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Everyone is jumping on the CFL bandwagon. Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Lowe’s among many other retailers are promoting their sale even though they are more expensive than traditional light bulbs. What about the energy savings? The US Department of Energy [DOE] is pushing them also. Reading their June 2008 FAQ, one would think that they are stockholders of Wal-Mart and Home Depot. They point out that lighting accounts for 20% of the average home’s electricity usage in the USA. That is probably not the case in an all electric house in south Florida that has air conditioning. They state, and many others have quoted them, that if every home in the US replaced just 1 incandescent light bulb with an Energy Star rated CFL [Full Disclosure: I have installed 5 CFLs in my house], in 1 year the US would save enough energy to light 3 million homes & prevent the release of greenhouse gas emissions equal to that of about 800,000 cars. Careful! It says light, not power, and they just told us that lighting is 20% of the electrical usage and less of the total power usage as many homes use gas or oil for heating as well as cooking.

What is the total energy cost of CFLs? A CFL weighs about 120 gm compared to 30 gm for a regular bulb. So it costs 4 times as much in energy to ship them around the country to retailers. Then it will cost 4 times as much energy to ship them to recycling centers when they finally fail.

What about mercury? The DOE says that the average CFL has 0.4 mg of mercury, but because it uses less electricity from coal powered electrical plants, which also produce mercury. They say it’s OK for CFLs because over 8,000 hours of use the total mercury will be 1.6 mg per CFL bulb vs 5.8 mg per incandescent bulb. BUT, aren’t electrical utilities avoiding and reducing their emissions? Also, over the life of the bulbs being installed now, the DOE also projects more electricity coming from wind and solar projects that will not emit mercury. Of course, the macro effects don’t help you if you drop one in your house. The DOE says that if your local regulations allow you to put a burned out CFL in the trash, put it inside 2 plastic bags and then in the normal trash. What is the contribution to the equation for making and shipping 2 plastic bags per bulb?

What happens if you break a bulb? Should you just clean your clothes or bedding that has come into contact with the broken glass or mercury-containing powder? The DOE says throw it out! What is the energy cost of making new garments and shipping them to the US from China? That’s where they are made, isn’t it?

As I said above, I’ve already installed 5 bulbs in my house. Why not more? You can not use them with most dimmers [some new dimmer models claim they can be used with CFLs; extra cost if you want to replace an already installed dimmer] and you cannot use them with electronic timer systems, such as the ones that control my outdoor lights as well as some internal lights, and they take several minutes to get to full light output [some new models claim quicker response time.]

Simple solutions are always more complex than they seem at first. But overall, the pros seem to outweigh the cons for average installations, especially in locations that are a nuisance to change bulbs [places where you need a ladder, etc.] as their longer life means less ladder climbing.

Photo courtesy & © GE Lighting