http://www.khou.com/news/local/stories/k...98500.html

Quote:Mayor White, other Texas mayors push light bulbs as energy-saver

01:25 PM CST on Friday, November 30, 2007

Associated Press

SAN ANTONIO—How many mayors does it take sell Texans on a light bulb?

Well, five are trying.

Houston Mayor Bill White along with San Antonio, El Paso and Austin held a news conference on Friday to push the use of compact fluorescent light bulbs, saying they’ll save residents money and reduce the need for new power plants.

The squiggly bulbs use 80 percent less energy than regular incandescent bulbs and can last up to a decade.

“Everybody cares about the money they pay on their electricity bills,” said San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger. “More and more as we go along, people appreciate the need for energy conservation.”

Replacing 8 million incandescent bulbs would have the same effect on pollution reduction as removing 55,000 cars from the road, Hardberger said.

Although the bulbs cost about 20 percent more, the electricity savings easily offset the cost, he said.

Hardberger met privately early Friday with Mayor White, Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, El Paso Mayor John Cook and Austin Mayor Will Wynn to talk about conservation strategies used in their various cities.

White noted that if Texans reduce their energy consumption with steps like the light bulb replacement, overall demand for energy will decrease and reduce the need to build expensive and sometimes controversial power plants, like the proposed coal-fired plants that sparked debate earlier this year.

Wynn said Austin has found that spending money to encourage conservation is far more cost effective that building more plants to absorb swollen demand.

“We’d rather spend money on conservation than spend money on building power plants,” he said.

Okay, if these things are such a great deal (which I believe they probably ARE) why doesn't the city replace EVERY bulb in EVERY city building, including metro, the police, the streets... EVERYWHERE with them. THEN they could say, in 2006, we spend $5000 on bulbs and $50,000 on electricity. This year, (or over some reasonable period) we spent $10,000 on bulbs and $30,000 on electricity... and we DID it without having to raise your taxes to buy the bulbs in the first place.

C'mon politicians... put your money where your mouth is

The initial investment scares people, that or they say when we replace the bulbs we'll get the new ones.

In Cincinnati, the local energy provider, Duke Energy, offered discount coupons if you purchased them from Walmart before December. I hate shopping there because I think it is a dirty store, but I went in and picked them up. I think I paid about $12 for 12 of them.

Bourgeois_Rage Wrote:The initial investment scares people, that or they say when we replace the bulbs we'll get the new ones.

In Cincinnati, the local energy provider, Duke Energy, offered discount coupons if you purchased them from Walmart before December. I hate shopping there because I think it is a dirty store, but I went in and picked them up. I think I paid about $12 for 12 of them.

I bought a bunch of them at Sams....Ive been replacing burned out bulbs with the new ones..The price will of course drop as manf. techniques improve and more people use them..Walmart will take care of the cost difference in time.

My point exactly. If they want US to absorb the upfront cost for ourselves, then show that you can do it without having to use credit and that the payoff comes quickly enough to justify it.

They may be more cost efficient, but the light is crappy. I have a couple and I feel like I am in a hospital. They also look stupid if you have the wrong fixture for the bulbs.

Anyways, that's just my $0.02...

The technology is certainly not at the same level of incandescents. Hopefully it will catch up. more hopefully, LEDs will surpass CFLs.

Should There be a Ban on Incandescent Lamps?

I haven't read all of the above article, but I'm not too eager to risk having lamps with Mercury around my (young) kids, even granting his statement that "metallic mercury is relatively safe". The power savings seems relatively trivial, though. The article claims that 90% of the energy is still converted to heat (rather than light), and the electronics that drive bulbs are not very tolerant of heat variations. Thus, putting them in globe fittings or recessed canister fittings can cause reduced lifetime. Many (>50%) light fittings would have to be replaced to use CFL, offsetting the energy savings for several years. The environmental impact would be negative due to having to replace existing fittings. Using a CFL with a dimmer switch increases its power usage by 200-400% and will reduce its lifetime (timers and motion sensors supposedly have similarly bad effects). Managing the mercury going into landfills is an additional problem that hasn't been adequately addressed.

I'm holding out for LEDs personally, but it looks like 2010 will be when they will hit a reasonable price point.