This story on the BBC news website, explaining the virtues of the new EU legislation to ban 100w incandescent bulbs features plenty of quotes from the Energy Saving Trust, who explain why Compact Florescent Lighting (otherwise known as “the shitty bulbs they’re going to make you use from now on, whether you like it or not”) are completely awesome:
According to the Energy Saving Trust, compact fluorescent lamps (energy-saving bulbs) use 80% less electricity than standard bulbs.
They could also save the average household £590 in energy over their lifetime of between eight and 10 years, and if all traditional bulbs were replaced, the carbon saving would be the equivalent of taking 70,000 cars off the road.
Good reasons.
Thanks Auntie. But who are the The Energy Saving Trust? Well they’re a ‘non-profit’ organisation 90% funded by the Government and includes as members The Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, The Secretary of State for Transport, The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and The First Minister for Scotland. It gets 2% of its funding from the private sector, and boasts the membership of most of the utilities and energy producing interests, all of whom seem terrified of being perceived as un-Green by consumers.
So when the BBC reports the views of the Energy Saving Trust like this, they’re not really quoting an independent, reliable source – it’s the Government advising the Government – again. It may be factually true that energy saving bulbs are cheaper to run, but ‘equivalent to 70,000 cars taken off the road’ is a completely bollocks statistic – and even if it were true, I have one simple question to ask:
So what?
In fact, I reached the end of the story wondering why, exactly, there’s this overwhelming need to take political action against the humble light bulb.
Handily the Government is on hand to explain to us what our criticism of this plan should be (because they’ve got a response pre-cooked for it, unlike, say, ‘hey, you’re taking away my decision to choose for myself, you authoritarian shits!’)
Claims of poor lighting were also untrue, [a Government spokesman] said.
“The light is bright and clear and tests conducted by the Energy Saving Trust suggest that the majority of people cannot tell the difference between the light of a new CFL and an incandescent bulb.”
Right, let’s rip this to pieces nice and quickly : ‘the majority’ (anything over 51% of the sample) couldn’t tell the difference in a trial. In other words, anything from 49% of people in the trial could tell the difference. The spokesman makes no reference to what their test subjects said about their quality of the light or which one they preferred. How do they get from ‘majority couldn’t tell the difference’ to ‘claims of poor lighting are untrue’? The mind boggles. It’s a piece of political propaganda and a conclusion not supported by data.
The reason all florescent lighting is inferior to incandescent lighting is simple: Normal bulbs emit the full spectrum of visible light, whilst Compact Florescents don’t. You get the full spectrum from the Sun, and you get partial spectrums from things like televisions – that eerie glow when a television is left on whilst the lights are turned out.
I used to do a lot of 3D Computer Graphics, and one of the hardest things to simulate is human skin. That’s because skin isn’t just ‘skin’ – it’s multiple layers of different types of tissues, and light is diffused and scattered around underneath the surface, each layer handling photons in its own way. Put your hand over a powerful light source and your skin seems to glow bright orange. In computer graphics it is fantastically difficult to get right, and is the main reason why it’s almost impossible to create a truly photo-realistic human in a computer.
What I learnt from this is that how we look is very much dictated by the light that illuminates us. The partial spectrum light from Compact Fluorescents makes skin look very different. I can’t explain it. It just feels eerie. Whenever I’m in space lit only by Florescent lighting I feel like I’m in a dystopian horror, as if we’ve crossed some invisible line in creating artificial environments for ourselves.
Yet despite “claims of poor lighting being ‘untrue’” the EU wants to have a go at reducing the perceived quality of lighting from the old style bulbs regardless, by making it illegal to sell a standard bulb that tints or diffuses the light. Hmm. Does this not suggest that someone, somewhere, is concerned enough about a difference to warrant legislating against it?
And once again I’m brought back to wondering why. Why do this? Presumably the answer is “because the market has failed! People are still buying cheap bulbs that give off better lighting instead of expensive bulbs that aren’t as good. We must do something!”
Yet the market hasn’t failed. The market’s working perfectly well. People aren’t switching because the new bulbs aren’t better and cheaper than the ones that came before. I mean, even if you decide that 100w bulbs are wasteful and it’s not enough that people simply waste their own money paying to run them, why make it illegal to sell a bulb with diffusion or tinting?
