Putting sunglasses on the sun

Event 1: Iceland volcano eruption
The volcano eruption on Iceland has had a dramatic effect on air-traffic in the northern part of Europe. Yesterday, no airtraffic was allowed in Norwegian air-space (not even emergency helicopter flights were allowed). The problem has later spread to England, France, Germany etc. Why do I mention this event here?

1) Not since "9-11" 2001 have the videoconference companies been more active. They say that companies should use their technology rather than airplanes (with CO2 emissions)

2) One of the geo-engineering options is putting man-made "sunglasses" on the sun. The real life example of a similar effect can be observed  now (though in small scale). Many thousands of years ago a big volcano eruption in (what is now) Indonesia caused our planet to reflect enough heat from the sun to cause an ice-age on planet Earth. 200 years ago we lost one summer due to a similar effect after a volcano eruption on Iceland (the temperature can drop and leave us with a very long "fall season").            

Volcanic ash cloud: no flights out of Britain
Norway's Stranded Prime Minister Uses iPad To Govern From U.S.

Event 2: Weak energy results in Enova

The Auditor General has conducted an investigation of Enova SF's operation and management - and the final report was sent to Parliament on April 15th 2010.


Enova SF is a public enterprise owned by the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy. It's main mission is to contribute to environmentally sound and rational use and production of energy, relying on financial instruments and incentives to stimulate market actors and mechanisms to achieve national energy policy goals.


Enova's realized energy results are considerably lower than the established goals. This is true both overall and for the goals related to the heat and wind power. The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy and Enova should to a far greater extent follow up on supported projects - verifying that they actually result in new environment-friendly energy production or energy savings, says Auditor General Jørgen Kosmo.

The aim is that Enova through his use of instruments to trigger projects that provide new environmentally friendly energy production and energy savings equivalent to 18 TWh / year by the end of 2011. Auditor General's investigation shows that the realized energy results are generally even lower than Enova's final reported results.

Comments 2:  I heard this on the news this morning, and I hope that the report will trigger a new discussion on how to reach our goals - both for renewable energy and of course the very important energy savings potential ("the greenest energy is the energy not used").

When the Climate and Pollution Control Directorate (Klima- og forurensingsdirektoratet) earlier this year presented their comprehensive report on how to reach our energy savings/CO2 cuts (Klimakur 2020: the target for cuts =12 million tonnes of CO2), they did not highlight energy savings in buildings as a major contributor. The reason for this is that energy saved is mostly clean energy (hydroelectric power from waterfalls). I think that this must- and will change, and Enova should be used much more actively to encourage energy saving in the more than 1 million old drafty homes in Norway. 

• Statnett is already planning major investments in the grid - allowing Norway to import/export electricity. When this has been implemented you could say that:
• 1 KWh clean energy saved in a "Jahus" in Norway reduces the CO2 emissions in Europe by between 0,5 and 1 kg of CO2 (coal-fired powerplants)
• Norway can take the role of Europe's battery: supply of clean energy (send more water through the turbines) when solar-, and windpowered energy production is temporarily reduced/stopped because of weather conditions.
• Aligning energy prices with the rest of Europe and potentially adding a new tax on electricity, will increase the electricty bill for normal families, but will....
• Reduce the purchasing power: the indicators our central bank follows say that the temperature in the economy is at a point where a hike in the interest rates should be used to reduce the pressure in the economy (inflation). Rather than do this, we could introduce higher electricity prices (same effect - but also driving energy savings)    
• Our social-democratic government believes in a redistributing some of the wealth from the rich to the less fortunate. Higher electricity prices will affect the rich more (with bigger houses and multiple summer/winter houses).      
• My wishlist includes: cheap loans, more grants from Enova and tax-relief
• More projects will get started and more energy is saved
• More activity and higher employment is a plus in these difficult financial times 
• Indoor climate is improved in these houses: which potentially could reduce lost production capacity due to sick leave (a hot topic these days in Norway)    

"Spend more (and more wisely) to encourage energy savings - and less on renewables"

Progress (status):
I discovered the other day that the "used" air leaving the house now holds 18.8 C. I checked the ventilation aggregate and noticed that the heat exchanger was off (the rotor wasn't rotating). I asked the Project Leader a week ago, but have not received an answer. 

I know that the aggregate is supposed to automatically detect when it's summer, but something must be wrong when the rotor does not operate and the supply air temperature is lower than the exhaust air (and both are below the desired room temp)?

On extra hot summer days, the temperature of the "used" air will be cooler than the outside air (closer to the ideal temperature because of the cooling effect of the heatpump) - and I would therefore expect the rotor to operate and provide "cool-exchange" in the same way we get heat-exchange during the winter?

Other relevant data:

• External temperature 11C
• Temp out of the aggregate 14C
• Temp out to the living room 21C
• And as mentioned, the temperature out of the unit / house 18.8C