EU outlaws incandescent bulbs by 2012

I guess you could use a LED based one.

Now that might be more of a problem, conventional oven lights too!

I expect there will be exemptions for these uses - just like (last time I looked) with RoHS and the lead in car batteries and the cadmium in NiCds.

For a fairly biased (as opposed to unbiased) review of cfls, read here:

please note the lousy power factor.

IMHO for certain things, CFLs really suck.

Steve

Power factor correction is no big deal... pretty much every PC built today has PFC circuitry on the front end. The only downside is, of course, greater cost and perhaps ever-so-slightly lessened reliability.

Agreed. I like CFLs in general, but they certainly aren't a 100% replacement for all incandescents. Banning incandescents doesn't really make any sense to me... if people can't figure out that CFLs are, for many general-purpose lighting situations, cheaper overall than incandescents, I don't think it'd be fair to assume they'd be able to figure out the appropriate wattage to use if CFLs were their only choice anyway.

You probably could get me to sign onto a bill that requires, e.g., both commercial and residential *rental* properties to have a "minimum lighting efficiency" that would typically be met with fluorescents. As far as I can tell, it's rental properties that end up with minimal (or no!) insulation, the least efficient appliances, the worst windows, etc. -- I'd personally find it unethical to save a dollar myself if I knew that over the course of its life my renters were going to have to pay $10-$100 for that savings. (I'd just raise the rent a skosh to make my dollar back... and prominently advertise how overall the renters would be saving money...)

---Joel

We have exactly one light fixture in our house where CFL's live long and happy lives. All the rest of them are either 3-way table lamps or are tightly enough enclosed that the lamps don't last any longer than incandescents -- and I somehow doubt that changing a CFL every year uses less of the Earth's resources than changing an incandescent every year.

It sounds like more hippie-dippy feel-good fake environmentalism, to me.

Traffic lights? Are they talking about the signals? These are well on their way to being switched to LEDs. Why would they provide an exemption?

o...

..

What they don't tell you is that the long life ones have mercury in them and even more problem for the environment!

Because of anti-discrimination laws? Many birds have by now developed an entitlement mentality when it comes to cozy nesting places :-)

Somehow they have to fill those 15 tons of paper trucked into Brussels every day. Yes, that's 15 tons. Got to keep the gravy train rolling ...

On a sunny day (Tue, 9 Dec 2008 10:09:55 -0800 (PST)) it happened HardySpicer wrote in :

I found an interesting statement that says: the mercury from dumping those CFL outweighs the mercury that is not created by burning less fuel. Clearly they were thinking coal.

The EPA says that you'll save ~4.6mg of mercury from using less electricity over the life of a 13W CFL, and the CFL itself contains ~0.4mg of mercury, hence there's still a 4.2mg savings. More details:

Quote "Switching from traditional light bulbs (called incandescent) to CFLs is an effective, simple change everyone in America can make right now." IMHO statements like that are dangerous, we cannot assume that the average citizen (especially the elderly) knows enough about technology to handle this stuff safely in all situations.

No word about heat or concerns in dimmed circuits. So uncle Leroy gets up on his ladder and screws in some of them thar newfangled curly bulbs. After all, a bulb is a bulb is a bulb. Or so he thinks. Zzzt ... zzzzzt ... bzzzz ... phsssst ... *BANG*.

Un bel giorno nospam digitò:

If a fluorescent lamp lasts ten times more and consumes one third of the power of an incandescent light bulb, but it costs five times more, you can be sure that there will always be a lot of people who will buy the incandescent lamp. Never underestimate mass stupidity.

Probably based on the exaggerated claimed life of CFLs. Almost certainly ignoring the mercury dispersed from energy production required to replace the heating effect removed by CFLs for a significant proportion of the world during a significant proportion of the year.

And conveniently ignoring dose without which any discussion of poison is meaningless. An even covering of Mercury across the globe is much less of a problem than a high concentration in landfill sites.

And the have the cheek to call it a fact sheet when it is half truths and spin.

Honestly the amount of bollocks talked in the world today is so depressing, it isn't like there are not enough smart people to talk sense. Just politicians and the media don't want to hear sense they want to hear bollocks and will pay (with our money) for it.

Besides Starbucks have turned off their tap - I thought the world was saved already....

Or being so poor that its their only choice, other than stealing bulbs.

Or needing something that will work in an outside location in the winter, or come to full brightness right away. Porch and closet lights, for instance.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Or needing something that will work in an outside location in the winter, or come to full brightness right away. Porch and closet lights, for instance.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs

Why would a government exempt themselves from a bothersome regulation?

Do we have to think very hard about that one?

I was amazed to find that you can now obtain CFLs at Dollar Tree. Only something like 13W, and I suspect the quality might be low, but still... that's pretty impressive.

They also had universal remote controls for a buck. Joerg must have worked on that design...

Also a slightly cut-down electronic Sudoku game... 3 rows, but only 2 columns, so only numbers 1-6. Bizarre... I guess a regular 3x3 grid would have made it $1.50?

And various bits of odd frozen food, although there the prices weren't really that much better than what you'd find at a Wal*Mart if you spent some time perusing the options.

Dollar stores are fun...