The Danish newspaper Politikken wrote today on their website about how the Danish gas compagny DONG attempts to hinder plans of green energy in local areas. Decades ago the Danish goverment invested billions (DKR) in establishing a national gas network (DONG), and planned whole regions to be gas dependant to make it rentable. This now clash with the current reality and initiatives of Danish counties that wish to build houses with greener energies such as sun and biomass fuel. These initiatives have lately grown forward to meet the goals of reducing CO2 and protecting the environment, also specified by the goverment. It is another dillemma, or Catch-22, of a goverments long term planning including law regulation that now disharmonize with new regulations of reducing the use of energy and the effects on the environment.
I post this example because it is a good example of how strongly govermental planning, both short term and long term, blocks what I like to think of as more stable development and generally innovative thinking. One could think of the goverments compagny, DONG, thinking as backward thinking.
As an example we already know that we use enormous amounts of energy building and maintaining houses (it is a good sales pitch for selling more products), but law often hinders the possibility of developing and using alternatives. Examples of these are isolation - where a there are minimum demands for new houses, but there are also strong regulation on using only existing materials. Using collected water for flushing toilets are regulated by demands as well in Denmark. And in Estonia using a circulating system to the ground water beneath the house as a heating is rejected in about 90% of the cases because of theoretical possebility of damaging the ground water. But the same system is very common in Swedish houses. Naturally these regulations and laws are often to protect from damage or harm, but a general manipulation with what is possible have side effects that stops more intelligent alternatives. And as long as money is involved the process of altering the laws is slow - just look at how fast the alternative to the car is regulated.
So, depending on the contry, the political law regulations seems to work as breaks on on innovative development initiatives in general. Laws could work the opposite way, but unfortunatly they are normally designed to be protective rather than progressive.
I post this example because it is a good example of how strongly govermental planning, both short term and long term, blocks what I like to think of as more stable development and generally innovative thinking. One could think of the goverments compagny, DONG, thinking as backward thinking.
As an example we already know that we use enormous amounts of energy building and maintaining houses (it is a good sales pitch for selling more products), but law often hinders the possibility of developing and using alternatives. Examples of these are isolation - where a there are minimum demands for new houses, but there are also strong regulation on using only existing materials. Using collected water for flushing toilets are regulated by demands as well in Denmark. And in Estonia using a circulating system to the ground water beneath the house as a heating is rejected in about 90% of the cases because of theoretical possebility of damaging the ground water. But the same system is very common in Swedish houses. Naturally these regulations and laws are often to protect from damage or harm, but a general manipulation with what is possible have side effects that stops more intelligent alternatives. And as long as money is involved the process of altering the laws is slow - just look at how fast the alternative to the car is regulated.
So, depending on the contry, the political law regulations seems to work as breaks on on innovative development initiatives in general. Laws could work the opposite way, but unfortunatly they are normally designed to be protective rather than progressive.
