As seen from my earlier comments, I agree that the targeting of ordinary incandescent light bulbs is not justified
(and not warranted as “promoting innovation”, fot the reasons just given, above)

But OK:
Let’s say politicians remain determined about this and other efficiency based bans.
Is there a better way for all concerned?
Sure there is – taxation on products based on efficiency.

Now, noone likes taxes.
But these are taxes that people would accept.
Firstly, since they know – and would be reminded – that bans are the alternative,
Secondly, since politicians can give them less sales tax on efficient alternatives.

Taxation is better than bans because:

– Bans are normally applied to products unsafe to use.
But we are not talking about lead paint here.
The object is simply to reduce energy consumption, like the use of electricity.
Throughout all markets,
taxes, levies, duties are more common and more acceptable than bans to reduce consumption.

– Taxation allows continued purchase of products or product versions which offer other advantages to
consumers. Energy efficiency isn’t all they want in a product!

– Like bans, taxation lowers sales.
Unlike bans, taxation gives direct government income with the lowered sales.

– Government income can be massive,
since these are often cheap popular products that can absorb a large taxation.

Take ordinary incandescent light bulbs:
Much cheaper than the opposition,
high sales (2 billion in USA),
high turnover (relatively short 1000 hour lifespan),
so sales reduction from a 1-2 dollar tax raises future government billions of dollars
- and that is just from light bulbs.

– Government income can be used to lower energy use and emissions (home energy and insulation
schemes, renewable energy projects etc) more than remaining product use (like light bulbs) raises them.

– Sales taxes on efficient products can be lowered, making them cheaper

– Taxation is easier than bans to apply without having to worry about product variety and availability,
easier to adjust, and to adapt to new market conditions with new products,
and can be lifted when no longer required (such as when electricity emissions are judged to be low enough)

So, while taxation is still wrong for the rerasons given,
if bans are the alternative, a tax is better all round.
For more see http://www.ceolas.net/#gg5x

While Steve Heising makes some interesting points,
CFL right-or-wrong doesn’t justify banning the alternatives

(and re mercury,
http://www.ceolas.net/#li198x
deals in depth with why the “coal power emissions are worse” argument doesn’t hold up – including that EPA enforcements and recent new technology implementation means USA is well on track with 90% mercury emission reduction target by 2018 anyway )

Put another way:
Americans (like Europeans) choose to buy ordinary light bulbs around 8 to 9 times out of 10 (depending on light industry data used, 2008-9)
Banning what people want gives the supposed savings – no point in banning an impopular product = little savings!

If new LED lights – or sufficiently efficient incandescents, CFLs etc – are good,
people will buy them – no need to ban ordinary light bulbs (little point).
If they are not good, people will not buy them – no need to ban ordinary light bulbs (no point).
The arrival of the transistor didn’t mean that more energy using radio tubes were banned… they were bought less anyway.

Also see my earlier comment…

Mr. Heising’s comment, as long-winded and banal as it is, so sanctimonious and loaded with sarcasm, addresses not a whit this primary consideration. It may prove to be true that the CFL bulb is the way to go. That decision ought to be left to consumers and producers, and implemented by way of unfettered exchange rather than at the point of a gun. State coercion of such decisions tramples on our most basic private property rights, a threat to modern society much more imminent and real than any global warming nightmare.

Clearly, however, Mr. Heising, self-appointed seer, knows best, and since the government happens to see the light, he enthusiastically supports its tyranny, at least in this instance. I wonder if there are liberties of his own with which he is unwilling to part – even in the event that someone else should determine that for him to do so is for the greater good?

When you can show me peer reviewed proof that Burning Fossil Fuels at an ever increasing rate is not having an impact on climate change, that Ice does not melt at 32 Degrees, and that mercury released in burning coal and all the other contaminants from coal ash, not to mention mountain top removal mining are safe, you will not convince me that saving energy by phasing out the current inefficient lighting is not a good idea.

We did not ban Incandescent lights here in the US. One can still get them for heating chicken coops. Instead, we increased the efficiency standard for lighting products. There are incandescent, inefficienct flourescent technologies and a number of products that exploited loopholes in current standards that no longer make the cut or provide a new minimum lumens per watt.

We can no longer afford to continue burning coal and releasing CO2, HG and other compounds into the atmosphere as if they were of no consequense. Since incandescent lamps costs just 25 cents but come with a $50 utility bill, you are free to continue to stockpile and use your incandescents. We can only hope that energy costs continue to rise so that your shortsighted choice to stock pile edison lamps costs you 100 in utility bills before you see the light.

