Green Options » compact fluorescent

Los Angeles Giving Out Free CFLs

Jerry James Stone — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:00:14 +0000

First, the EU banned incandescent light bulbs. Now, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is distributing compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) to its 1.2 million households, citywide. Oh, and for free! What’s next?

As we all know, CFLs come with many energy-saving advantages compared to traditional incandescent bulbs. A CFL last 10-times longer when compared to an incandescent. Also, CFLs operate at lower temperatures, which can reduce air conditioning use. A big plus for a city like LA!

Go Into The Light, Carol Anne

The program projects a savings of up to 240 GWh of energy and 131,000 metric tons of CO₂ each year—the equivalent of taking approximately 24,000 cars off the road or enough energy to power 40,000 homes for a year. The savings will equate to about $61.3 million in fuel costs for generating electricity.

LADWP sponsored teams will distribute the two free bulbs door-to-door over several months. Included with the two CFLs are other energy saving materials.

Read more of this story »

EU CFL Ruling Raises Vision Concerns

Richard Elen — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 12:28:41 +0000

Some UK charities and vision experts are calling into question the European Union decision to phase out traditional incandescent light bulbs in favour of Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs). The EU requires traditional filament bulbs to be phased out by 2016, and 100W bulbs will become unavailable later in the year - from September they will no longer be sold in the UK. Already 100W traditional bulbs are becoming hard to buy and there are rumours of people hoarding them.

Concerns now being expressed do not relate to the issue of the tiny quantities of mercury in the bulbs that was raised a year or two ago (largely misguidedly - while in environmental terms far more mercury is released into the environment by the manufacture of traditional bulbs). Instead they focus on potential difficulties for partially-sighted people.

Read more of this story »

GE Ends Development of Incandescent Bulbs, Focuses on LEDs

Jerry James Stone — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:55:33 +0000

According to Clean Break, General Electric has dumped all plans for revitalizing their century-old incandescent lightbulb. Instead, it plans to focus on light-emitting diodes (LED) and its organic counterpart — the OLED.

Read more of this story »

New Report Suggests CFLs Could Cut Global Lighting Energy Demand by 40%

Timothy B. Hurst — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:29:54 +0000

A new report suggests that with an aggressive replacement program, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) could drastically cut global lighting demand and begin reducing greenhouse gas emissions immediately. Fresh off the recent announcement that the European Union had banned incandescent light bulbs, the report, prepared by the Worldwatch Institute, suggests that replacing incandescents with compact fluorescents could reduce global lighting energy demand by 40%.

By 2030, these savings would add up to 16.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide — more than twice the amount released in the United States every year.

Read more of this story »

European Union Bans Incandescent Light Bulbs

Timothy B. Hurst — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 00:52:34 +0000

EU energy ministers meeting last week in Luxembourg have given final approval to an EU-wide ban on incandescent light bulbs that would begin in 2010. The switch to energy-saving bulbs, first ordered at last year’s Brussels summit as part of an aggressive energy policy to fight climate change, was approved at the negotiations leading up to a meeting of European heads of state, being held next week.

>>More on European energy policy at RG&B

Read more of this story »

School Bulb Exchange Program Saves SoCal Families Money, Cut Energy Use

Kelli Best-Oliver — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 13:12:57 +0000

Kenny Luna may have some help in his quest to get CFLs into the hands of students across the country: nine schools in Southern California. The schools are part of the Alliance to Save Energy's Green Schools program; elementary and high schools in the Alta Loma, Hesperia, and San Bernardino Unified School Districts are all participating

The schools provide students and their families a means to exchange incandescent bulbs with more energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly CFLs. Students sign pledges vowing to replace their old bulbs with CFLs, supplied by Southern California Edison, and document the wattage of the bulbs they replaced. Bulbs were exchanged at school, during PTO events, parent events, and other school-community activities.

The program set a goal for the 2006-2007 school year: to replace 4,000 bulbs in the homes of district families, but that goal was too conservative. The program replaced over 8,000 bulbs in the fall semester alone. In fact, the program has been so successful that twenty more schools were added for the second semester, and the program expects to easily make their three-year goal of replacing 12,000 bulbs in less than a year.

Think of it this way: in just these nine schools, students have already saved their families a collective $40,000 in energy costs, and about three million kWh over the life of the bulbs. The program anticipates a one-year savings of over $700,000 for student families.