Just to piss Ross off, I acquired some CFL bulbs yesterday at Target and installed them. The light they emit looks, um, totally fine to me. Congressional action to ban incandescent bulbs does, however, strike me as at least somewhat unfortunate insofar as they've now made it inevitable that claiming to be able to detect a major difference between CFL light and traditional bulbs is now going to become a point of pride for conservatives across the country. Once again, the best thing to do would be to put a price and carbon and let people work out the best adjustments on their own rather than trying to mandate specific technological solutions.
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CFL
10 Feb 2008 02:23 pm
Comments (79)
"Once again, the best thing to do would be to put a price and carbon and let people work out the best adjustments on their own rather than trying to mandate specific technological solutions."
Yup.
I'm a progressive who prefers incandescents, not for the politics, but for the better light.
Of course, there is a major difference between CFLs are incandescents: the light of CFLs is far better, IMHO, than incandescents, which are too yellow for me. Also, its nice in the summer (and good for energy efficiency) to have more energy going off as light rather than heat.
But are CFLs really that good for the environment (taking into account production and the desposal, while of less waste, more toxic waste)?
For more specifics look here: http://www.house.gov/list/press/ca36_harman/Dec_6.shtml
Note also that the bill was sponsored by Jane Harman AND Fred Upton.
"The provisions passed today would phase out the 100 watt incandescent bulb by 2012, and phase out remaining inefficient incandescent bulbs by 2014. By 2020, the bill requires that light bulbs be at least 3 times more efficient as today’s incandescent, paving the way for the use of the super-efficient LEDs that will light our future. The bill gives the Department of Energy (DOE) the authority to craft a rule to give the lighting industry the flexibility to sell a range of bulbs. The rule must save as much energy as a flat requirement that all bulbs be 3 times more efficient than today’s bulbs. If DOE fails to act, the flat requirement will automatically become law. The bill also requires that DOE find ways to minimize the amount of mercury in compact fluorescent bulbs and provides incentives for high-efficiency lighting to be manufactured in the United States."
The fact of the matter is, yes, a carbon tax would be great. But this is low-hanging fruit on efficiency and we have to start somewhere. The arguments are so overwhelming for it that many Republicans, including Upton, supported it. Conservatives who are bitching are acting like children. I have been using CFLs for years and neither my wife nor I can tell the difference. I think conservatives are just saying that based on those old-style bulbs which truly are terrible.
For at least 5 months a year where I live, incandescent bulbs are just as efficient as CFLs. This is because the cost of using an incandescent bulb is the energy that is "wasted" as heat, but heat isn't wasted so long as I'm heating my apartment somehow. The same goes for all my appliances - anything that uses electricity and gives off heat is "inefficient" only during the summer months.
The most important thing is that, as CFLs become more widely adopted, we implement good disposal policies to deal with the hazardous waste. I suppose the best way is to use a deposit system and put collection points in or near the stores that sell the bulbs. I don't even think it would have to be that much money to work, maybe $1/bulb.
The only thing that annoys me ever-so-slightly about CFLs is the slight delay they have between turning on the power and the light actually turning on.
I'm surprised you can't tell the difference. I REALLY don't care for the light of CFLs. We have them in a few places in the house-- the lamp we leave on at night (my husband wants one on for some reason...), the porch lights, one of the kitchen lights. I wish I liked them but the quality of the light is very odd and unpleasant, somehow harsh but dim at the same time. My F-I-L says he read an article about women being more sensitive to the spectrum than men. Maybe that's why I dislike them. Either way, I'm stockpiling incandescents and it will be a very very sad day for me when I run out.
minderbender: Have you done the cost benefit analysis on that? My hunch is that your heater is far more efficient at heating your place and that the ratio of electricity to heat that your bulb is producing is highly inefficient. Do you have studies that say differently?
minderbender: Have you done the cost benefit analysis on that? My hunch is that your heater is far more efficient at heating your place and that the ratio of electricity to heat that your bulb is producing is highly inefficient. Do you have studies that say differently?
I love CFLs, use them in most every room and have a dozen or so in the closet waiting for the next incandescent to burn out. I also prefer the color of the light compared to incandescent bulbs. Yet, I just installed two 100 watt incandescent bulbs yesterday. Why? Because the room has a dimmer switch and CFLs don't work with dimmer switches; they flicker. I used 100 watt bulbs because they give the greatest variance. Normally I run them at much lower power and output.
Now perhaps LEDs can provide the same use. But in one room in the house, CFLs simply don't work.
When I was in India recently, I noticed that nearly all of the lights in my hotel rooms were CFL. The reason is that energy costs are a large percentage of the total costs that people incur in their lives. Most things are much cheaper in India, but energy costs about the same as in America. So they face a much greater incentive to conserve energy. And they conserve it pretty well. I think that a carbon tax incentive could work, but energy costs will have to be much higher for people to change their behavior. A 30% tax would probably do little but raise money.
CFL's come in a variety of 'temperatures' ranging from cool white, through warm white and onto daylight.
The daylight ones are freakishly blue.
Amongst lamps of all sorts (lamps are bulbs in technical parlance, rather than luminaires or fixtures which are the things you screw lights into)
there is a measure known as Color Rendition Index using the light from a standard incandescent bulb as the basis for comparison. With incandescents scoring 100, the better florescents are now scoring nearly 90 where 10 years ago they couldn't manage much above 60.
As with all things you buy, assuming that all CFL's are made equal is foolish. Check the packaging for information on the CRI. The big box home centers generally carry a variety of temperatures.
