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Like so many aspects of the home, planning and thought is the key to having an efficient and cost-effective home heating system.
There are of so many variables when one thinks of the best way to plan your heating system.
Are you constructing a new home? Do you live in one that is low in energy efficiency? Are you refurbishing an old property where you have the opportunity to install the latest and best heating systems?
The answer to all these questions will form the rationale that you need to reach to solve the problems.
We live in a world where there is now huge awareness of the carbon footprint we leave by our various activities and our lifestyle. Fossil fuels, which for the most part, are the providers of heat in Irish homes, are running low in the world. Oil is running low caused by greater demands on the supplies by emerging consumer countries such as China and India. This of course, affects the price, which reached historic highs in 2008 and forced nations to consider alternatives.
And alternatives there are. Ireland and many parts of the world rely too much on carbon fuels to supply our heat. Carbon based fuel is any fuel whose energy derives principally from the oxidation or burning of carbon. Carbon based fuels are of two main kinds, bio-fuels and fossil fuels. Whereas bio-fuels are derived from recent-growth organic matter and are typically harvested, as with logging of forests and cutting of cur n, fossil fuels are of prehistoric origin and are extracted from the ground, the principal fossil fuels being oil, coal, and natural gas.
From an economic policy perspective, an important distinction between bio-fuels and fossil fuels is that only the former is sustainable or renewable. Whereas we can continue to obtain energy from bio-fuels indefinitely, in principle the earth's reserves of fossil fuels was determined millions of years ago. Therefore they are fixed as far as our foreseeable future is concerned, although the great variability in the ease of extraction of fossil fuels makes its endgame scenario one of increasing prices over one or more centuries rather than of abrupt exhaustion.
From the perspective of climate and ecology, bio-fuels and fossil fuels have in common that they contribute to the production of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which has emerged in recent decades as the fastest-changing greenhouse gas. However, bio-fuels actively participate in the carbon cycle today by photosynthesizing carbon dioxide, unlike fossil fuels whose participation was long ago, and can therefore in principle bring atmospheric CO2 into equilibrium not possible with the continued use of fossil fuel.
The damage caused by all this interaction and over dependence on fossil fuels in particular is irreversible. We live on a planet where much of the harm is done and cannot be undone. Only in the last decade, have there been intensive efforts by major superpower countries to reduce our carbon footprint. The term was not in existence ten years ago; now we use it daily, as we are more aware of the importance of protecting the environment.
In this section, we examine the sources that provide our homes and industry with heat.
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