World First? Australia Switches Off Incandescent Bulbs

I am so glad to hear of the new change in light bulb usage! It is something that should have been done many years ago. Most people have no idea that incandescent light bulbs create a huge amount of heat at the same time that it emits light. With the bulbs generating heat, this tempts people to turn up their AC and cool off. The banning of incandescent light bulbs will hopefully improve the environment while saving people money at the same time. I hope that Australia's new phase-out period creates interest for other areas to do the same thing. Any improvement for the environment is crucial and I think that this particular legislature is very important.

Ugh.

I'm all for reducing emissions but the flourescent bulbs give off a ghostly light that gives me headaches. This isn't an aesthetic problem, the flourescent light makes me (and several other people i know) feel sick.

Yes but the government lets (read encourages) people to build the biggest house on the smallest block, without any eaves. I live in West Australia and we regularly get 42degc (>> 100F) and have no rain for months at a time. As a consequence it is not uncommon to have people running the air con 24 hrs day in summer, even when not in the house. Let's get some perspective.

can somebody smell an election

Kudos to Australia for taking action - but a ban? Not really into the freedom limiting thing... just tax the life out of them, and swap the price of CFLs and Incandescents, thats a little more democratic.

I've surprised myself at how unexcited I am by this announcement. CFLs are a good thing - I have them, so should everybody else, and there should be some incentive to kickstart this important 1st step in the bigger picture.
But similar to other opinions here and elsewhere, I can't get out of my head the over-riding disappointment of the general feeling that this approach is (a) just election year green spin (b) addresses only 1% (figure I saw somewhere) of Australian emissions and (c) reinforces the mindset in the general population to do nothing until government forces their hand and/or tells them what to do.
The government has millions of dollars to give away to try and bury CO2 in the ground but none to subsidise CFLs? They tax petrol/gas near 50% of total price and do the same on cigarettes to discourage use and (supposedly) fund the side effects of those products but it doesn't occur to them to do the same for light bulbs?
It's a positive move, but such an awkward, small, baby step it deserves only a heavy sigh and return to usual programming.

Way to go Aussies. I am proud of you. I live in rural Illinois. We are way behind California in out leadership and programs.

I have heard that some people are sensitive to fluorescent lights. I would like to see studies on that. Possibly they could get medical exceptions.

If not banning incandescents, I would like to see a tax on them, and programs to promote fluorescents.

Ron

-First of all, an extreme tax to convince people to use an alternative product is not exactly what I call a successfully democratic solution. It would seem education that convinces people on the pros of saving energy would be more democratic, rather than taxing them into it.
-People who need to switch to CFL's to save money have done it (myself included) unless they haven't been educated on the possibility (which is getting to be less of an excuse considering that I've seen advertisements in Wal-mart advocating the switch).
-The people, as G Smith suggested, who need to be convinced are the people who aren't very effected by an even significant tax on incandescent. How are you going to get them in?
-I applaud Australia, but agree, it is only a baby step.
-Ben- I don’t understand how you say that Austrailia’s approach “reinforces the mindset in the general population to do nothing until government forces their hand and/or tells them what to do,” but then turn around to suggest that the government taxing the people would be any different? I don’t disagree that it could be effective… rather I feel that the push should be from the people, which would require education, and a great deal of convincing. I suppose this is a rather idealistic point of view, and that realistically, people aren’t really going to care unless something extreme happens.
-I’ve obviously not suggested any solution, but I hope that there will be more analytical discussion about this. I’m interested on further insight.

"Though we imagine the LED guys will seize the opportunity too."
HOPEFULLY! Switching to LED's is obviously a greater step, because it requires not only the replacement of bulbs, but completely different lamps, it has many advantages, the greatest being the colour. I mean, honestly, CFLs don't give a nice light. If you instead have a nice multicoloured LED matrix, you can adjust the tone any time. I'd very much welcome more promotion of LED light technology...

I just started looking into medical effects and happened upon this page. Great the government is doing something BUT, I am one of those people who are poorly affected by flourescent lighting, the whole idea of having nowhere to escape form them is making me feel sick already! Why didn't the government sign the Kyoto Protocol, or stop subsidising 4WDs first - both of which would do a far better job at reducing this countries emmisions.

