From the 02.26.07 edition of Red Herring magazine:
California’s proposed incandescent bulb ban (see “Could California Ban the Bulb?” RedHerring.com, February 1, 2007) is ridiculous! Fluorescent bulbs may last longer (not in my house) but you have to include the cost of the ballast and the starter in both energy to produce and additional expense of the fixture. When these and the additional cost of installation are included in the equation, plus fixture replacement costs due to poor reliability, the cost of fluorescent lighting is vastly more expensive than incandescent lighting. Incandescent lighting is also better for the health of our eyes and sanity as that endless flicker fatigues the eyes and drives people nuts!
Fluorescent bulbs are also considered hazardous waste. The energy costs to clean up or keep the environment clean are not worth the few bucks saved at the meter. This ban is not a good idea. Neither is Title 24, which bans incandescent sockets in new-home construction. People just change out the fluorescent fixtures to incandescent after the house has been inspected. Then the fixtures just end up in the dump. I for one will just buy my bulbs out of state and stock up.
The best way to reduce energy waste is to educate people and business to not waste it. Turn the lights off when not in use!
—Roger Smith, Bishop, California
With the mass, recent push for everyone to switch to fluorescent bulbs, I thought a contrarian point of view might be good for discussion.
I'm not sure what this "cost of the ballast and the starter in both energy to produce and additional expense of the fixture" is, but that's a nonsensical argument. I think he's confusing the old tube fluorescent bulbs, which have (fairly inexpensive, these days) separate ballast and starter components, with the fully integrated CFL bulbs that are in vogue right now.
With a CFL bulb, the dollar cost of producing the ballast and starter it is passed on to you, already, in the cost of the bulb. There's no way that the energy cost of producing the ballast and starter in these integrated bulbs is higher than the genuinely enormous savings in electricity that you get by using them, over the lifetime of a bulb.
I've switched all but one bulb in my apartment to CFL bulbs, over the last six months, and I'd say that the lighting is actually better, since we use higher-wattage bulbs than we would if they were incandescent. (We use mostly 20W CFL bulbs, analogous to 75W incandescents, whereas they used to be 60W bulbs. Still a savings of .04kW/h, or, if you assume typical usage, or 9.6 kW-h per bulb per month. That's a savings of 87¢ per month per bulb. Or, if you prefer, somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 a month, for a relatively small two-bedroom apartment. They're more expensive, but they're paying themselves off rapidly.
There are perfectly good arguments against the drive for CFL bulbs (e.g., that better fuel economy in today's cars just lets Americans drive more, so we use more fuel now) -- but this isn't one.
Posted by: Wes Meltzer at February 25, 2007 11:23 PM