If you are concerned about the mercury and your electricity is supplied by “not so clean coal”, for each incandescent lamp you use, more than 5 Mg of mercury is emitted into the environment at the power plant. So this means the amount of mercury and other pollutants that are kept out of the air, out of the watershed, and out of the food chain (in the form of less pollution from not using the incandescent lamp) is actually greater than the amount of mercury in a modern CFL. So if you use one and recycle it you net less mercury released in the environment. If you throw it in the trash, it end up in the landfill where it could form methyl mercury (reacting with the methane) and thus escape and contaminate everthing every where but you still have less mercury in the environment.

The amount of coal that is not burned is significant in that the whole coal to steam to electricity to transmission energy conversion process is more than 50% waste before the electrons even get to your meter. Then you want to waste another 90% as heat, it’s your choice. You can use your toaster to heat your kitchen too.

CFL’s cost a $1 or $2 or so here, but you can spend more and get a better product. If you are not happy with a CFL take it back and try a different one. If you put more than a 20 watt cheap one in a can upside down in the ceiling, the heat will rapidly kill the electronics in the lamp.

Sure the industry is all hip to the governments efforts to kill off their 125 year old cash cow. If I could sell you 10 regular light bulbs 1 per year for 10 years, or just sell you 1 lamp that actually lasted 10 years, I would go for the 10 lamps. Its good for the sales numbers. And then I would make the other lamp as cheap as I can, But I would charge more for it cause I dont make that many relatively speaking. And maybe I wouldn’t make it so good so that you’d go back to buying the 10 lamps I’d rather sell you cause they have such a high profit margin.

Then I would generalize about how bad the 1 was and that therefore all others like the 1 are bad. Keep on keeping on. Climate change is a hoax anyway. Glaciers are not receeding, the polar ice is not melting, and nothing bad could possibly happen to all the coral reefs and plankton in the ocean related to my personal preference for the incandescent lamp.

Or maybe quit buying the cheapest CFL’s that China, Inc. can make.

Problem is that practically 100% of all CFL’s are made in China. Even all the CFL’s lamps that have a power factor >.9 are also made in China. There is no standard that requires anything better than .5 or that requires manufacturers to properly recycle their products or to actually make them last as long as the UP nine years clams on the label. So you get what they want to sell you.

There are CFL’s that actually print useful information on the packaging. Lamp color temperature and color rendering index are two commonly used lighting metrics that are missing on most packaging. Most marketers are content to claim warm white, soft white, day light or other terms that have no meaning, (kinda like natural or green) on their packaging. Marketing types are pretty creative with terms like soft white, warm white, and every other possible description of daylight or a more natural white… when 2700K is yellow. warm yellow, fuzzy yellow. just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

A CFL with a magnetic ballast (120 cycle flicker) with a single yellow phosphor (and the green from the Mercury) is going to be horrible.

On the other side of the spectrum, a DAYLIGHT 5000 – 6500K COLOR, 85 CRI with electronic three-way ballast (30,000 cycles/second with 15, 23 and 27 watt positions) with a three phosphor RGB blend is going to be better for reading, while a 15 or 20 watt 3500K color or even a 2700K color is going to be better for relaxing by the fire.

A CFL with an electronic ballast with .91 power factor, 5550K, 93CRI (with the addition of 2 more rare earth phosphors) would be still better for a daylight color match with a higher Color Rendition Index

CFL’s that will start down to -20 degrees are still going to take time to warm up to full brightness when its cold. New elecronic ballasts will typically strike instantly but will still require some time to warm up to full brightness as the lamp warms up to proper operating temperatures. More expensive phosphor blends will last longer and produce a fuller spectrum and higher color rendition index for brighter more natural looking colors.

A CFL’s that give you a sunburn could also stimulate the skin to produce vitamin D. So don’t sit within one foot of a cheap lamp all day. And I think UV should be listed on the label. Some lamps add UV shields to prevent UV emissions. Too much UV is certainly bad, but so is too little. There are “Locker Room” CFL’s that actually kill odors and germs with UV (typically not the UV from the Mercury, but uv produced with additonal rare earth phosphors. The UV then reacts with a titanium dioxide catalyst to oxidiize chemicals and kill bacteria and viruses. There are also grow lamps and animal health lamps that are designed to emit some UV to better mimic natural sunshine. There are specific UV lamps for sterilizing water and air in air handling units.

Many CFL’s come with Energy Star ratings, but many that do not are also excellent choices as the Energy Star rating only requres a 0.5 ballast factor and does not differentiate those that have a 0.9 ballast factor. It would be easier to tell the bad apples from the good ones if there were more standardized labeling.