This is purely to rig the competition and deny us the ability to choose for ourselves.
So the EU, a ‘Free Trade Zone’, is deciding that the manufacturers of energy saving bulbs are to be favoured (they’re produced by Great Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain) and the manufacturers of incandescent bulbs are to be fought against. It is economic planning, without question – done on an EU wide level, using The Environment as the excuse for restricting yet another personal and economic freedom.
Is there any wonder that Green is the new Red?
Peter in Dublin said...
31 Aug 09 at 6:37 pm
Thank you Charlotte, also for the BBC link
I have extensively covered why this ban is wrong, and the politics behind it http://www.ceolas.net/#li1x onwards
(also see Commissioner Piebalgs posting and comment…if moderators allow it: http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/piebalgs/lighting-the-way-to-the-future/ )
Peter in Dublin said...
31 Aug 09 at 6:38 pm
The particular error of banning 100W+ ordinary bulbs is that bright CFLs or LEDs are comparatively difficult and expensive to make,
and the high wattage heat effect is not necessarily wasted (room heat substantially rises towards the ceiling by convection, and spreads downwards from there).
Banning frosted lights smacks of particularly unwarranted EU pettiness, for any marginal savings involved.
Clear lights (including halogens) have a strong glare – hence the overwhelming popularity of frosted lights for ceiling use.
Another problem is that small bright CFLs and LEDs are difficult to make, so that candle/golfball lights are bulkier and may not fit some lamps.
Supposed savings don’t hold up for many reasons:
Just a few examples here: CFL Lifespan is lab tested in 3 hour cycles. That does not correspond to real life usage and numerous tests have shown real life type on-off switching reducing lifespan. Leaving lights on of course also uses up energy, as does the switch-on power surge with CFLs
Also, CFLs get dimmer with age, effectively reducing lifespan
Power factor: Few people know that CFLs typically have a power factor of 0.5 – that means that power stations use up twice as much power than what the CFL rating shows. This has to do with current and voltage phase differences set up when CFLs are used.
Although consumers do not see this on their meters, they will of course have to pay for it on their bills.
This is explained with official links including to US Dept of Energy here: http://ceolas.net/#li15eux
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.
The Taxation alternative
A ban on light bulbs is extraordinary, in being on a product safe to use.
We are not talking about banning lead paint here.
Even for those who remain pro-ban, taxation to reduce consumption would make much more sense, since governments can use the income to reduce emissions (home insulation schemes, renewable projects etc) more than any remaining product use causes such problems.
A few euros (or equivalent) tax that reduces the current sales (EU 2 billion per annum, UK c. 250-300 million pa, Germany c 1/2 billion per annum), raises future billions, and would retain consumer choice.
It could also be revenue neutral, lowering any sales tax on efficient products.
However, taxation is itself unjustified:
It is simply better than bans also for ban proponents, in overall emssion lowering terms…
Peter in Dublin said...
31 Aug 09 at 6:42 pm
(continued, written in sections to allow publishing!)
The EU and industrial politics behind the ban is even stranger than you might think…
http://www.ceolas.net/#li1ax
Manufacturers have been pressurized into making/distributing CFLs and payback time means EU citizens buying poor quality CFLs, thereby choosing to migrate to LEDs when those lights are ready – at yet more cost to citizens and at yet more profit to the manufacturers.
Why should lighting costs come down, when the cheap light bulb competition is all removed by force?
Cheap light bulbs = lots of competiton = no profits = no fun
Complex expensive light bulbs = less competition = lots of profits = lots of fun
Numerous local manufacturers can give local jobs and make and distribute simple light bulbs and with low carbon footprint, compared to shipping complex CFLs made in coal-powered China and transported over with ships using bunker oil and associated emissions – with used CFLs/mercury also probably shipped back again to China for reuse in new CFLs.
Question: Why did major light bulb manufacturers like Philips suddenly become very agreeable to this ban?
Also why was this Energy based ban proposal – by the Energy Commissioner – shunted to the Environment Commission, with lots of friendly activists, which was invited to be the last instance of discussion: Rather than going to a likely more critical Energy committee and a normal parliamentary debate and vote?
Charlotte Gore said...