LEDs may someday make CFLs seem silly, but their current cost is insane - you'd have to spend $50 for the same quantity of light as you get from a CFL or incandescent. It'll use even less energy, give great color rendition, and last longer than you, but that's a high price to pay.
I oppose a ban on incandescents. For one thing, I like 'em. For another, I know the American people won't stand for that much intrusion. But mostly, I don't want to spend the next five years debating the merits of the ban.
there is a measure known as Color Rendition Index...
They had CFL bulbs on a recent flight I took to Egypt, and I just have to say the rendition was extraordinary!
Enjoy the buffet. I'll be here all week.
I can tell that there's a difference, but it's small. I can see why someone might prefer a traditional bulb for a reading light they use a lot, but for hallway lights and so forth the CFL bulbs are perfectly satisfactory. It's particularly satisfying to use a CFL for a hard-to-replace bulb (over stairways, etc.).
I bought some LED bulbs and they were atrocious. Still some work to be done there.
Dimmers don't just make CFL's flicker, they also make break them. certain automated lighting systems also cause bulb failures in CFLs.
I am opposed to the ban, but still use the CFLs in 80% of my fixtures.
"I'm stockpiling incandescents and it will be a very very sad day for me when I run out."
Ditto. The light CFL's produce really is appalling.
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"The fact of the matter is, yes, a carbon tax would be great. But this is low-hanging fruit on efficiency and we have to start somewhere."
Why not start by banning SUV's? I like incandescents, but I don't like SUV's.
I find the daylight incandescents to also be too harshly blue.
The CFLs I get (I forget which ones, but they are pretty standard) are a very nice shade ... I've never seen anything quite like it in incadescent bulbs.
My F-I-L says he read an article about women being more sensitive to the spectrum than men.
Why would that be? I guess, even ignoring cases of frank colorblindness, there are likely partial loss of function mutations in some of the color photoreceptor genes that render a person partially, even very slightly insensative to certain colors. And because these genes are X-linked, men are more likely to have the loss of function phenotype than women who have a "back-up" copy of the gene?
"Why not start by banning SUV's? I like incandescents, but I don't like SUV's."
Sound good to me Petey, because, to be clear, incandesents are being "banned" only insofar as they don't meet new efficiency standards. I would love to create CAFE standards that modern SUVs would have difficulty meeting--but on the other hand if they could figure out how to meet them (maybe a super awesome Hybrid SUV?) then I would be happy to let people buy them.
Also, a start would be to make SUVs meet current CAFE auto standards. The situation now, whereby SUVs meet light truck standards on CAFE but auto standards for other standards is absurd and bad policy anyway.
I'm much pickier about lighting than most-- spent several years in the home-design biz informally specializing in color, which makes lighting pretty important-- and I'm fine with the warmer CFLs for most applications. The downsides are being unable to dim them and the greater lag time for the enclosed bulbs, IME. And I haven't found a really good, bright (comparable to the standard 50/100/150 incandescent) three-way CFL for lamps yet.
I also agree that the lack of incandescent-bulb heat in the winter produced a bit of a surprise on my electric bill, but since the winters are short here, it still was a worthwhile switch.
"there is a measure known as Color Rendition Index using the light from a standard incandescent bulb as the basis for comparison. With incandescents scoring 100, the better florescents are now scoring nearly 90 where 10 years ago they couldn't manage much above 60."
Color temperature isn't the only problem with CFL's. They also have a very high frequency flicker which harshes my mellow.
incandesents are being "banned" only insofar as they don't meet new efficiency standards.
what a fluorescently brilliant idea . . .
This seems to me one situation where liberals ought to take the libertarian critique into account but don't. The problem with this legislation is not that t will make Conservativs do silly things (I consider that it's only benefit). The problem is that it will make us all less free, to no good pupose.
As others have pointed out, the effect on total carbon emmisions will be less than negligible, so the only real effect of ban will be cosmetic.
Environmentalism (as a sub-ideology of liberalism) seem to me too eager to force people to change their behavior for the sake of appearances, i.e. "sending the right message".
I wonder what the price difference is where people would start switching on their own? I have mostly CFL's now - whenever one of te flourescent lights burns out, I replace it with a cfl. I still haven't had a cfl burn out.
As far as the whole mercury isue, according to an article in slate recently, the emissions from coal power actually release more mercury into the environment per light bulb used than is contained in one bulb.
Bottom line is to me, it seems silly to use light bulbs that burn 8 times more energy and burn out 10x faster. I guess I am not that sensiive - I mean I can tell the difference, I guess, but not really.
Incandescents 'waste' 95% of the electricity to heat. Those of you heating your apartments/homes with incandescent bulbs may want to consider switching for the summer.
And sorry about your 'mellow'. Try candles.
Well southpaw. I think it is important to keep the context in mind. Increasing efficiency standards is not arbitrary and it isn't targetting incandesents per se.
Look, if you and others aren't even willing to change a lightbulb that gives off light almost as good as incandesents (and could get better) as a step to possibly averting global warming then we are seriously doomed. I mean, do you think climate change isn't a serious issue?
Sound good to me Petey, because, to be clear, incandesents are being "banned" only insofar as they don't meet new efficiency standards.
*grumble* Oh.
I'd love to see which lobbyist organizations are giving this a push forward. Are these efficiency standards for light bulbs specifically, light-producing devices generally, all devices that purposefully emit radiation, or... what?
Nearly 9% of electricity use goes to lighting. This is not an insignificant part of conservation, and ultimately has to be part of a package.
