Australia's Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Malcolm Turnbull MP, today announced the phasing out of incandescent light bulbs.
He said, “A normal light bulb is too hot to hold – that heat is wasted and globally represents millions of tonnes of CO2 that needn’t have been emitted into the atmosphere if we had used more efficient forms of lighting.”
“These more efficient lights, such as the compact fluorescent light bulb, use around 20 per cent of the electricity to produce the same amount of light.”
“A compact fluorescent light bulb can last between 4 and 10 times longer than the average incandescent light bulb, which can lead to major savings in household energy costs.”
So why not just run some advertisements? Why ban the old technology?
According to the media release the banning will save on average 800,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year during the 2008-2012 period. Given annual emissions are predicted to be about 603 million tonnes each year for this period then we are looking at a saving of 0.13 percent of total annual emissons.
Other abatement measures are predicted to save a total of 35.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
from http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/projections/pubs/stationaryenergy2006.pdf
I have been searching but I can't find how much electricity it takes to produce one of these light bulbs. Has anyone taken this into account? Also Canada has a recycling program to remove the mercury etc under negative pressure. Again, how much electricity to do this per globe???
Amusing set of comments in this blog.
I am having trouble finding a fluoro to fit into the socket inside the electric oven, to keep the temperature down.
Hs anyone ever done a cradle to grave costing of the fluoro versus the incandescent, including the cost of production of raw materials and the cost of special disposal? Seems to me we are jumping the gun by mandating fluoros.
On bottled water, simply take the popular brand EVIAN and spell it backwards.
This is a lightweight blog to fit a lightweight subject. Where does our Constitution empower a minister to dictate which light is used in private by consenting adults?
What about car globes? Because there are no replacements for them. There are some L.E.D.s are for sale but there are not recomended for use on road cars as they don't produce enough light to be cosidered legal or safe. In short Governments love to ban things like light globes and leaded fuel but don't like thinking things through. For example the repacment adative for lead in fuel is more toxic than the lead it self.