31 Aug 09 at 6:44 pm
Thanks Peter,
Yes the implication seems to be that CFLs are something you can make profit on in Europe so long as you don’t have to compete with cheap incandescent bulbs manufactured in China…
The Grim Reaper said...
31 Aug 09 at 6:57 pm
I think I love you…
Mark Reckons said...
31 Aug 09 at 7:36 pm
… but what are you so afraid of?
Charlotte Gore said...
31 Aug 09 at 7:37 pm
Economic planning?
Philip Walker said...
31 Aug 09 at 7:39 pm
“People aren’t switching because the new bulbs aren’t better and cheaper than the ones that came before.”
And to drive the point home, the new bulbs are only on sale at the higher price because the supply chain cannot make a profit selling them at a price which competes with incandescents: in other words, we may fairly deduce from the lower retail price that incandescents are cheaper to manufacture. Some of that will be technical efficiency, but a large part will be the various factors which go into making an incandescent. Among those factors is, not only directly, but imputed through the entire factor chain, energy.
So if incandescents are cheaper, it is reasonable to suppose that they are so because they take less energy to produce, which means that, ceteris paribus, their production process is less bad for the environment.
And you try explaining that to the watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) and they won’t believe yer.
Mark Reckons said...
31 Aug 09 at 7:42 pm
It was actually my attempt to turn The Grim Reaper’s comment into a Partridge Family song, but thanks for the answer anyway!
Peter in Dublin said...
31 Aug 09 at 8:51 pm
Thanks Charlotte
Agree about the personal freedom philosophy here too, as you’ll have guessed from my website…
Andy Hinton said...
31 Aug 09 at 9:33 pm
Charlotte, I can appreciate where you’re coming from, and the attempt to ban diffused incandescents would indeed be very odd if true (you don’t link to anything backing up this claim, and it’s the first I’ve read of it).
But your refusal to engage with the actual reasons government(s) want us to switch to compact fluorescents (climate change etc) is bizarre.
And once again I’m brought back to wondering why. Why do this? Presumably the answer is “because the market has failed! People are still buying cheap bulbs that give off better lighting instead of expensive bulbs that aren’t as good. We must do something!”
This, for instance, is just bizarre. You may not believe in anthropogenic climate change, but can you not even accept that the reason this is being done is that some people do, and they are trying to do something about it?
Andy Hinton said...
31 Aug 09 at 9:46 pm
Actually, I take back what I said about the frosted bulbs, I’ve now read the BBC news article you linked to!
Roger Thornhill said...
31 Aug 09 at 9:54 pm
Philip Walker makes the same point I have against rail l- all that cost must mean more energy than people are prepare to admit. But what is truth in the face of ideology and “the green religion”?
Dazmando said...
31 Aug 09 at 9:56 pm
Charlotte How dare you! you have managed to change my mind about these bulbs, I dont like changing my mind. I never realised the politics behind it, Just thought it was a green ban, while quite hard I was not really against it. But now I am. Well Done! good work as alway damn it!
Charlotte Gore said...
31 Aug 09 at 10:14 pm
Perhaps the question is one of stress – not *why* do this, rather why do *this*. 70,000 cars off the road sounds wonderful but I don’t believe it – and even if I did it’s a woefully lame excuse for taking away people’s ability to decide for themselves and worst still engage in what is ultimately economic planning.
I’m sincerely of the opinion that if the only solution for the ‘green problem’ offered is economic planning then our doom is very much sealed, whether or not the planet gets us first.
Andy Hinton said...
31 Aug 09 at 11:08 pm
Charlotte: The burden is surely on you to say what a better solution would be? I mean, I have some sympathy for your dislike of this move, but ultimately, I believe the consequences of not doing something, and fairly quickly, about reducing our carbon footprint are in a rather higher category of “doom” than compromising on ideology. If you see equivalence either way, then you ought to allow those of us who don’t to choose the one we prefer, unless you think you know a way to avoid both. In which case, you need to spell it out. Is there any form of intervention you would accept?
Charlotte Gore said...
31 Aug 09 at 11:57 pm
I disagree Andy – I think the burden of proof should be on those who seek to impose economic planning without really having any sense of what the actual outcome might be – we might reduce CO2 emissions a bit – but what of it? What exactly will that achieve other than ‘sending a message’ to people?