The libertarian notion applies only insofar as your actions don't screw other people. It's an easy argument to make that SUV driving or a slavish devotion to incandescent bulbs is screwing lots of people.
What Pat said. It is not insignificant. Here is an example (it also addresses the mercury question):
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/business/14light.html?scp=4&sq=light+bulb+bill+&st=nyt
"The participants say that a complete phaseout would save $18 billion a year in electricity, and save the amount of power that would be produced by 30 nuclear reactors or as many as 80 coal plants. It would also eliminate substantial mercury emissions from the coal plants, they said."
Here is a link to a popular article about how many women have superior red color perception to men, with a discussion of genes and proteins:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1168851.htm
Apologies for the repid two post, but I just have to question somebody stating that te effects will be less than negligible.
A single bulb, used for 4 hours per day (say a porch light turned on from 6 - 10 every night) will save 69 kWh per year. According to the DOE, the average carbon generated for all fossil fuel generated electricity in the US is 1.35 pounds per kWh. This is 70% of total production, so every KWh in the US generates .94 pounds of carbon. Every light changed, therefore will save about 60 pounds of carbon. So if every one of the 115 million households in the US changes even 2 bulbs, that will equal 13.8 billion pounds of carbon, which is 6.25 million tonnes a year.
So it is not much - only .15% of total emissions. But that is only two lights used for 4 hours each per day. How many lights is realistic? Even if it is 5 times that number, then we are up to 1%. And that is not "negilgible"
"Look, if you and others aren't even willing to change a lightbulb that gives off light almost as good as incandesents (and could get better) as a step to possibly averting global warming then we are seriously doomed. I mean, do you think climate change isn't a serious issue?"
I'd like to make my own decisions on how to manage my carbon footprint, not have Congress decide which carbon emissions are most important to me.
As Matthew noted, a carbon tax is the best way to have choice, rationality, and efficiency in the system.
I'm going to be stockpiling incandescents because light quality is important to me. But I don't operate a fuel-guzzing vehicle. So I'd say my morals here are just fine.
"Nearly 9% of electricity use goes to lighting."
Cite your source. I doubt that's true.
In any case, even if it were true, it's misleading. However much of electricity use is going to "lighting," what we're concerned with is how much private energy use is going to lighting with incandescent bulbs. Offices and grocery stores and most other big buildings already use flourescent lighting, so however much energy they use, mandating a change to CFL isn't going to reduce their expenditures. Street lighting and the like doesn't require a law mandating how private citizens light their homes.
And why look at electricity use, rather than energy use, except to create the misleading impression that these kinds of laws are anything other than a symbolic gesture?
Incandescent bulbs aren't low-hanging fruit. They're barely a low-hanging peanut. If total conversion from incandescents to CFL reduces the energy budget of any industrialized country by as much as 0.5%, I'll eat my hat.
(And yes, I've got CFL's in my house; they're fine. I don't have any particular animus against them.)
My source, and it was 2001 numbers. It also only included residential use.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/enduse2001/enduse2001.html
Look, if you and others aren't even willing to change a lightbulb that gives off light almost as good as incandesents (and could get better) as a step to possibly averting global warming then we are seriously doomed. I mean, do you think climate change isn't a serious issue?
For the record, I have CFLs everywhere in my house that I don't care about the quality of the light.
However, I also grew up in California during the mandatory low-flow toilet years. It was a water conservation measure, and it was cosmically stupid--based on the fatuous notion that the people who designed the toilet had given no thought to the amount of water required for the task. You had to flush the things like 4 times . . . it can't even imagine how much water was wasted.
Now we find out that investing in biofuels would probably be similarly counterproductive.
I tend to think that government is really bad at dictating behavior. That's why I agree with Matthew that a carbon tax is a much better, simpler, and more efficient solution.
"I'd like to make my own decisions on how to manage my carbon footprint, not have Congress decide which carbon emissions are most important to me.
As Matthew noted, a carbon tax is the best way to have choice, rationality, and efficiency in the system."
While I agree a carbon tax is the best policy (and will be needed regardless) the light bulb bill, building standards, and CAFE standards are reasonable complements to and constituent parts of a larger framework.
(When I first read CFL I thought we'd talk a little 3 down football)
I really don't understand the argument about the colour of the CFL lights. Who uses an exposed light bulb in a socket? Don't people use light covers and lampshades anymore?
I think it's reasonable to grumble about the inability to use them with dimmer switches (although I do anyway, and only once in a while do I have to adjust my dimmer to get rid of the flicker), but light colour? I don't get it.
pat -And sorry about your 'mellow'. Try candles.
Pat, go screw yourself, you self-righteous twit.
And I say that as a person who uses nearly all CFLs.
For me, the biggest advantage of CFLs is how long they last. Bulb costs are trivial compared to the annoyance of changing one
southpaw: I agree 100% on biofuels, and I say that as someone who comes from a rural state and has family members who directly benefit from the high prices of corn and wheat stemming from, among a couple other things, increasing ethanol production.
On the toilets. Increasing the price of water and pricing water for ag at non-subsidized rates would probably have been better, but from what I hear the new low-flow toilets seem to have improved a lot.
While, I don't think everything should be regulated, or even most things, I think on a case by case basis, a few things, such as CAFE, bulbs, and houseing standards increasing standards makes sense. Take building standards. Even with a carbon tax, it could well be to the developers advantage to make crappy non-insulated housing because people only plan to live in them over the shortterm (and sell the "starter" house), in which case they might not reap the benefits of better windows and insulation and therefore not demand it. Now there might be more flexible free market ways of addressing this, and if so I am all ears, but if not, it might make sense to make that part of the larger energy-saving framework.
