Australia’s Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Malcolm Turnbull MP, today announced the phasing out of incandescent light bulbs.
He said, “A normal light bulb is too hot to hold – that heat is wasted and globally represents millions of tonnes of CO2 that needn’t have been emitted into the atmosphere if we had used more efficient forms of lighting.”
“These more efficient lights, such as the compact fluorescent light bulb, use around 20 per cent of the electricity to produce the same amount of light.”
“A compact fluorescent light bulb can last between 4 and 10 times longer than the average incandescent light bulb, which can lead to major savings in household energy costs.”
So why not just run some advertisements? Why ban the old technology?
According to the media release the banning will save on average 800,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year during the 2008-2012 period. Given annual emissions are predicted to be about 603 million tonnes each year for this period then we are looking at a saving of 0.13 percent of total annual emissons.
Other abatement measures are predicted to save a total of 35.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
from http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/projections/pubs/stationaryenergy2006.pdf
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.