister even says that printed books will continue to be tax-free, but ebooks (to my Kindle ebook reader) will not be given the same tax exemption. Does this make sense?

• Cut down the forests to produce paper and packaging material (CO2 emissions)
• Transport the paper to where they print the books (fossil fueled transport sector)
• Transport the book half way around the globe to a bookstore near you (more CO2 emissions)
• Recycle or burn all the packaging material and the books not being sold 

.....or, you could buy a book online from Amazon and in a matter of minutes it downloads automatically to your Kindle. What can be more climate-friendly than that?

The same goes for music CDs - isn't it a good thing that you can buy and download music from Spotify, Itunes etc. rather than having to bother with physical media? Films used to ship on VHS cassettes, and now DVDs are common - but soon we will get rid of the physical media here too.   

Content does not weigh anything and travels with the speed of light.  

Progress:
Yesterday, the "too warm attic" not only caused snow on the roof to melt and create icicles as it fell from the roof - but on the inside of the roof there was condensated water that ran down the inside of the roof and tried to get out. Some of it didn't - and started to find its way into our living room.

The attached pictures show that icicles also form under the roof - indicating that there is condensated water coming out from under the roof. The Project Leader was here today to look at this new surprising effect and promised to fix it. I believe there he has a fight going on with the subcontractor who placed the ventilationsystem in the cold attic (Rockwool and Glava who produces isolation material say that you should avoid placing ventilation systems in cold attics).