Pat: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/consump.html
Same website, talking about non-residential use. Note:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec2_4.pdf
This shows that primary energy consumption by the residential sector in 2006 was 6,403 trillion btu, while the industrial sector was 28,313 btu, and commercial was 3,927 btu. That makes residential use about 16.6% of total usage. If we assume that we can make household lighting four times as efficient by mandating CFL everywhere, that'd be about 0.37% of the primary consumption across those three sectors. I'm excluding transportation, here, 'cause I assume most energy useage in transportation is non-electrical.
That's very back-of-the-envelope, and the numbers aren't directly comparable, but I think it demonstrates the problems with assuming that 9% of household electrical budget is equivalent to 9% of nationwide electrical budget. (And electricity use is [i]still[/i] not what we should be looking at. Total energy use is).
Chris B's methodology looks like a better one, to me.
I'll admit I haven't made up my mind about how far to compromise my libertarian leanings in these new-technology-adoption cases. On the one hand, I strongly suspect that the vast majority of people would quickly adjust to the differences (including the more up-front lifecycle costs), so I can see the argument for basically forcing people to get over their initial reluctance. On the other hand, I do think these relatively coercive approaches to new technology adoption often end up causing a lot more trouble than they are worth.
And like I said, I don't have a well-formulated answer for this sort of case. But one thing I do know is that this issue doesn't have much to do with the idea of pricing carbon. Already, making a switch to the more efficient bulbs makes economic sense for most consumers, and yet they aren't doing it in nearly the numbers we would expect. So, while I am sure pricing in a few more externalities would have some marginal effect, I don't think it really solves the basic problem.
"But one thing I do know is that this issue doesn't have much to do with the idea of pricing carbon. Already, making a switch to the more efficient bulbs makes economic sense for most consumers, and yet they aren't doing it in nearly the numbers we would expect. So, while I am sure pricing in a few more externalities would have some marginal effect, I don't think it really solves the basic problem."
DTM: I had been meaning to make that point. You are absolutely right about that. In many cases it is the same with insulation and housing actually.
David,
Indeed. I sometimes think that as a culture we have something of an anti-energy-efficiency mindset, and that various people have been consciouly encouraging this anti-efficiency tendency (either because they are in the energy business, or allied with such people).
Or maybe we are just bad at math.
Even with a carbon tax, it could well be to the developers advantage to make crappy non-insulated housing because people only plan to live in them over the shortterm (and sell the "starter" house), in which case they might not reap the benefits of better windows and insulation and therefore not demand it.
Why not? They would reap the benefits not only through lower utility bills while they lived in the house, but through its higher resale value when they came to sell it.
We should be deeply skeptical that any of these market-distorting government interventions--CFL mandates, CAFE standards, or whatever--will have the desired effect and will not produce undesirable side-effects. I think the mandatory low-flow toilet is a good example of just how easy it is for government mandates to have the opposite effect of what's intended.
David asks, regarding my comment about incandescents being just as efficient as CFLs during the winter: "minderbender: Have you done the cost benefit analysis on that? My hunch is that your heater is far more efficient at heating your place and that the ratio of electricity to heat that your bulb is producing is highly inefficient. Do you have studies that say differently?"
The point here is that the inefficiency of incandescent bulbs stems almost entirely from the amount of electricity that they convert into heat instead of light. You can think of each incandescent lightbulb as a CFL with a tiny space heater attached that drains away some of the electricity. If you're using a space heater anyway, it's not an efficiency loss at all. Conservation of energy tells us that any "wasted" energy is not going to disappear, it's going to linger around my apartment in the form of heat.
The only realistic inefficiency is that the heat is being produced with electricity instead of gas or oil. I have no idea which is cheaper to transport, but this cost seems overwhelmingly likely to be negligible. Plenty of buildings use electricity for heat. The other potential inefficiency is the energy used to manufacture incandescent bulbs, but I suspect that, when you take disposal costs into account, they use less energy to manufacture and destroy than CFLs.
All of this only applies to the winter months, but my landlord turned the heat on in October and certainly won't turn it off before April. That's a long stretch when CFLs have nothing but downsides: worse light, more mercury, more expensive, no energy savings. It's pretty galling to be forced to use CFLs in those circumstances, particularly on specious "efficiency" grounds. I will be among many stocking up on incandescents, in part so that I can be more environmentally responsible.
"My source, and it was 2001 numbers. It also only included residential use."
The source you cited says that lighting uses up 8.8% of electricity used by residences only. It didn't include how much lighting was used if you factor in commercial buildings as well.
Hell, screw the CFL preference on the merits; to the extent the anti-global warming movement is perceived as a force that literally comes into your house and commands you to make things less pleasant, the anti-global warming movement loses.
mindbender,
Last I looked, using gas for heat was about twice as efficient in my locale as using electricity for heat. Oil was more expensive still, however, at current prices (it was less expensive when oil was 1/3 of the price). So it seems to me that at least if you have gas heat in my locale, in the winter months you are at most recapturing around half of the waste heat from incandescent bulbs.
Moreover, I think you need to consider the implications during the summer months for homes which use artifical cooling. Presumably the waste heat from your bulbs means an increased cooling bill to compensate, so that is actually going to compound the energy inefficiency during those months.
All that said, I am sure there may be some cases where the tradeoff doesn't make economic sense. But I doubt it is enough cases to explain the current low adoption rates.
minderbender, unless your house is perfectly insulated—which is isn't—you're losing heat constantly. And you're not losing heat uniformly, you're losing it in particular areas.