Indonesia has had only energy-efficient lights available for years - at least since 1998. Don't know for sure it was government policy, but it was almost impossible to buy incandescent globes (not that I wanted to). They clearly did it for reasons of energy shortage rather than the environment. Still, if a poor country could do it years ago, shame on Western countries for being so slow.

There is a real problem here. As professional lighting designer I am fully behind all initiatives to reduce CO2. However, it is very clear that the politicians have not been well advised on the proposal to place an outright ban on incandescent lighting. Apart from the questionable colour characteristics of compact fluorescent (CFL) lightsources, there is the very major issue of optical control of the light generated by these. Because they are physically large and produce a diffuse dispersion of light, they do not lend themselves to working in a situation where a controlled and directed beam of light is required. This particularly the case if a narrow beam of light is required. Although white LED sources have the potential to produce a 'directable' beam, we are not yet at the stage where this can be done to produce the same amount of light as a incandescent or tungsten halogen source. So -we are confronting a situation where untold numbers of existing lighting installations will be visually compromised by the use of retro-fitted mini-CFL or inadequately powered white LED sources. The answer is to legislate against the use of incandescent light sources in new buildings of a given type (perhaps all commerical, retail, transport and industrial) whilst leaving the recently introduced lighting related energy code of practice in the Building Code of Australia to do the rest. As for the use of incandescent light sources in homes, the solution must be to place a high tax on these and thereby encourage their use only in situations where their visual characteristics are critically important.

The incandescent bulb is being banned due to the amount of energy it wastes. However, everyone is ignoring the fact that it takes more energy to manufacture a CF bulb, then an incandescent bulb could ever hope to consume as waste in its life time.

It appears to me that they are doing nothing but shifting the energy waste from the consumers, to the manufactures, and making the waste greater in the process. While at the same time increasing the amount of toxic compounds being distributed in our environment and eventually our land fills.

Could someone please explain this logic to me?

Thanks!

i agree we need to cut back on incandecant light bulbs. the world needs us right now and we have to take action.

Somebody told: "flourescent (should be fluorescent) bulbs give off a ghostly light that gives me headaches." If you buy fluorescent fixtures with high frequency ballast (over 30,000 Hz) and turn the best full spectrum daylight lamps (e.g. Viva-Lite or True-Light) on, you will neve have headache and you will love this light, see colours and even read faster. Australia has done right, congratulations.

But because also halogens belongs to the group of incandescent lamps and consumers much of energy like incandescents, will also those be banned? I hope so and I would recommend this. Halogen is one of the worsest lamp, if you consider the disadvantages.

Here is an article "Why you should not use halogens and incandescent lamps in homes, where are children": http://www.adlux.fi/public/koti/halogeenitlapsiperheessa.html
All the pictures in this article are bad examples. Unfortunately this article is in Finnish. I think that indirect daylight is the best way to light homes. I have several years of experience of this. Here you can see examples of pure, excellent daylight lighting with no blending. http://www.adlux.fi/public/asiakaskuvatjohdanto.html People are very satisfied in it.
Greetings from a lighting designer in Finland.

If people are doing this change for ecological reasons, they should know that all fluorescent lights contain MERCURY (yes CFLs too), which is known as one of the most poisonous elements on Earth.

Why not switch directly to LEDs?
They are energy efficient and contain no poisonous elements.

Alejandro Casteleiro

Today it is no problem with the mercury. Fluorescent lamps and CLF:s are collected very effective at least in my country and many others. Mercury is taken off. It will not go to the nature. So do not be worried.

But you should be more worried about incandescent lamps and halogens, because it is allowded to throw them away. There will be huge mountains of those lamps together with normal waste from the houses. I think that this is stupid.

LEDs are good but not yet, may be after some years. They are much more expensive than fluorescents. Their colour rendering index is 70-80. Many people do not like LEDs because the colours are so unnaturally and you cannot see all colours. I prefer CRI-index 98.

For these reasons I do not yet recommend LEDs for lighting purpose to home. You can use those only for decorating purpose. And when the leds will be even more effective, the next problem will be that they dazzle too much. It is not safe and pleasant for the eyes, particularly for the small childrens eyes.

