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.
This is generally true - the 20 watt CFL produces a light equivalent to the typical 75 or 100 watt incandescent.
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'.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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),
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I amot 100% certain, but I think all flourescent lights require minute amounts of mercury to operate.
The issue is that while compact fluorescents generate much less heat than incandescents, many of them are less tolerant of heat. On a hot day (40C), heating a fixture to 70C will only require a fifth as much power as heating it to 190C (374F). Although a well-designed compact fluorescent fixture shouldn't dissipate that much heat, some inferior units might.