Well, tomorrow heralds a historic day in the long, century-old\u00a0history of the traditional, incandescent light bulb.\u00a0 As\u00a0of the 1st September 2012, the last stage of the EU-wide\u00a0gradual incandescent bulb phaseout will begin.<\/p>\n
This all started back in the late 2000s, with the EU announcing its intention to remove these inefficient products from the shelves of Europe.\u00a0 For once the UK was ahead of the game, grandly pronouncing it would be launching a voluntary phaseout of the high wattage bulbs a whole twelve months before the official ban came into play.<\/p>\n
The first to disappear off our shelves was the 100Watt (and above) bulb, the official timeline started in 2009; then came the 60Watt and above a year later and now the 40Watt and above has been banned.<\/p>\n
So, what does this mean in practice?\u00a0 It does not mean that all 40Watt bulbs will be cleared off the shelves come the 1st September.\u00a0 Retailers are allowed to continue selling their existing stock until they run out.\u00a0 But they will not be able to buy new stock of any incandescent bulb 40Watt or higher.\u00a0 To all intents and purposes the\u00a0reign of the traditional light bulb is over!<\/p>\n
I’ve been, largely unintentionally, pretty\u00a0close to this piece of legislation over the years.\u00a0 As a main spokesperson for EST I was regularly\u00a0wheeled out to talk to the press about the various stages of the ban and to try to influence opinion on the virtues of the new efficient range of bulbs.\u00a0 I even ventured into the ‘lair of the dragon’, the dread\u00a0Daily Mail offices (a very grand old Art Deco\u00a0building in off High St Ken), to try to convince the journos there that compact fluorescent light bulbs were not, in fact, the\u00a0spawn of the devil and that the new generation of them worked very well.\u00a0 I’m not sure I succeeded in that one I’m sorry to say!<\/p>\n
And just today\u00a0I was interviewed on the radio again, to explain this last\u00a0piece of the EU lighting efficiency jigsaw.\u00a0 And still, like a broken record,\u00a0I was again defending the quality of energy efficient light bulbs.\u00a0 It’s so depressing that\u00a0there continues\u00a0the mis-conception that they take forever to warm up, the colour is drab and cold; they are big, stick-like and ugly – it’s simply not true.<\/p>\n
OK, some facts, to hopefully help dissolve this misplaced nostalgia for old fashioned incandescent light bulbs.<\/p>\n
Do you know of any other product out there that would still be for sale in the marketplace if it was only 10% efficient at doing the job it was made for? It seems hardly credible when you think of it that way. But it’s a fact that the incandescent bulb, for all of its 100+ year lifetime, has only been around 10% efficient at converting the electricity it consumes into light!\u00a0 The other 90% is wasted as heat!<\/p>\n
Ah, I hear the ‘disgruntled of Tonbridge Wells’ claim – but that heat is useful, it helps heat up your home!\u00a0 Without it\u00a0you need to heat your house more!\u00a0 Well, consider the facts,\u00a0in the main\u00a0light bulbs are positioned close to the ceiling, and heat rises.\u00a0 You mostly want heat at ground level, where you are!\u00a0 Also, electricity is three times as expensive as gas per unit, so if you have a gas central heating system, even if the boiler is old and only 60-70% efficient, surely you will want to be heating your home with gas rather than with electricity?<\/p>\n
Ah they cry, but they take forever to warm up.\u00a0 Not any more, there modern varieties have a very quick warm up phase, a matter of seconds.\u00a0 And anyway\u00a0I have always thought the gentle warm up of the CFL\u00a0was a bonus.\u00a0 Before I converted to CFLs, and had to turn\u00a0a light on in the middle of the night, I would be incapacitated for a minute or so as the sharp, viciously bright light of the incandescent\u00a0bore into\u00a0my eyelids, so much so that I\u00a0laid blinded and\u00a0immobilised until my eyes had gotten accustomed to the harshness.\u00a0The gentle warm up of the CFL cuts out that effect completely\u00a0and so is a time saver in my eyes (if you’ll excuse the pun).<\/p>\n
The lack of\u00a0shapes and sizes argument doesn’t wash any more either.\u00a0 They come in every size and type feasible nowadays.\u00a0 You can get dimmables, you can get ‘looky likeys’ that have the familiar\u00a0bulb type shape, you can get various colour tones.\u00a0 The emergence of LED varieties in recent years has increased the variety available\u00a0even more -albeit at a premium cost at present, but since the LED varieties last up to 25,000 hours, and save up to \u00a36 per year in high use areas, the payback is quick and prices will tumble as they become more popular.<\/p>\n
Basically, the hoary old\u00a0arguments against\u00a0efficient light bulbs\u00a0can be best illustrated by analogy.\u00a0 Imagine if people were still talking about mobile phones as if they had not evolved since their first emergence in the\u00a01990s?\u00a0 Heavy, brick like constructions which cost a fortune, took forever to charge, short lifetimes\u00a0and\u00a0 limited coverage.\u00a0 That would be a nonsense wouldn’t it?\u00a0 Given how far we have come since then!\u00a0 Well, you can think in the same way about energy efficient light bulbs – we’ve come a long way in the last decade, it’s just some people – and I’m talking about you Daily Mail journos, will simply not recognise this fact.<\/p>\n
And we must be doing something right.\u00a0 The USA have started to implement their own ban; with 100Watt bulbs now off the market and lower wattages to follow. And China, eager to make efficiency savings where they can, will be implementing a 100Watt bulb ban in October 2012, and will have all bulbs over 15Watts banned by 2016.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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