Thank you Ilkka,
The problem here in Spain is that people do not know how to dispose properly of CFLs and Fluorescent tubes, most of them end up broken in the trash container.

Sensitivity to fluorescent lighting is not an uncommon problem, particularly among those with light-coloured (such as blue and green) eyes. If incandescent lighting is completely replaced with fluorescent lighting, there will be more and more people suffering headaches all the time.

Wouldn't it be better to encourage the use of renewable energy? How about looking into solutions so that more people get solar power? Wouldn't this be even better than merely changing lightbulbs to something that will no doubt be found to adversely affect a large portion of the population?

As some have already pointed out, this proposal is green spin, it is not sound environmental policy. Worse, it shows a disturbing trend toward politicians going out of their way to avoid genuine expert advice because they fear it may contradict what they have already decided to do for political reasons.

The facts are that the energy savings available from switching to CFLs have been vastly exaggerated, and in many cases are actually zero, or even a nett loss. Even in the case where there is a net saving, for most domestic users it is so small that almost any other initiative would have been more worthwhile. Further, as soon as the real experts heard about this crazy idea, they pointed out numerous applications in which CFLs simply cannot be used to replace incandescent bulbs, or else create serious safety problems.

In detail, overwhelmingly the largest users of energy for lighting are industrial, commercial and government users. Yet these users are extremely sensitive to power prices because they use so much, and consequently they all switched to fluorescent lighting as soon as it became available around seventy years ago, and many in fact are already using sources (such as low pressure sodium vapour) that are actually more efficient than fluorescents. Any applications in which they still use incandescent bulbs, you can bet it is done for a good reason.

Conversely, homeowners mainly have incandescent lighting, possibly excepting one or two areas such as kitchens or workshops that benefit from more uniform, colder light. So, it is these domestic lamps we are targeting right? But how much is actually used in this way? A typical home average from people who aren't very energy conscious might be on the order of 1100 watt-hours per night. That's watt-hours, not kilowatt-hours! If you really could reduce that by 75%, it represents a saving of just 2% of a household's typical power consumption. Which, averaged over non-domestic as well as domestic users, drops to well below 1%. If the household is already energy conscious and diligently switches off lights not in use, uses lowest effective bulb power etc. then the potential savings are much smaller still.

However it is quite doubtful that 75% savings are realisable in practice. For one thing, many of a domestic household's incandescent lighting uses are in areas that are only lit temporarily, such as in cupboards, hallways etc. In those areas, the fact that you have to wait for a CFL to warm up -- even if only for a few seconds -- while an incandescent is flicked on and off again, eliminates a substantial part of the potential savings. Even worse is in places in cool climates, or temperate climates in winter. There, the "waste" heat from the incandescent bulbs is actually useful and goes toward heating the house. If you replace those bulbs with CFLs, the thermostat will just turn on the heaters for slightly longer to make up the difference. The total power savings will be exactly zero! True you can -- and should -- save power by putting on a sweater and turning the thermostat down a couple of degrees, but you could have done that whether you had incandescents or CFLs. Either way, there is no power saving at all from the bulb switch. In fact, because CFLs take considerably more energy to manufacture, transport and recycle, there will probably be a nett loss! (Conversely, of course, in warm climates in summer the waste heat counts twice if an air conditioner is used to pump it away; but in summer, lights are also run for considerably fewer hours per day.)