Fact is that CFL bulbs contain mercury, PCBs and plastics while standard bulbs contain metal and glass – CFLs cannot be the right solution here. They’re a recycling nightmare and increase our use of oil. Oil companies in favour of replacing a metal and glass based product with a plastic one? Surprise surprise.
It’s completely unnecessary. If people are concerned about their electricity bills or their energy use then there’s nothing stopping them switching – why *force* it? What is the real outcome other than an economic boost to people involved in the supply chain of those blasted horrible CFLs?
peter in dublin said...
1 Sep 09 at 12:00 am
Another small point…
if energy use does fall with light bulb and other proposed efficiency bans and electricity companies make less money,
what’s the bet they’ll put up prices to compensate
Energy regulators can hardly deny any such cost covering exercise…
yet less “savings” from a ban!
Charlotte Gore said...
1 Sep 09 at 12:06 am
There’s an assumption that it will achieve something measurable and concrete in terms of benefit to the environment but this is highly, highly suspect at best.
The only possible benefit might be ‘pseudo rationing’ people’s energy useage (cutting it off at the demand rather than the supply) will might help reduce the probability of embarrassing supply related power-cuts by.. hmm… 0.004%? Something like that?
The whole green thing bugs me because no-one can really point to any evidence at all that suggests we even *can* have an impact.
Tom James said...
1 Sep 09 at 12:35 am
I think the burden of proof should be on those who seek to impose economic planning without really having any sense of what the actual outcome might be
Charlotte – I recommend you read Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the subject of global warming and action under conditions of uncertainty.
The truth is that no one knows what the *precise* consequences of continued emission of CO2 and other gases will be on the climate.
We gain nothing from meddling with the composition of the atmosphere, and the potential downsides are catastropic. Therefore by the precautionary principle governments should take whatever action is necessary to reduce emissions of CO2 and other gases.
As a general rule we shouldn’t meddle with complex systems (like the environment) by dumping our waste in them.
Taleb is not so stupid as to wallow in ideologically-derived anti-statism. He is a smart guy, and more than that knows the value of uncertainty. He knows that it is hubris to demand certainty, and that we should instead accept that bad things happen, and build a society that is robust enough to cope when bad things do happen.
If that means “economic planning” then so be it. If it means “freer markets” then so be it. Why are you so blindly committed to free markets?
I agree that banning incandescent bulbs is a stupid policy; but only because it is so very limited. It does not attempt to address the real causes of anthropogenic climate change. It is a pointless distraction.
What is needed is a straightforward tax on activities that emit greenhouse gases.
Thomas Byrne said...
1 Sep 09 at 12:47 am
Tom,
The question you have to ask is whether the balance of incentives is going to be any better for governments: don’t forget, there are two problems here. Firstly, whether governments are going to be able to make the right decisions in spite of the powerful special interests in their midst who will be opposed to most of these measures you talk about, and secondly, even if they manage to do this, whether they will be able to solve the collective action problem between governments. If the US and Europe impose a strict cap-and-trade policy, regulate emissions, whatever, this won’t help a bit if China and India realize that they can free ride off of the efforts of the rest of the world and enrich themselves in the process. In other words, I’m afraid that if global warming really is the problem it is made out to be, putting our faith in governments is going to be of no use anyway. It’s no coincidence that countries like Cuba have some of the worst environmental records.
At the moment, the people who bear the costs of pollution are not the same people as as create it – under strong property rights, the opposite would be true. Incentives matter, and in this case they’d rapidly decrease the amount of pollution.
The state actively prevented this in history. At the beginning of the 19th Century when the first factories were opening, groups of farmers took the factories to court because their crops were being damaged by the pollution of the factories. The state threw out the cases and said that the air belonged to everyone and that people could not sue factories for pollution damages. Stricter property rights and less state intervention would have done much to nip pollution problems in the bud and allowed for the development of greener technology and industry much earlier than it did.
Tom James said...
1 Sep 09 at 12:57 am
@Thomas Byrne:
Fair enough. I agree that stronger and more comprehensive property rights are important in addressing environmental issues.
And yes the state is frequently captured by special interests, but imperfect as it is the state is the only tool with the power to develop and enforce the better property rights that are needed.
