Dimwits: Why 'green' lightbulbs aren't the answer to global warming

They have to be left on all the time, they're made from banned toxins and they won't work in half your household fittings. Yet Europe (and Gordon Brown) says 'green' lightbulbs must replace all our old ones.

Every day now we are being deluged with news of the latest proposals from our politicians about how to save the planet from global warming. We must have 'a new world order' to combat climate change, Gordon Brown proclaimed yesterday. We must have strict 'green' limits on air travel, proposes David Cameron, so that no one can afford to take more than one flight a year.

A fifth of all our energy must be 'green' by 2020, says the EU, even though there is no chance of such an absurd target being met. We must have 'green' homes, 'green' cars, 'green' fuel, even microchips in our rubbish bins to enforce 'green' waste disposal.

Have these politicians any longer got the faintest idea what they are talking about? Do they actually look at the hard, practical facts before they rush to compete with each other in this mad musical-chairs of gesture politics?

Take just one instance of this hysteria now sweeping our political class off its feet: that which was bannered across the Daily Mail's front page on Saturday in the headline 'EU switches off our old lightbulbs'.

This was the news that, as part of its latest package of planet-saving measures, the EU plans, within two years, to ban the sale of those traditional incandescent lightbulbs we all take for granted in our homes. Gordon Brown followed suit yesterday, saying he wanted them phased out in Britain by 2011.

No doubt the heads of government who took this decision (following the lead of Fidel Castro's dictatorship in Cuba) purred with selfcongratulation at striking such a daring blow against global warming.

After all, these 'compact fluorescent bulbs' (or CFLs), to which they want us all to switch, use supposedly only a fifth of the energy needed by the familiar tungsten-filament bulbs now to be made illegal.

Among the first to congratulate the EU's leaders was UK Green MEP Caroline Lucas, who claimed that 'banning old-fashioned lightbulbs across the EU would cut carbon emissions by around 20 million tonnes per year and save between e5 million and e8million per year in domestic fuel bills'.

Who could argue? Certainly one lot of people far from impressed by the EU's decision are all those electrical engineers who have been clutching their heads in disbelief. Did those politicians, they wondered, actually take any expert advice before indulging in this latest planet- saving gesture?

In fact, the virtues of these 'low-energy' bulbs are nothing like so wonderful as naive enthusiasts like Ms Lucas imagine them to be. Indeed in many ways, the experts warn, by banning incandescent bulbs altogether, the EU may have committed itself to an appallingly costly blunder.

It is a decision that will have a far greater impact on all our lives than most people are yet aware, presenting the UK alone with a bill which, on our Government's own figures, could be £3 billion or more.

The result will provide a quality of lighting which in many ways will be markedly less efficient. Even Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor who put forward the proposal, admitted that, because the energy-saving bulbs she uses in her flat take some time to warm up, she often has 'a bit of a problem' when she is looking for something she has 'dropped on the carpet'.

But even more significantly, because they must be kept on so much longer to run efficiently, the actual amount of energy saved by these bulbs has been vastly exaggerated.

So what are the disadvantages of CFLs over the traditional bulbs we will no longer be allowed to buy? Quite apart from the fact that the CFLs are larger, much heavier and mostly much uglier than familiar bulbs - and up to 20 times more expensive - the vast majority of them give off a harsher, less pleasant light.

Because they do not produce light in a steady stream, like an incandescent bulb, but flicker 50 times a second, some who use them for reading eventually find their eyes beginning to swim - and they can make fast-moving machine parts look stationary, posing a serious safety problem.

Fluorescent CFLs cannot be used with dimmer switches or electronically-triggered security lights, so these will become a thing of the past. They cannot be used in microwaves, ovens or freezers, because these are either too hot or too cold for them to function (at any temperature above 60C degrees or lower than -20C they don't work),

More seriously, because CFLs need much more ventilation than a standard bulb, they cannot be used in any enclosed light fitting which is not open at both bottom and top - the implications of which for homeowners are horrendous.

Astonishingly, according to a report on 'energy scenarios in the domestic lighting sector', carried out last year for Defra by its Market Transformation Programme, 'less than 50 per cent of the fittings installed in UK homes can currently take CFLs'. In other words, on the Government's own figures, the owners of Britain's 24 million homes will have to replace hundreds of millions of light fittings, at a cost upwards of £3billion.

In addition to this, lowenergy bulbs are much more complex to make than standard bulbs, requiring up to ten times as much energy to manufacture. Unlike standard bulbs, they use toxic materials, including mercury vapour, which the EU itself last year banned from landfill sites - which means that recycling the bulbs will itself create an enormously expensive problem.

Perhaps most significantly of all, however, to run CFLs economically they must be kept on more or less continuously. The more they are turned on and off, the shorter becomes their life, creating a fundamental paradox, as is explained by an Australian electrical expert Rod Elliott (whose Elliott Sound Products website provides as good a technical analysis of the disadvantages of CFLs as any on the internet).

If people continue switching their lights on and off when needed, as Mr Elliott puts it, they will find that their 'green' bulbs have a much shorter life than promised, thus triggering a consumer backlash from those who think they have been fooled.

But if they keep their lights on all the time to maximise their life, CFLs can end up using almost as much electricity from power stations (creating CO2 emissions) as incandescent bulbs - thus cancelling out their one supposed advantage.

In other words, in every possible way this looks like a classic example of kneejerk politics, imposed on us not by our elected Parliament after full consultation and debate, but simply on the whim of 27 politicians sitting around that table in Brussels, not one of whom could have made an informed speech about the pluses and minuses of what they were proposing.