When architects and engineers design buildings and heating systems, they pay attention to where it is better and worse to direct that heated air.
You'll noticed that they generally don't place heated air exhaust vents in the middle of ceilings or high on exterior walls. And when the heat is carried exclusively by convection, as in steam/radiator systems (and by incandescent light bulbs), they don't place the radiators at waist level or higher (certainly not at eye level); they place them low, below the waist, near or even below the floor.
With the exception of some vents, the placement of heat distribution points and incandescent lighting largely exclude each other.
I shouldn't overstate the point. The efficiency loss of incandescent bulbs for heating compared to conventional heating is probably not huge, but it's certainly not zero, either. And it's probably not insignificant.
Note that small, "space" heaters, which create heat exactly the same way as incandescent lights do (with the addition of a small fan), are known to be inefficient ways to heat living spaces.
Note also that someone, perhaps you, mentioned that things like ovens are also not wasting heat in the winter. But they are: people don't spend that much time in the kitchen, the kitchen doesn't need to be heated. If you keep your oven in your living room, I stand corrected.
“Presumably the waste heat from your bulbs means an increased cooling bill to compensate, so that is actually going to compound the energy inefficiency during those months.”
It would work out to be even, except that we spend more time awake at night-time in the winter months than in the summer months.
Even so, it's amusing that those who so cleverly thought about how the waste heat from incandescent bulbs wasn't "waste" in the winter failed to realize that it also heated homes in the summer, forcing the cooling system to work harder!
Which brings up the question of the relative efficiencies of heating systems and cooling systems—I suspect the latter are much more inefficient than the former. So, even accounting for the greater daylight in the summer, it's still inefficient to produce heat in the winter with these bulbs if you're also producing the same amount it in the summer—and that's before accounting for either my earlier point, or the much stronger point that most people heat with natural gas or heating oil, not electricity.
Bottom line: it's inefficient to heat your house in the winter with incandescent lighting compared to using CFC and any alternative to make up for the gap.
For the record, I have CFLs everywhere in my house that I don't care about the quality of the light.
I'm using the same strategy, and I'm replacing my bulbs by attrition. The other big advantage is that CFLs last longer, and I will have to climb up on a ladder much less often to replace them.
Ultimately, my living space will having a hybrid solution with CFLs for most light sources and incandescents and halogens for my reading lamps and desk lamps. The biggest weakness from CFLs seems to be that they take a minute or so to "warm up" before the light becomes acceptable, and I prefer to read by very bright light.
That said, I think that laws to push people away from inefficient lights is going to be as popular as the introduction of New Coke. Sure, more people might have preferred the new formula in blind taste tests, but as a matter of principle, people won't like to be forced to change.
Once again, the best thing to do would be to put a price and carbon and let people work out the best adjustments on their own rather than trying to mandate specific technological solutions.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
There already is a price on carbon. It's called the electrical bill.
The appropriate thing for CFL-producing companies to do is to run ads saying that CFL bulbs save a lot of money on electric bills and last longer.
The appropriate thing for the State to do is nothing.
CFLs are already a better value, a better product and less of a hassle. Any government interference can create nothing but resistance to that fact.
DTM: It could very well be cheaper to heat your house with oil or gas than with electricity. The question is whether it is environmentally more costly to do so. Financial efficiency may reflect environmental efficiency, or it may not. Certainly it's hard to imagine that electricity uses twice as much energy as gas to produce and transport into your home. Of course, even if that's true, then incandescents are only half as inefficient during winter months as the raw numbers would suggest, since their cost is merely the difference in efficiency between electricity and gas.
You are correct about the summer months, and this is true of all appliances (during the winter, their inefficiency is "free," but during the summer it costs you twice - first when you generate the excess heat, and then when your AC works harder to get rid of it). Certainly CFLs make a lot more sense in Florida than they do in Minnesota for that reason. This is part of the point of trying to price things correctly and let the market figure it out: a solution that works in Texas and Florida might not work in Minnesota and Maine. A bulb that works fine for some people might be really annoying for others.
There already is a price on carbon. It's called the electrical bill.
No, the electrical bill is a price on electricity. There are large costs to producing electricity from carbon-based fuels that are not reflected in the market price of electricity, hence the need for a tax, or some other mechanism, to offset those costs.
Keith wrote, "Even so, it's amusing that those who so cleverly thought about how the waste heat from incandescent bulbs wasn't 'waste' in the winter failed to realize that it also heated homes in the summer, forcing the cooling system to work harder!"
Chill out man. Those who so cleverly thought about the waste heat from incandescent bulbs didn't fail to realize that things are different in the summer. I qualified my point by noting that it only applied during the winter. However, there are large swathes of the country where AC is necessary for maybe 2-3 months a year, and heating for 5-7 months a year. I don't have AC at all. Of course, even without AC, the extra heat is undesirable during the summer, so again my analysis only applies when extra heat is desirable.
As for the location of incandescent bulbs, I think this is a fairly minor factor. So for instance, take this comment:
"Note also that someone, perhaps you, mentioned that things like ovens are also not wasting heat in the winter. But they are: people don't spend that much time in the kitchen, the kitchen doesn't need to be heated. If you keep your oven in your living room, I stand corrected."