I agree with you basically, but I don’t agree that the state is necessarily the cause of all problems, and that the state can never be the solution.
Jimmi_W said...
1 Sep 09 at 9:08 am
An excellent article.
Devil's Kitchen said...
1 Sep 09 at 10:28 am
Charlotte,
I have added (reasonably substantially) to your comment.
But the gist of it is that one of the reasons that CFLs are not cheaper is that the EU has slapped a 66% import tariff on them…
DK
Devil's Kitchen said...
1 Sep 09 at 10:37 am
@Tom James,
Lordy. Look, the precautionary principle only applies when there are no downsides to doing such and such a thing. There is a colossal downside to limitation of CO2—namely that the world becomes much, much poorer than it would otherwise be. Which means, in common parlance, unnecessary millions more dead Africans. But who cares—they’re only brown people, eh?
The IPCC itself recognises that reduction of CO2 is not necessarily the best way to go. The SRES A1 scenarios are the ones that makes us richest and best able to mitigate so that we can react if catastrophic climate change is happening. I stress that these are not some crackpot minority report: the IPCC reports are based on the SRES scenarios.
DK
Joe Otten said...
1 Sep 09 at 11:06 am
Why are the manufacturers in favour of this ban? Because the incandescent light bulb is a commodity item and therefore barely profitable to make. See the range of wierd and wonderful light bulbs and fittings in B&Q, and you will see that the business plan is to capture customers with bizarre fittings that take only obscure expensive bulbs. To sell such things as halogens, which are barely more efficient than incandescents but are expensive and short-lived to boot.
Environmentalists are the ventriloquists’ dummies on this one.
peter in dublin said...
1 Sep 09 at 12:21 pm
Charlotte
) =
Why not tell the man directly what you think:
EU Commissioner Piebalgs new explanation of the ban in his blog (with comments
http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/piebalgs/lighting-the-way-to-the-future/
Rob said...
1 Sep 09 at 1:29 pm
Tom James:
To say that “the state is the only tool with the power to develop and enforce the better property rights that are needed.” is absurd. Law protects property rights, Common Law independent of the State. A powerful State is anathema to the property rights of individuals.
Ben said...
1 Sep 09 at 9:54 pm
“Therefore by the precautionary principle governments should take whatever action is necessary to reduce emissions of CO2 and other gases.
Thats true greenie language…nice
I know let the gormless state do whatever they like to stop (this non problem) dreaded CO2 emissions. Ban lighbulbs, stop car usage, measure CO2 output of your house and then tax you accordingly…..where next…..limit (CO2 emitting) children..thats what they want folks
Meanwhile, the world (sorry I should be saying “planet”) and its weather/climate will continue on its own merry course.
Finally I think we should limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees. Every hour on the hour everyone please stop breathing for 5 minutes
Jack Hughes said...
2 Sep 09 at 9:12 am
Interesting that the greenies want to force us to use mercury-based lights in our homes.
20 years ago they would have been fighting to make mercury-based lights ILLEGAL.
Similarly the new bonkers sci-fi ideas about putting salt spray into the clouds and iron filings in the oceans. This is a new twist on the theme of ‘we had to destroy the atmosphere to save the atmosphere’ – just coming from left field this time.
Next up: Royal Society recommends lightweight foil-based headwear to protect from cosmic rays.
Tom James said...
2 Sep 09 at 7:08 pm
@Devil’s Kitchen:
*Rolls eyes*. I’m not against industrialisation, just against anthropogenic climate change. With nuclear reactors, wind and solar energy there is no reason that developing countries can’t continue to develop. But there is a trade off if your country ends up being flooded/stricken with drought/unlivable due to increased temperatures.
Fair enough re the A1 scenario, which looks jolly leave-it-to-Beaver, but governments have a responsibility to hope for the best and plan for the worst, which leads me onto
@Rob:
Indeed. But what good is English common law when it comes to global environmental problems? Your suggestion that “A powerful State is anathema to the property rights of individuals” is unhelpful because whether rightly or wrongly a powerful state exists and as such any action to deal with global environmental issues will probably involve states.
And I’m not even sure that your statement “A powerful State is anathema to the property rights of individuals” is even empirically accurate. We have had a stronger state in this country over the past 100 years or so than at any time in history previously, and property rights haven’t declined in strength.