Even if it does have the effect of reducing CO2 emissions, those reductions will be utterly insignificant when compared with emissions from China, for example, which is growing so fast it is using half the world's cement, 30 per cent of the world's coal, one quarter of copper production and 35 per cent of steel.

There was not a hint of democracy in this crackpot decision, which will have a major impact on all our lives, costing many of us thousands of pounds and our economy billions - all to achieve little useful purpose, while making our homes considerably less pleasant to live in.

Such is the price we are now beginning to pay for the ' ecomadness' which is sweeping through our political class like a psychic epidemic. The great 'Euro-bulb blunder' is arguably the starkest symbol to date of the crazy new world into which this is leading us.

"Me either. I have a 12' high ceiling fan I got tired of changing light bulbs in."

They solved the opposite problem in my case. When I finished my basement I had to use recessed can fixtures in order to have enough ceiling height. Unfortunately due to heat buildup I couldn't put anything bigger than a 60 watt bulb in the fixtures, and even with spotlights the basement always had a very dim glow. I replaced the spots with CFLs that put out a pure white light equivalent to a 100 what bulb and it made the space much more livable, and actually runs cooler than the 60w spots. And as an Irony the 100w CFLs cost less that the 60w spots, and you can only tell the difference if you look straight up into the can.

I also use smaller CFLs in closets and enclosed fixtures, again not because of saving money, but because they are cooler for a given level of light.

I also have them outside too, since I keep those light on for 10 hours at a time in the winter. The conventional bulbs had an irritating tendency to burn out when you The only weird thing was that on a day when we went to ten below, the outside lights came on orange for about 10 minutes.

I probably have more than 30 CFL in my house and not one bought for the purpose of saving the planet. And there is no way I'm going to give up the dimming lights in my family room, bedrooms and dining room. The fact that I'm saving some cash is just sauce for the goose. But the choice to put them in or not was mine and not some Washington or Springfield bureaucrats.

A few years ago I became interested in a different way to save energy which was very doable and survivalist friendly. That is using straw bale construction for house building. Although vehicle energy uses about 25% of our energy. House and building demolition, construction and heating and cooling use something like 50% of our energy. The British estimate that house heating and cooling uses about 28% of their energy. Thus saving energy with the right housing is more efficient than saving vehicle energy.

All true. In large parts of the country, building codes requiring simple passive solar-heating (window placement, eaves) and insulation in new homes would make an enormous difference over a 30-50 year time frame. Also, requiring a geothermal tap in the back yard for heating and cooling would make a huge difference.

If we were really serious about bankrupting the muslims and hugo, we would take a small portion of money we will waste every year on medicaid and retrofit all existing homes with a geothermal tap. Home heating and cooling costs down about 50%.

But we aren't serious. Instead, we are going to spend an incredible amount of money producing ethanol, which will have almost no net energy effect, except to make our cars run less efficiently. But it will buy a lot of votes for D's and R's alike as farmers lap up the subsidies.

The article makes a lot of sense in terms of government-mandated banning of incandescent lights. That is not the role of government, and I believe that most of us agree on that. But, there are several misnomers in the article. I'll point a few out....

This is generally true - the 20 watt CFL produces a light equivalent to the typical 75 or 100 watt incandescent.

This is somewhat true - they come on quickly enough, but don't reach full output for a couple of minutes. Depending on use, this can be a problem.

But even more significantly, because they must be kept on so much longer to run efficiently, the actual amount of energy saved by these bulbs has been vastly exaggerated.

I don't have any data on this, but certainly, they'd be more useful in lights that are going to be used somewhat continuously rather than intermittently.

This has changed - more recent CF bulbs come closer to mimicing the light output of incandescent lighting, although they still have a different overall color temperature. The use of different flourescent coatings gives better light color than in the past.

Pricewise, even the good ones (GE, Phillips, etc.) can be had in 3-packs for under $8.00 at WalMart. Still not cheap, but less than 20X a decent soft-white incandescent.

This issue has also been dealt with - the newer CF bulbs have electronic ballasts that operate at a much higher frequency than ordinary line voltage, so you don't see the flicker.

There is some modest dimming capability with CF lights, and there may be some that are made for dimming, but ordinarily, they aren't capable of being dimmed down the way incandescents are. As for low temperatures, it depends on the type of bulb. I used a Philips CF bulb in my outside lamp in northeast Ohio with no problems. Yes, when it was very cold, the light took a few minutes to warm up, but it was fully functional after that.

I've never had a problem with a CF bulb in an enclosed fixture, provided that the bulb fit. They don't always fit, but they run so much cooler than incandescent that I can't see a tight enclosure being a problem.

They are more complex to manufacture, and probably require more energy for production. But I doubt that any compact flourescent uses mercury vapor - that is reserved for outdoor streetlighting and such.

Perhaps most significantly of all, however, to run CFLs economically they must be kept on more or less continuously. The more they are turned on and off, the shorter becomes their life, creating a fundamental paradox, as is explained by an Australian electrical expert Rod Elliott (whose Elliott Sound Products website provides as good a technical analysis of the disadvantages of CFLs as any on the internet).

No, they don't need to be kept on continuously. Yes, they are best used in locations where their on-time is longer, but they aren't so fragile that turning them on and off occasionally is a significant problem.

I have several CF lights in certain locations. Of course, those hard-to-get bulbs in high fixtures get them, along with the 8 bare light fixtures in the basement. And a few lamps that get long-time duty. But I also have places where I use incandescent lighting. Lights that get frequent on/off duty, decorative fixtures where the bulb is exposed, and lights where CF bulbs don't fit are among those places.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

FReepmail me to get on or off