There are CFL lamps rated for 15,000 hours or more than 2x as long as the average cheapest crap that China can make and the big boxes can stock. There is variation in any production batch and some lamps are more likely to fail in particular applications. Add together cheap electronics, cheap phosphors and cheap parts and you get what you pay for. It traveled a long way to get here from China and it could have been damaged in transit. Or it could have been a bad batch or it could have been a failure of a lower quality component to begin with. If you don’t take it back and make the manufacturer/retailer honor the warranty, they won’t get any better cause they don’t have to and they dont want to.

Most stores that sell CFL’s take them back for recycling and proper handling. Home Depot, Ace Hardware, Wal-Mart, Ikea, and more all offer CFL recycling. So unless you never go back to the store, and can’t remember to take back a bad CFL, there is no excuse not to take them back where you purchased them. You can even mail them in for recycling if you prefer. Or even mail them to the EPA, if you want to risk mailing a suspicious white power and a electronics package to the government. Maybe the best thing is to stick then in a bag in a box with a Business Reply Envelope from a bank credit card offer you don’t want and drop it in the mail.

New dimmable reflector CFL lamp designs are better but still have issues. New cold cathode CFL designs however are perfectly suited for dimming and flashing applications and come in all kinds of Las Vegas colors.

Yes you can break the lamps. And you should take some precautions if you do. If you are particularly clumsy or just unlucky, you can buy CFL that are contained in a shatter proof coating. I personally like the ones that are enclosed in the round ball format with an outer glass bulb. I use them in the bathroom. The light starts out dimmer and then warms to full brightness which i personally find to be an advantage when coming in from the dark. I also like the new smaller reflector style bulbs that reflect more of the light out of the fixture. Both these formats minimizes the chance for breakage of the inner fluorescent tube.

It doesn’t really work all that well to put a standard spiral lamp in a fixture like a 6 inch ceiling can if most of the light never makes it out of the fixture. So you put in a higher wattage CFL, and the heat (which rises) trapped in the can cooks the electronics. The new BR30 and BR20 choices for ceiling cans can be enhanced by adjusting the depth of the socket, and by replacing dark trim rings with white or specular colored trim rings. While your at it, consider the air tight gasketed trim insert to cut down on the chimney effect of cans in ceilings. Hot lights in small chimneys tend to create a stack effect that pulls conditioned or heated air out of the room costing you twice. In the summer, you pay more for airconditioning to remove the heat from the lamps.

Again, repeat after me. CEO’s, accountants and sales managers do not kill cash cows, snakes don’t eat their tails, and mercury pollution and CO2 from coal fired power plants doesn’t matter and marketing people never make stuff up.

If you want to stockup on incandescent lights go for it. We’re not going to make them any more because after 125 years we can’t make them work any better than 10 lumens per watt. The companies that make them are not going to stop making them and the people that can’t connect the dots between the inefficiency of the light bulb and a higher electric bill won’t stop buying them. So the only force left that can impact this problem is government. You know protect the common good of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations. I can hardly wait for the Light Bulb police to come knocking on doors in my neighborhood.

Compare 10 lumens per watt the light produced by an incandescent to 3rd generation 4-foot linear T8 fluorescents in offices and schools which produce nearly 100 lumens per watt. CFL’s are in the 40-60 lumen per watt range, LED’s are also in the 40-60 lpw range). The same companies make all three kinds of light bulbs and they don’t pay the utility bill or worry all that much about Climate Change Implications or Pollution. All that matters is short term profit and cash cows that never die are very profitable. GE was working on a better higher tech version for the incandescent light bulb, but has since dropped the effort to focus on LED’s. because you can violate the laws of physics any more than by denying the existance of gravity makes one weight less.

So in the mean time, write the date on the base of each CFL/LED you install, the store you bought it from and the number of years it is supposed to last. That way, you’ll know which store to take it back to and what brand not to buy next time. If enough of us did this, the retailers would quit selling the inferior products.

Were seeing a lot of LED Chistmas lights over the last few seasons. There have been problems with the CHEAP ones. Cheap LED’s BR30 style spot lights are now coming out in the $15 to $45 range. The good ones however cost $85 – $125, so lets all rush out and buy the cheapest ones. If we don’t like them, then all LEDS are bad.

LED’s have issues too. They are great for flashlights, not so great for general glare free shadow free illumination. Many claim specifications that are purely fiction (according to LBL, CLTC, LRC and others.) It’s as if the salesmen and the marketing department just made up something to adorne the packaging because the engineering specifications were not all that stellar. The color shits as they age, and many have heat related parblems and premature failures.

