Would you pay $50 for a light bulb?

In 2007 Congress, in its wisdom, mandated that incandescent light bulbs be phased out. Next year, we will not be able to buy 100-watt bulbs. Bulbs of lower wattage will be banned in 2014. What about 3-way bulbs?

The first solution was to be CFL bulbs (compact fluorescent light) which were touted to last much longer and use less electricity than incandescent bulbs. They also cost about five-times more. I’ve tried CFLs in various applications around my house. In most applications, the CFLs burned out at about the same rate as the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs. More recently, there have been several reports that CFL catch fire. More troublesome, is the fact that CFLs contain mercury and if broken, they require extensive cleanup. See my article “How many haz-mat suits does it take to change a light bulb?”.

Enter the next panacea: LED (light emitting diode) bulbs. These are touted to last much longer and use less electricity than incandescent bulbs. Principal manufacturers are Philips, a Dutch company, and GE which produces them in China. LEDs have been around in special application for a long time, but use for main household lighting is a different matter. Home Depot has been selling LED bulbs, the equivalent of a 60-watt bulb, for $40 each and the replacement for a 100-watt bulb is estimated to sell for $50 each. An LED can last up to 30 times the life of an incandescent bulb (but costs 50 times the price).

LEDs are said to generate little heat, but in certain fixtures what little heat they do generate quickly degrades the bulb’s efficiency and life. LEDs produce focused light which may make them undesirable for broad area lighting. Another potential problem is color rendering. That depends on the phosphors used and even on the angle of viewing. LED light is generally harsher than the light of incandescent bulbs. Many LEDs do not work with dimmers.

While LED bulbs contain no mercury, according to a study of LEDs from the University of California, Irvine, LEDs ” contain lead, arsenic, and a dozen other potentially hazardous substances…”

So, how many $50 light bulbs are you willing to buy? Maybe one of these days Congress will see the light, repeal their mandate, and allow consumers to choose the type of lighting that suits their needs.

Cancun Climate Conference, Japan Says No To Kyoto

Things are not going well for the climate industry at the Cancun conference. Japan announced that it would not be a party to renewal of the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. A Japanese official said, ” “Japan will not inscribe its target under the Kyoto protocol on any conditions or under any circumstances.”

To open the conference, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, invoked the ancient jaguar goddess Ixchel in her opening statement to delegates gathered in Cancun, Mexico, noting that Ixchel was not only goddess of the moon, but also “the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving. May she inspire you — because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and creativity as your tools.” (Washington Post)

Meanwhile, according to an article in the British Globe and Mail, Canada is getting ready to walk away. “Canada remains the only country to ratify Kyoto and then publicly renounce its 2012 emission targets…” Canada is “seeking a legally binding treaty that includes all major emitters, which is what the Copenhagen Accord was all about last year. That includes the emerging economies of China and India. It also includes the United States, which did not ratify Kyoto and has no intention of doing so.”

President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, announce that he will ban the use of incandescent light bulbs throughout Mexico. By some calculations, that would make a difference of 0.004% in Mexico’s carbon emissions.

The 16th Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP16) did reached its first consensus by approving a proposal on education, training and consciousness as part of efforts to mitigate climate change (i.e., brainwashing).

The proposal commits signatories to promote formal and informal education strategies covering the climate change phenomenon.

“One of the most important aspects of adaptation and mitigation is people’s behavior,” said Guatemala’s Environment Minister Luis Ferrate.

“We have to create a citizenry that is more conscious of climate change, and that means education and training,” he added. (Source, China Radio International)

The real purpose of the conference is not climate, it is to extract $100 billion per year from industrial countries to go into U.N. coffers purportedly to help third world countries to cut their carbon emissions.

By the way, yesterday, Cancun set a 100-year record low temperature for that date of 54 F. Ironic.

Demise of Incandescent Light Bulbs May Increase Energy Use

“A light bulb factory closes in Virginia as mandated fluorescents are made in China. It’s now a crime to make or ship for sale 75-watt incandescent bulbs in the European Union…. The General Electric light bulb factory in Winchester, Va., closed this month, a victim, along with its 200 employees, of a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014.” notes Investor’s Business Daily.

Incandescent light bulbs waste much electricity by producing heat. Many governments have or are about to phase out incandescent light bulbs under the belief that other, more energy efficient lighting technology will reduce energy use.

Currently, artificial lighting uses 6.5% of the world’s primary energy, which translates into about 16% of world electrical generation, and it consumes about 0.72% of global GDP.

A new study conducted by Sandia National Laboratories, and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, takes exception to the assumption that newer technology will mean lower energy consumption.

The study authors note that “Lighting technology is evolving rapidly. Filament-based incandescent lighting is giving way to gas-plasma-based fluorescent and high-intensity discharge technology, and over the next 10- to 20 years, may give way to solid-state technology.”

It has been assumed “that consumption of light is relatively insensitive to the cost of light, and that evolution of lighting technology resulting in an increase in efficiency and a decrease in cost

leads to a decrease in the consumption of energy rather than an increase in the consumption of light.” The authors of the new study, however, reject that assumption and instead assume “a sensitivity consistent with simple extrapolations of past behavior into the future.” They also analyze the interplay between lighting, human productivity, and energy consumption.

The paper concludes: “A principal conclusion is that there is a massive potential for growth in the consumption of light if new lighting technologies are developed with higher luminous efficacies and lower cost of light. A secondary conclusion is that this increased consumption of light has the potential to increase both human productivity and the consumption of energy associated with that productivity.”

If this analysis is correct, then government policy to phase out incandescent light bulbs will have the unintended consequence of increasing energy use, just the opposite of what was intended.

Citation: J. Y. Tsao et al, 2010, Solid-state lighting: an energy-economics perspective, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 43 354001; doi: 10.1088/0022-3727/43/35/354001

The paper is highly mathematical in justifying its conclusions, but if you are game, you can read the paper here.