Re: energy conservation

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Dave Houston" <nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4597a64b.1374743484@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Today's NYT has an excellent article on energy conservation.
>
>      http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/business/30diet.html?ref=science

There were some eye-openers in there for me:

"[A CFL] uses 75 percent less electricity, lasts 10 times longer, produces
450 pounds fewer greenhouse gases from power plants and saves consumers $30
over the life of each bulb. But it is eight times as expensive as a
traditional bulb, gives off a harsher light and has a peculiar appearance.
As a result, the bulbs have languished on store shelves for a quarter
century; only 6 percent of households use the bulbs today."

That's far less penetration than I would have ever imagined.

"Wal-Mart sold only 40 million [CFL's] in 2005, compared with about 350
million incandescent bulbs"

Wal-Mart has apparently decided to go green and has indicated to its
suppliers that they had better get in line.  The article discusses their
battle plan to save the environment. (-:

Maybe they can pull it off, although if they really wanted to make it
happen, they'd make CFL's loss-leaders and sell them at cost or less with an
X dollar purchase.

"Then there is the mercury inside the bulbs, a problem Wal-Mart is working
with the federal government and environmental groups to resolve"

The devil is always in the details.  There's also the issue of CFL's not
lasting as long as the "payback formulas" claim, which the article did not
touch upon.  Wal-Mart convinced one vendor to change their name from
"Marathon" to "energy saver." One can only wonder if that's because the
returns department knew that lots of the bulbs weren't going the distance.
They also didn't get into another, more serious reason for the low
acceptance rate:  people bought one or two and discovered they fit far fewer
lamps than incandescent bulbs do.  I'd say half the lamps in my house can't
take an average CFL as bright as the 75 and 100W incandescent bulbs they now
use.  So the choice there is to either use smaller, dimmer, CFLs or to leave
the incandescents in.  Using dimmer bulbs has been unpopular here because
they darken fairly quickly and therefore become harder to see with.

--
Bobby G.