Tuesday, July 07, 2009

What is the problem with banning incandescent bulbs?

They keep getting better and better, so any ban may not really help the environment in the end.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/business/energy-environment/06bulbs.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1246978812-R4qjP9aSF5XZ1NbywEFkUg

Not to mention that many environmentalists and doctors are concerned with the amount of mercury in every CFL bulb.

To be clear: I am not against CFL bulbs. We have many of them in our house. I am against limiting consumer choice when companies have the ability to fix the problems that made a product problematic in the first place.

3 comments:

Sean said...

There is also some concern about CFL's taking more power at the power station than incandescent bulbs. I'm not entirely sure what the argument is here, but I do remember an article coming out about 6 months ago saying that CFLs having more of a draw at the power station than the others.

Nomad said...

I think this is the article that you were talking about:

http://www.edn.com/blog/1470000147/post/450043045.html

It appears that the "Power Factor" is not worse for the generators than (old) incandescent, but it makes the CFLs much less efficient than they could be.

BH said...

Less government please with a side order common sense.