Now for this month's question from afar...
Does the extra production cost of compact fluorescent lamps exceed the possible energy saving they provide? As you may know they contain many electronic components, coils, resistors, capacitors etc. There must be a cost to the environment to produce these more than what is passed on to the consumer...
(In a similar vein to the disposable / terry nappies saga this could go on for ages...)
Any (non-destructive) comments would be welcomed...
Not even close. A CFL bulb will use many, many times its own cost in energy alone over its life.
Working on a 25W CFL bulb for 10,000 hours, the electricity cost would be about 20 pounds. A similar output incandescent lamp (100W) would use 80 pounds worth of electricity and need to be replaced 10 times during this period.
Christian.
The message from "Christian McArdle" contains these words:
Yes, but will it /save/ many times its energy cost? (insert smiley here)
On 21 Apr 2006 01:39:09 -0700 someone who may be "Englishman in Adana (Turkey)" wrote this:-
There is a difference between financial cost, environmental cost and energy.
They do indeed contain a number of electronic components. They also don't contain long filaments. I suspect both contain about the same amount of glass.
Of course there is, just like there is an environmental cost in producing GLS bulbs.
An easy assertion to make. However, I don't think it is a conspiracy by the manufacturers (who had a lot of money tied up in GLS bulb plants) to sell more expensive products. Even if it was a conspiracy I think that Friends of the Earth and similar organisations would have pointed this out long ago.
As has been said, the bottom line is that over their life cycle they consume significantly less electricity and resources than the roughly ten GLS bulbs one replaces. That reduces greenhouse gas emissions (except in somewhere like Norway, where almost all electricity is produced by hydro plants and even there they still have advantages).
A very good point - one that concerns me when we import cheap electronic toys and poor quality batteries. They all consume valuable and ultimately polluting resources - yet add next to nothing to the quality of life. They become landfill in a very short time
John
There are also indirect savings in packaging and distribution, because one uses fewer of them.
Owain
Are tehre any governmental subsidies? I notice that CFLs marketed at teh corporate world typically have much, much higher prices than the 49.5p you can find CFLs for in supermarkets.
Well, assuming an efficient market, the fact that cost benefit analysis shows they are cheaper overall, says no..
thats because they actually work... I can't find CFLS at 49.5p.... £4.95 perhaps.
I've seen them in supermarkets for 49p (Asda and somewhere else, but I can't recall where now). There weren't no-names either (Philips, IIRC).
I used to keep an eye out and buy them for stock when on special offer. I have ended up with a small cupboard full before it dawned on me that I was picking them up much faster than I actually needed to replace them, and haven't needed to buy any for about 5 years, even though I'm pretty well all CFS throughout the house.
ISTR reading some years back that IKEA was having a fight to bring in CFLs from China at low prices. My recollecftion is vagues, but ISTR EU was stamping an inport duty on them to bring them up to same high prices of EU manufacturers. I can't recall the deatils now, but IKEA may have got some concession, as it was about half the price of everyone else for a number of years. Many other sellers prices have come down to match now.
Morrisons (at least my local one, a couple of weeks apart) have had philips Genie 11/18W (60/100W equiv) for 99p BOGOF.
I've bought 20, to do the garage lighting. Combined with whitewashing, for a total outlay of maybe 15 quid, you can actually see stuff in there now.
Only one has failed so far, and that was the one that I dropped on the floor :)
The message from snipped-for-privacy@cucumber.demon.co.uk (Andrew Gabriel) contains these words:
Poundland had some a few years ago. They were utterly crap. Deep blue-grey light of almost no utility.
In the case of CFLs they become toxic waste becasue of teh mercury vapour. In the future they will have to be disposed of in a certain way no doubt.
very little mercury in them. Not enough to shake a thermometer at really. Sure they have lots of little components, but the actual energy is mainly used in making the glass..and thats the same for them and standard bulbs.
I am sure that if copper prices go up, we will recycle the copper..
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