And quite apart from whether people should be encouraged to use CFLs for energy efficiency reasons, banning them outright is daft because there are many uses where CFLs simply cannot replace incandescents. Here's just a few of the problem areas that experts have already pointed out:
* high temperatures, such as range hoods, microwave ovens, saunas and oven lights (CFLs are damaged or destroyed by the high temperatures, incandescents not.)
* moderately high temperatures, such as any existing light fitting or product which is enclosed without ventilation holes on the top and bottom (slightly more than half of those currently in service) (CFL efficiency dramatically reduced at elevated temperatures)
* low temperatures, such as refrigerators or outdoor lighting in cold climates (CFLs not damaged, but efficiency severely impaired and may not start at all.)
* any area where full brightness is required instantly for safety or security, such as stairwells and other trip hazard areas, or security lighting
* areas where lighting is only required for a few seconds at a time, such as refrigerators, cupboards, short hallways (CFLs take a few seconds to reach full brightness, so completely wasting efficiency gains in this area)
* applications where the lamp is repeatedly switched on and off e.g. motion-operated lighting, indicators, warning lights, hazard beacons, safety signage, advertising displays, and Christmas trees (CFL longevity severely degraded by repeated switching)
* low voltage DC applications, such as boats, caravans, submerged (swimming pool) lighting, emergency exit lighting (no CFL currently available can use this power supply)
* medical and research labs that require very low levels of RF interference (CFLs have their RF interference suppressed, but only enough so they don't interfere with watching the TV.)
* light which needs to be focussed e.g. projectors, spotlights, flashlights (CFLs focus very badly because of the diffused radiating surface and odd shape.)

Make no mistake: CFLs are great. Please do use them where-ever practicable. But not everywhere is practicable, and the idea that you can just ban incandescents and replace them with CFLs is dangerous nonsense.

The facts are that the energy savings available from switching to CFLs have been vastly exaggerated, and in many cases are actually zero, or even a nett loss

Ridiculous.

THERE ARE SOME ISSUES THAT PEOPLE AND GOVERNMENT HAVE TO CONSIDER WHILE CHANGING INCANDESCENT TO FLUORESCENT OR LED'S.

- FLUORESCENT LAMPS HAVE MERCURY AND THE WASTE OF THIS LAMPS IS VERY NOCIVE TO THE ENVIRONMENT, WITHOUT MENTIONING THAT THE LIGHT SOMETIMES HURTS PEOPLE AND MAKE THEM FEEL SICK AND DIZZY.

-LED'S ARE GREAT SOURCES OF LIGHT AND YES THEY LOOK GREAT WILL ALL THOSE COLORS BUT THEY ALSO EMMIT A LOT OF HEAT AND BECAUSE THAT TECHNOLOGY IS NEW THE SOURCES ARE TOO EXPENSIVE AND THEY ARE NOT LIFE LONG.

THERE ARE TOO MANY KINDS OF INCANDESCENT LAMPS, PEOPLE JUST NEED TO KNOW THEM AND GET THE ONE THAT COMPLIES WITH THEIR NEEDS.

If this government were serious about cutting CO2 emissions, they would have developed standards for electric cars so that the companies that are ready to start marketing these cars in Australia can proceed. I'm all for compact fluorescent bulbs too, but the main CO2 problem is coming from cars. Wake up John Howard.

I work in the lighting industry and am in the middle of furthering my knowledge on CFL's and LED's. But what I know so far is this...

Firstly, Malcom Turnbull and a few others on this page hit on the fact that incandescent globes produce an insane amount of heat. The higher the wattage globe, the higher the heat. Is this is one of the reasons we should phase them out, because that heated becomes wasted energy and turns into greenhouse gasses. Right? So, did you realise that CFL's also produce wasted heat. There is a halogen globe called the GU10, simply one very stupid globe. So suppliers and manufacturers introduced the GU10 fluro, to cut back on the heat and to increase longivity. These GU10 CGL's run so hot that if you dare to touch them after an hour of use, it will burn your skin. Same goes for any CFL's. So much for heat reduction.

Secondly. Any fluro globe, CFL's, linear, circular, whatever, all contain mercury as a lot of you have mentioned here. Working in this industry I have never come acsross any sort of Fluorescent Recycling Station anywhere near where i am from, and no-one seems to promote recycling these fluro's. The moment a fluro tube breaks, it lets phosphor and mercury escape into the environment. Even though from what I've read, mercury is a solid form at room temperature, it still ends up in our water. mersury is well know to cause serious kidney and liver problems, brain damage, spinal damage, the list goes on. So if we don't spend millions on builing these recycling stations and promoting recycling of fluro globes we'll be worse off then we started. There is a hell of a lot more but I'm sure that's a pretty descent start.

