"An employee works at a traditional light bulb factory, which produces up to 110 million bulbs a year, in Russia's Siberian city of Tomsk, October 16, 2009. Russia will ban the production and sales of incandescent lamps with a power rating of more than 100 watts starting January 1, 2011."
REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin
2 comments:
Yes, can't believe this banning craze.
The ban on light bulbs is not just wrong because CFLs have disadvantages,
and not just wrong for freedom reasons,
it's even wrong with the energy and emission arguments used to defend it.
It may sound good to "only allow efficient products".
Unfortunately, inefficient products may be popular for many other reasons, relating to
performance, appearance, construction, as well as cost, and sometimes the overall savings
http://www.ceolas.net/#cc2x
onwards
Put it this way with the light bulbs:
Americans (like Europeans, probably including Russians) choose to buy ordinary light bulbs around 8 to 9 times out of 10 (light industry data 2008).
Banning what people want gives the supposed savings - no point in banning an impopular product = no "savings"!
If new LED lights - or more efficient incandescents etc - are good,
people will buy them - no need to ban ordinary light bulbs (little point).
If they are not good, people will not buy them - no need to ban ordinary light bulbs (no point).
The arrival of the transistor didn’t mean that more energy using radio tubes were banned… they were bought less anyway.
The need to save energy?
Advice is good and welcome, but bans are another matter...
ordinary citizens -not politicians – pay for energy, its production, and how they wish to use it.
There is no energy shortage - on the contrary, more and more renewable sources are being developed -
and if there was an energy shortage of the finite oil-coal-gas fuels,
then
1 renewable energy becomes more attractive price-wise
2 the fuel price rise would lead to more demand for efficient products – no need to legislate for it.
Any government worried about say oil use can simply tax it
(and imported oil is not used in electricity generation).
Supposed savings don’t hold up anyway,
for many reasons:
http://www.ceolas.net/#li13xonwards
= comparative brightness, lifespans, power factors, lifecycles, heat factor etc with referenced research
About electricity bills:
If electricity use does fall, the power companies have to put up prices to cover their overheads, maintenance costs, wage bills etc (using less fuel doesn't compensate much in overall costs).
As with other consumption, those who use less tend to pay more per unit used (and heavy users get discounts).
Emissions?
Does a light bulb give out any gases?
Power stations might not either:
Why should emission-free households be denied the use of lighting they obviously want to use?
Low emission households already dominate some regions, and will increase everywhere, since emissions will be reduced anyway through the planned use of coal/gas processing technology and/or energy substitution.
Direct ways to deal with emissions (for all else they contain too, whatever about CO2),
with a focus on transport and electricity:
http://www.ceolas.net/#cc10x
.
Incidentally,
about the industrial politics behind the bans...
http://www.ceolas.net/#li1ax
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