The thing is, even if I'm not spending a lot of time in my kitchen (though I generally am while I'm cooking or baking), I can't take advantage of that fact by letting my kitchen fall to the same temperature as the outdoor air. My kitchen is connected to the other rooms of my apartment, so its temperature affects the temperature throughout my apartment. True, the distribution of heat cannot be ignored entirely, but the heat isn't lost merely because it starts out somewhere I'm not. After all, to lose the heat it would have to go somewhere outside my apartment. If it goes to the front or back of the apartment, it warms the bedrooms. If it goes up, it warms the apartment above us.
mindbender,
It doesn't surprise me at all that gas is twice as efficient when it comes to producing heat as electricity in my locale, and I bet that is true most places. Keep in mind that somewhere back at the generating plant, something has to be converted into electricity (it might even be gas!). It then has to be transported (with a lot of loss) to my house.
The thing about electricity is that it is very useful for doing a lot of things besides heating (e.g., I am not typing this on a gas-powered computer). And the scale efficiencies in electricity generation are such that it wouldn't make sense for all of us to try to do something like convert gas into electricity on a house by house basis. But if you are just talking about heating, where there are really not much in the way of scale efficiencies to be achieved (it isn't hard to burn up gas), then the local approach makes a lot more sense.
Oh, one more point. It's amusing that those who so cleverly pointed out that the location of lightbulbs means that the heat won't have much beneficial effect didn't realize that the same analysis should mean that they don't have much detrimental effect during the summer.
Americans will fight for their right to destroy the planet no matter what. Their freedom is more important than survival. Look people, it is just a light. CFLs are more efficient and soon maybe LEDs even more. You will get used to the color if you stop bitching and use them AND you will save money. What is the downside? Oh yeah, you will feel abused by liberals. Ugh...
I'm going to avoid CFL for as long as I possibly can.
Flourescent lighting actually flickers. The flicker rate is pretty rapid, so most people don't notice it, or only notice odd effects that they don't immediately connect to the flickering. But there is a substantial number of people whose eyes can detect the flickering, and for those people CFL means unpleasant effects like headaches and worse: I get a headache every time I step into a store lit by flourescent lights. Would you look forward to having a headache any time you turn on the lights in your own house?
I'm going to avoid CFL for as long as I possibly can.
LEDs will probably turn out to be the main alternative for those who can't tolerate CFLs. Right now, though, LEDs that are as bright as high-wattage incandescents are very expensive.
The increasing cost of electricity and proposed carbon taxes might not force everyone to make a 100% switch to CFLs or LEDs. However, it will make people start thinking about where incandescents are truly necessary and where they aren't.
The savings from CFL bulbs appear very small. 0.33% to 0.5%. About the equivalent of letting 1 million immigrants in.
Just as all the energy conservation savings of the 1st two energy crises in the 1970s were wiped out by immigration and immigration-driven growth. We were 30% dependent on foreign oil in 1973 before we had all the new efficient equipment installed, huge improvements in vehicle MPG, and closed down all the oil-burner plants. Now we are 70% dependent on foreign oil, and a bigger net user of energy and oil than in 1973. The main difference is immigrant-driven growth driving us from 226 million people in 1973 to 300 million today.
Why the distraction of picayune little changes like the war on incandescent lightbulbs instead of stopping population growth or building more CO2-free nuke plants or forcing people to stop wasteful travel practices?(one ill-planned, extra shopping trip uses more carbon than all the lightbulb savings, as does driving 3 weeks with underinflated cars)
Why the do-gooder focus on lightbulbs?
Because lightbulbs are a great way to proselytize & indoctrinate children that they can save the planet and the gay baby whales by nagging parents to use only "correct" lightbulbs....and thus create the next generation of envoronmentalists that "feel good about themselves" through trivially impactful "involvement" like recycling awful plastic shopping bags (2800 per gallon of oil, burned anyways in trash to energy plants)or newspapers to save(renewable) trees.
Movement environmentalists vs. true conservation environmentalists. People that favor knocking down rain forest because "beautiful exciting renewable fuel" from palm oil and sugar cane monoculture could be obtained. Movement environmentalists no loger concerned with massive human population growth or wildlife habitat loss. Who wish to give up 2,000 square miles of natural US prairie to "exciting switchgrass energy", or whack down 40% of a remnant Nigerian or Burmese forest to palm oil - but oppose drilling on 2,000 acres of Arctic wasteland because "saving a miniscule piece of ANWAR from temporary human activity is a powerful symbol to the children! the children!".
Look, if you and others aren't even willing to change a lightbulb that gives off light almost as good as incandesents (and could get better) as a step to possibly averting global warming then we are seriously doomed. I mean, do you think climate change isn't a serious issue?
Posted by David
David is just such the idiot the movement environmentalists count on. Don't be concerned with human population going from 1 billion in 1800 to 6 billion now to 12 billion in 2100. No. If you want to avert planetary doom, do what the Elites now jetting monthly to Davos tell you to do and support ethanol, and abandon incorrect lightbulbs!
No, the electrical bill is a price on electricity.
Mixner,
Most electricity is produced by coal. Coal is a form of carbon. By and large, an electric bill is a carbon bill. You're picking nits.
Re: But there is a substantial number of people whose eyes can detect the flickering, and for those people CFL means unpleasant effects like headaches and worse:
I'm one of these people and old-fashioned flourescent tube lights play hell with me. In college I once had to drop a class because I could not stand to be in that particular classroom with its especially bad lighting. (Old computer screens are bad for me too). But CFLs do not affect me at all. I suspect the flicker effect is probably minimal.
Re: Just as all the energy conservation savings of the 1st two energy crises in the 1970s were wiped out by immigration and immigration-driven growth.
This is nonsense. Believe it or not they do have electricity in Mexico and even autombiles! I've been there; I can attest to that. So those immigrants will be using energy whether they are here or there-- and in Mexico they may well be using even less efficient technologies.