I don't believe CFL's are a bad move, I just know we have to do more than switch our bulbs.
Oh and P.S. in W.A a study took place and prooved that on average, lighting only used 9% of you power bill. Change your bulbs yes, but turn off your water heating, and air-conditioners also. Good luck australia.

this is soo cooooooooooooooool taht australia is changing its bulbs

i believe that australia is taking many steps forward to improve their economical status and bettter thir country so i appluad australias efforts and hope for the best

This legislation is ridiculous!

CFL light bulbs will cause more problems for the environment than the old style incandescent bulbs. There is a huge amount of information now on the net including states in the USA that are already benning them. The answer is a competative costing LED that has huge advantages over the CFL that is now being dumped into Australia. The government does not appear to be aware of the serious problems surrounding CFL bulbs?
The first LED 240V full replacement lifght bulb samples have arrived in Australia and are ready to market.
If anyone wishes to see them....call me.
I am the Australasian agent for these and have samples.

How can anyone take any politician seriously? A quote like this to ban standard incandescent light bulbs is ridiculous, funny and something serious, considering the fact that people in the street don’t know that millions where spent by all countries in Europe to phase out Mercury Vapor lamps (the ones that emitted white light) from our streets and replacing them with Sodium vapor (the orange light we use at present). People should know that the so called Green light bulbs contain 1; Mercury, yes they do and 2; Plastics 3; Electronics. Besides the fact that they give poorer light, interfere with wireless equipment they are not dimmable they are ugly and large. Governments should work harder to provide cleaner energy not waste time trying to gain popularity with issues that are worthless.

Did you ever try to use a CFL, or any fluorescent for that matter, in a cold temperature envireonment? The amount of light produced at initial turn on is comparable to a glowing ember. Sure, if you have 15 minutes to spare they will eventually get up to full brilliance. Unheated garages and motion detecting security lighting will be hopeless with fluorescent. How about theatrical lighting? Did you ever try to gradually fade up a fluorescent?

Hello, everybody,
Recently, more and more countries such as USA, Ireland, France, have passed a law to ban incandescent bulb. Would you wanna be ready to offer an alternative for your markets?

We are just marketing two kinds of newest LED lamps-High Power Spot Lamp & LED Daylight Tube as enclosed pictrues as replacements. Specially, LED tube is about 50,000 hours and it can save energy about 76% than traditional fluorescent lamp. Just from this view, you’ll see how economic it is. They must be the most popular sellers in 2008.

The sooner you replace those incandescent bulbs, the more you save. If you have any interests, we suggest you order some samples for test. All our products are CE and RoHS compliants.

Best regards,
Merry
Ningbo Futai Electric Co Ltd (Shenzhen Branch)
Tel: +(86) 755 3386 7582 ext 8128
Direct: +(86) 755-3386 7613
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Email: merry@fortoled.com;merry@futailite.com
Web: www.fortoled.com
We have exhibited at the following shows in 2007:
Lighting Fair in Korea-May 2007
Lighting Fair in GuangZhou- June 2007
Electric Fair in HongKong- Oct 2007
Lighting Fair in HongKong- Oct 2007
Lighting Fair in Moscow- Nov. 2007
We'll soon attend the following shows:
Lighting Fair in Germany- 6-10 of Apr. 2008, Booth No.: D11N, District: 10.1
..........

My comment: I find it ridiculous!!!

Kind regards

@ Roger: Quote: Make no mistake: CFLs are great. Please do use them where-ever practicable. But not everywhere is practicable, and the idea that you can just ban incandescents and replace them with CFLs is dangerous nonsense /Quote.

Very sound advice thankyou. Further to this, I have 75 percent of my home on CFL's and they work great in areas that require constant lighting. However,I have just installed $1800 worth of ceiling fans in my home as encouraged by the Australian Government to help reduce the use of expensive airconditioning. Each fan requires a 60W incandescent bulb for lighting. As it is enclosed it definitely can't take a CFL. I'm not about to spend more money installing new lighting so I'll guess I'll have to buy a large carton of incandescent bulbs to keep it and my oven light and security light and intermittent hall and pantry light going for a few years. I think that the impracticalities of this ban will cause a big rush and price hike on incandescent bulbs when the deadline gets closer.