First off, you were looking to modify an OLD building. That is not a great time to install geo. The deep loops are too expensive esp. when you have to drill more than 2.
Secondly, if building a new building, esp. homes, and a builder can spend loads of money on AE, OR put more into insulation (such as aerogel windows/doors, or 2x6 studs combined with R40 insulation in the walls, and R60 in the attic).
Once you have a lot of insulation, then geo-thermal is dirt cheap to install. Basically, you put a small horizontal loop in the backyard.

In the end, the economics of Solar (which is the best AE on most buildings), will drive better insulation, along with geo-thermal.

It's funny that you blame America for invasion.
1) North Korea with china invaded south Korea.
2) France asked America to help in Vietnam which we did.
3) reagan tried to stop massacre in Libya, but showed yellow belly when we were attacked.
4)we did go into Panama but only to stop noreiga. We also invaded Grenada to stop a coup that had ussr, North Koreans, and Libyan soldiers helping
5) at end of cold war, we, as part of UN, stepped into eastern Europe to stop the genocide that was going on.
6) as part of UN, we stopped Iraq invasion/occupation of kuwait
7) we invade and leave Afghanistan ( too early ) to take out AQ for bombing America and European targets
8) we unfairly invade/occupy Iraq.
9) we reoccupy Afghanistan to help their gov. Stop Taliban.
10) we help Europe invade Libya, but we had to be pushed hard to do it.
11) we were going to go into syria to stop their chemical weapons but Russia, china Europe, and GOP push Obama to accept a deal in which Syria/Russia announce all chem plants and will destroy them
12) ISIS formed and America staying out. Then ISIS captured chemical weapons that Russia/Syria said that they did not have. So we start supporting various groups, with Europe pushing America to invade.
13) Russia invades Crimea, America does nothing.
14) Russia invades Ukraine and then America pushes Europe for sanctions.
15) America pushed for sanctions on Iran to get a nuke deal. However, middle East and many European not happy with deal.

And yet, other than second invasion of Iraq, America has only responded to events that others did. In many cases, it was Europe pushing America that lead to military actions.

One huge trend in work over the last century or so has been towards automation. We need fewer people, or can do more with the same number of people, by automating some or all of peoples' jobs.

We don't need everyone to "build software" as you may think of it. However, we do need a substantial part of the workforce to automate their own jobs. Think about it. For most typical jobs, the ability to automate your work makes you more productive, more valuable, and can make you feel better about your life.

Automation, of course, means instructing machines.

Gut feeling says that you guys go to china.

Unless something new has happened in the last decade, the only source leaks I'm aware of are NT4 and Win2k. So if you were willing to do without x86-64, most of ACPI, UEFI, IPv6, and pretty much every piece of hardware on your motherboard, I guess you could use that.

You can probably live without Metro, so there is that.

Really? What nation are you from because America has NOT benefitted from any trade deals, outside of NAFTA, while the other nations manipulate their money and put on backdoor tariffs.

Not likely. Other nations such as china have implemented 'consumption tax', for all goods, which is then forgiven on locally produced goods.

Was this not invented by a limey that got upset at the west for not looking at it, so took it to china? Or was that something else?

That many nations are already working towards this. It is far far cheaper to build automated weapons than to turn humans into effective fighting machines. In addition, small nations will see this as opportunity to compete against west, china, or Russia. Heck, Syria used chem weapons on their citizens and then they and russia cut a deal with the west to remove all chem weapons. However, once ISIS took over several locations, Syria admitted that they and Russia were lying and ISIS now has chem weaps.

Think about what I wrote. Currently, unsubsidized solar is expensive to put in. So, the builder has a choice of lowering HVAC energy demands and installing less solar, OR simply installing a lot more panels. Builders will find it cheaper to install more insulation, use aerogel windows for places like basement, bathrooms, maybe bedrooms, etc. Likewise, they will switch over to using geo-thermal HVAC, esp if house is well insulated. In time, aerogel windows and geo-thermal HVAC will become so cheap that older homes will switch.

We need to drop the subsidies and simply say that all buildings less than 6 stories are to have enough on-site AE to equal the energy used for the HVAC (and require AC as well). In addition, the local utility must buy any daily extra at the maximum price that it costs them to buy electricity from elsewhere.

If she gets that passed, then not only will it put a stop to energy growth, but it will pretty much encourage cheaper buildings, and storage mechanism.

8-10% of France's electricity comes from Fossil fuel. They can easily kill these off with AE, combined with Nukes. In addition, by pushing for EVs, they can quit importing oil, since they are one of Europe's largest oil importers.

not everybody thinks that Americans are assholes. Just idiotic cowards like you.

the meme of Germany importing comes from the far right in America.
You will find that their emails are constantly full of lies.

hard to tally it up, when the means keep being shifted.
For example, they were supposed to use up nearly all of the nuclear 'waste', but was then stopped from breeding.
Then the far left fights against burying the 'waste' over at Yucca Mntn.
The smart thing is for us to push Gen IV reactors to burn it up, but we need to make it so that once a site is approved, then the protests and BS stop.