Matt, I think there's a progressive case for banning incandescents that you're overlooking. I'm working from the assumption that a carbon tax won't completely price incandescents off the market (I don't think it would, but I'm having trouble finding reliable numbers). If a carbon tax would completely get rid of incandescents, this is a pretty silly issue--the most you could say is "it sucks that this isn't a comprehensive carbon tax." True, but not that interesting.
Anyway, a carbon tax has real costs--food and transportation would both become more expensive with a carbon tax. Food is a necessity and transportation is pretty inelastic in the short term. That imposes a real cost on people, especially those below a certain income.
By finding easy ways to reduce energy use through regulations like those on incandescents, we can get the same reduction in greenhouse gases with less of the social cost associated with a carbon tax.
I understand there's a rationale for not doing things in this piecemeal fashion--for pushing something like a carbon tax that solves the problem in a uniform and transparent way. I'd be convinced, except for the fact that the efficiency gains of CFLs are huge and easily attained. It would be an entirely different story if the regulation wasn't accounting for a few percent of our entire electricity consumption.
Mixner is right and Shinyk is wrong. Sure, some electricity is generated by burning coal, and sure, coal costs money. However, the environmentally problematic aspects of coal are precisely the aspects that aren't priced in. If we had coal identical to existing coal except that it released no emissions when burned, it would be priced the same as real coal. However, it would be fairly unobjectionable to use the stuff. Coal as it exists is very dirty to burn, and this price is borne not by the electricity producers but by anyone who breathes downwind from them (and by anyone harmed by global warming). It is this additional increment to the price of coal that should be factored into decisions about when and where to use it.
If you want to tell me I'm wrong, you have to say why.
You would, for instance, have to put a price tag on the cost of breathing "downwind from" coal power plants as well as the estimated number of people whose health is directly and measurably harmed in this way.
Next, you would have to address why it is you think money from a coal tax would go towards this group instead of a Bridge to Nowhere (Stevens), welfare for a corporation that doesn't exist (Murtha), or the rechristening of private buildings in a specific congressman's honor (Rangel).
Finally, you would have to explain why it is that you believe there is some sovereign entity that makes "decisions about when and where to use" coal. There is no entity that micromanages the market in the way you suggest. Our system is, though regulated, self-selecting, usually based on lowest cost within those regulations. The only potentially useful purpose of a coal tax is to make coal non-competitive vs. other, cleaner alternatives, which would require increasing the energy price of coal to above that of, say, solar, which would increase the monthly electric bill of every citizen and business by a factor of between 5 and 10, which, in turn, increases the price of every commodity that requires electricity in its production, transportation or storage. Then, you have to sell that to the American people.
Or, as with CFLs, you could just wait for innovation to present viable options.
THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE IN THE LIGHT IF YOU BUY A 32K COLOR TEMPERATURE BULB.
This is simple physics. Light is light; the color temperature determines its color. Incandescents burn at 32K; CFLs are available in 31K, 32K, and 56K.
You're imagining the difference, or else buying the wrong thing. You're a consumer. Do your homework.
“Oh, one more point. It's amusing that those who so cleverly pointed out that the location of lightbulbs means that the heat won't have much beneficial effect didn't realize that the same analysis should mean that they don't have much detrimental effect during the summer.”
That's not necessarily true. Think about it for awhile.
Anyway, I don't think you're making a fair comparison. I actually deleted a short paragraph that had some explicit mockery of the sort that was more implicit in the paragraph to which you are referring. And the trait which I was mocking was the tendency to contradict other people with gotchya-esque statements that are a) overly theoretical and (relatedly) b) first glosses on the topic (i.e., not exhibiting anything beyond a few seconds of thought). It's pretty typical on the 'net and it's typical of people who are either not as smart as they think they are or who talk too much and are too eager to score conversational points, or a combination of both. I do it occasionally, too, though I try to avoid it and do it, I like to think, more for the latter reasons than the former.
But in the context of the criticism I was implicitly making, your comparison of what I wrote and what you wrote isn't really valid. Yes, I failed to account for all possibilities. But I didn't pretend to! In contrast, the simple "incandescent lighting is not a waste of energy in the winter" is too theoretical, misses the obvious theoretical correlate that it would even out because of heating in the summer (and therefore it's a net loss compared to heating with a heating system only in the winter), and is clearly only a superficial gloss on the theoretical aspects of this, without even a nod to the real-world difficulties of answering the question.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not assume that this is representative of your habits of thought; but there are a large number of people for whom it is and those people don't realize they are only smart enough to make themselves look stupid to smarter and/or more thoughtful people. Usually, we call these people “Libertarians” (or “Objectivists”), but they can be found in all walks of life.
THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE IN THE LIGHT IF YOU BUY A 32K COLOR TEMPERATURE BULB.
This is simple physics. Light is light; the color temperature determines its color. Incandescents burn at 32K; CFLs are available in 31K, 32K, and 56K.
You're imagining the difference, or else buying the wrong thing. You're a consumer. Do your homework.
Not correct, Luke I suggest you do your homework. The light given off by any lamp is more complex than can be distilled by a single number. Each is best represented by a curve, which plots frequency by strength of the light at that frequency. Using this measure, incandescent lights more nearly approximate sunlight than do CFL's.
That being said, I support the use of CFL's, and use many of them in my house, but mainly in locations where I can 'mix' the light from the CFL's with incandescents, if the color rendering is important, or in places where it's not too important.
Better would be for us to develop wind/solar/geothermal power, and use electricity from fossil fuels only as a last resort.
