Do Fluorescent Bulbs Light the Way to the Future?

[Dave Monroe]

Do Fluorescent Bulbs Light the Way to the Future?
by Robert Siegel 

All Things Considered, February 8, 2007 · Compact
fluorescent light bulbs save consumers money — and
their use can help slow global warming. So why haven't
they come into widespread use yet?

A compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) is a tiny
version of the long overhead lights in your office.
It's twisted into a spiral. The CFL fits into the same
fixtures where you use regular incandescent bulbs. The
CFLs cost more, but they use about one-third of the
electricity of the incandescent bulbs.

Utilities and local governments have tried giving them
away to promote switching over to CFLs.

Wal-Mart hopes to more than double its sales of them
in 2007.

"We are committed to selling 100 million CFL bulbs
this year," said Andy Rubin, Wal-Mart vice president
for sustainability.

He said one CFL should last five years, and the
customer's electric bills should be 50 cents to 75
cents lower each month as a result of switching from
one standard bulb to one compact fluorescent bulb.

If the nation's largest retailer were to meet its goal
of selling 100 million CFL bulbs, the aggregate
electric bill savings would be $3 billion, according
to Rubin.

When Wal-Mart itself switched to CFLs in its
ceiling-fan-lights displays, it saved $8 million a
year.

"There is a real desire right now for action," Rubin
said. By buying CFLs, customers know they are helping
curb greenhouse gases. "Everyone can do this."

Brian Huyser, creator of onebillionbulbs.com, believes
in that message so much that he started a Web site
preaching the gospel of CFLs.

The inspiration was a Discovery Channel documentary on
global warming. The narrator said, "If each family
switched out one bulb, it would be the equivalent of
taking one million cars off the road."

"I went to bed that night intrigued," Huyser said. The
next morning, he decided to start onebillionbulbs.com.
"After all, what could be easier than changing a light
bulb?"

But Randall Stross's experience with CFLs may
demonstrate one of the hurdles. Stross, author of The
Wizard of Menlo Park, writes about how Americans clung
to their gas lights at first, even though they were
impressed with the quality of Thomas Edison's electric
lights.

In the case of CFLs at his own house, Stross finds
their light quality a bit lacking — and he's not the
only one. As an experiment, he put one in the hall and
didn't tell anyone.

After a month, his son asked, "Would you please fix
the light in the hall?"

"This seems like an ethereal, intangible quality, and
one that can't be weighed in the same balance of the
very fate of the planet," Stross said. "But we have
always taken the quality of light very seriously."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7279952


 
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