So go ahead continue using incandescents as long as possible. Deliberately plan ahead to waste energy and natural resources, ignore any pollution and carbon emitted at the source, and send too much money to the utility each month. Harping about the nanny state banning your favorite sushi flavor because it happens to contain toxic bacteria, heavy metals and could be fatal is nothing to worrying about. You likely bought some cheap crap that failed in the first 2 weeks. Your probabally to busy to recycle all those plastic water bottles.

You got some bad lamps, you got taken. Why not try a better product next time. Even a couple of “better” products side by side. If you don’t like them after 2 or three weeks, take them back and try something else. (I always reserve final judgement on the color of a new fluorescent lamp until after a 100 hour burn-in for the phosphors to stabilize. Otherwise new lamps even the good ones often look dim or harsh.)

Otherwise, if you’re still too lazy (or too dissappointed) to take back bad bulbs or turn off the lights when you leave the room, get an occupancy sensor and a dimmer. That way you will have complete control and energy efficiency because the occupancy sensor will turn off the lights automatically (or after 30 seconds to 30 minutes) Might as well add automatic and remote control the inefficient light source. The more time its off, the less it costs to run.

Cheap LEDS are coming. It is kind of like betting your children’s future on Carbon Capture and Sequestration and safe handling and storage of Nuculear waste (which are both myths) while you continue down a road that ultimately leads to mutually assured planetary wide habitat destruction.

May organic LED’s or some other new technology will win. For me, I’m betting on daylighting, an old technology that is new again, and on Electron Stimulated Luminescence (TM). If this flies, it promises to make both the LED’s and CFL’s look like bad dreams. It is reported to lasts 6000 hours. It is fully dimmable, it looks like an incandescent, it contains no mercury, it costs less than $20 and it should be in retail stores in 2010.

But, for any meaningful progress now on Carbon Reduction efforts, and for the sake of economics and cash flow, (you keep more money in your pocket each month, and send less each month to the utilities), using the average or better CFL’s is the way to go.

As Americans, we amount to nothing more than wasteful energy hogs. We use 2x as much per capita as any other nation. It doesn’t have to be this way except for the profits in fossil fuel energy and the inefficiency inherent in the least first cost 125 year old technology. What would happen if everyones energy bill was reduced by half? not everyone will stockpile lamps and buy and sell at flea markets and in the black market. The us electicity consumption will drop significantly when the good old incandescent is no longer on store shelves everywhere.

Why the world will fall apart, our utilities will have to stop building so many new coal fired power plants, they will have to lay off people, our economy will be shattered. Our god given right to privatized the profits and exclude all externalities in the accounting is threatened. Or we could become energy efficient and we could all stop bowing to the Chineese Owners of our debt, the Arabian Oil Sheiks (they don’t like us, they like our oil money that we borrowed from the Chineese), and the Corporate overlords who don’t kill the cash cows and take their profits over seas. Or Not. Each of us gets to decide how it is going to go. History will surely record our generation(s) as the one(s) responsble for destroying the only habitable planet we have. For if we don’t each get started fixing the problems, there’s going to be no turning back the clock for future generations for all the species that inhabit this planet.

Regarding macbeach’s comment about them being ideal in hard-to-reach places, you can also get ultra-long-life incandescents for that same space. They are, in essence, higher voltage bulbs that you run at standard line voltage. They are dimmer than they would be at the higher voltage they can take, but they run at a lower efficiency and don’t wear out nearly as fast. So there are alternatives for those spaces. In fact, in my case, the CFL would require replacement much *sooner* than the incandescent in the same spot (unless I get really lucky).

It’s too bad no major media source ever questions the government mandates for things like this. Instead they simply accept that our overlords know best.

Otherwise, this is a great article.

-Jose

Amazingly, so few people question the BASIS of the bans:
there is no energy shortage, and if there was, the price rise would mean people buying more energy efficient products anyway
(compare with cars).
No need to legislate for Obama Cars and Obama Light Bulbs!

As for emissions: Light bulbs don’t give out gases, power stations might.
Even if it’s (wrongly) assumed that power stations and low emission distribution can’t be dealt satisfactorily, light bulb tax would give government money and keep choice, though it’s also wrong in principle (why should emission-free households be taxed).

For anyone interested:
Why All Energy Efficiency Regulation is Wrong
http://www.ceolas.net/#cc2x onwards
The Consumer Side
Product Performance — Construction and Appearance
Price Increase — Lack of Actual Savings: Money, Energy or Emissions
Choice and Quality affected
The Manufacturer Side
Meeting Consumer Demand — Green Technology — Green Marketing
The Energy Side
Energy Supply — Energy Security — Cars and Oil Dependence
The Emission Side
Buildings — Industry — Power Stations — Light Bulbs —
A New Car Deal for America: All cars available and their emission output lowered