Of course the best light is that given by nature for free, from the sun. Proper design by a good architect can increase daylighting so you don't need lights at all, during the day. So, try to put your desk near a window. Very simple!
But in the context of the criticism I was implicitly making, your comparison of what I wrote and what you wrote isn't really valid. Yes, I failed to account for all possibilities. But I didn't pretend to! In contrast, the simple "incandescent lighting is not a waste of energy in the winter" is too theoretical, misses the obvious theoretical correlate that it would even out because of heating in the summer (and therefore it's a net loss compared to heating with a heating system only in the winter), and is clearly only a superficial gloss on the theoretical aspects of this, without even a nod to the real-world difficulties of answering the question.
You might be surprised to know that, for many types of buildings (e.g., Hospitals, assembly spaces, or even office buildings that have a lot of glazing and are loaded with computers) most of the year, even well into the winter, the load on the mechanical systems is cooling. This is because of the heat generated by the occupants and all of the equipment. So most of the time, you'd have incandescents generating heat that you then turn around and pay to cool.
Thought I had stumbled onto a rare Canadian Football post, alas, no.
Just a post demonstrating that Ross is even weirder than his Table appearances - head turn and all - have demonstrated.
For those of you who don't "get" those of us complaining about the quality of CFL light: do you get migraines? I do, and I find the quality of CFL light irritating in much the same way some of the other visual triggers for my migraines are irritating.
CNN recently did a story in which Dr. Gupta admitted that there may actually be a link between CFLs and migraines.
So...if you think CFL light is just fine, simply consider yourself lucky.
“Each is best represented by a curve, which plots frequency by strength of the light at that frequency. Using this measure, incandescent lights more nearly approximate sunlight than do CFL's.”
Yeah, but CFL's have gotten better, somehow. I've never researched the topic at all, so I know squat about the technology involved in these new generation of fluorescent lights. I don't even know what gas standard lights use to fluoresce—but I imagine that you could use different combination of things to get better curves.
What I don't understand are white LEDs. I do think that they're not generating white light purely from narrow-bandwidth red, green, and blue LEDs. Aren't they also using UV to fluoresce some coatings or something? Anyway, while a combination of narrow-spectrum RGB light will appear to illuminate things in full color, it seems to me that this is very far from natural illumination and would present some real-world artifacts.
I bought one of these things, and it's pretty nifty...though mostly useless. The amount of light it produces is too small to be useful for any real illumination purposes. I fantasize about having twenty of them, though. Anyway, the pure color settings of red, green, and blue—especially red—are interesting because the spectra are so narrow they have interesting effects. Especially with regard to the little remote control: its buttons are color-coded in surprisingly pure colors and so, for example, under blue light suddenly the pure red button is absolutely black.
What I want is ubiquitous lighting that is computer controlled and adjustable in terms of color. I'd like to have the indoor light cycle through the morning, daytime, and evening colors, for example.
This is simple physics. Light is light; the color temperature determines its color. Incandescents burn at 32K; CFLs are available in 31K, 32K, and 56K.
You're imagining the difference, or else buying the wrong thing. You're a consumer. Do your homework.
Yep. Whole lotta basic physics ignorance cropping up in this thread.
I've had CFL's for at least two years now, and I don't believe I've had to replace them yet. Add in that they consume about an eighth as much power per lumen as incandescents, and there's no contest. In fact, I find them brighter and better for reading than incandescents, and I have yet to detect a trace of flicker.
Pat & all,
CFLs should have a Color Rendering Index (CRI) on the package, because that tells you how good the color is. 100 = perfect, 60 = lousy, 85+ pretty decent. (Trust me, I know about this).
But the CFLs I find at stores never have the CRI on the box.
Surfing the web I have found high CRI bulbs, but they are all the "freakishly blue" daylight balance (5600K).
Anyone know of a CFL with high CRI and a warm tone?
If the gummint required accurate labeling we would all be able to tell in advance if the CFL has lousy or good light. I guess I'm just a liberal.
I was buying my first CFLs just last week, and they had ones that were labeled as specifically designed for use with dimmer switches. Anyone know if these still flicker? They were about twice as expensive as the regular CFLs, so it would be shame to pick one up and not be able to use it.
Shinyk,
You are incorrect, the electric bill is not a carbon tax. For many years I consumed power in Metro Detroit. There is a nuclear power plant south of Detroit called Fermi 2 which delivers electricity with far less carbon emission (almost zero), whereas I now live in a region that is split between wind turbine electricity and coal powered electricity. As you can see from this example, there are many different sources of electricity within one region. In a region where coal power was the only power, the electric bills would be higher due to a carbon tax. Regions with power from low carbon emitting forms, whatever they may be, would have lower bills. Thus consumption would be regulated by market forces intent on minimizing carbon emissions. By increasing price per kilowatt hour, the market incentives for carbon neutral energy are higher.
However, I also grew up in California during the mandatory low-flow toilet years...You had to flush the things like 4 times . . . [one] can't even imagine how much water was wasted.Of course, that's only for number two, which represents a low percentage of toilet usages (or if it doesn't then you should see about changing your diet). I bet the water you save when you go number one more than makes up for the multiple flushes when you go number two.
Some foreign toilets have "big" and "little" flush modes, which accomplishes the same thing.
Comments closed February 24, 2008.
Matt don't fall into the trap. It isn't mandating specific technological solutions, but rather, it is mandating efficiency standards that only, at this point, CFLs and LEDs meet. However, companies are free to introduce any other technologies that meet those requirements.
Posted by David | February 10, 2008 2:36 PM