Why Edison-style light bulbs aren’t always bad
My Clean Break column today takes a look at the wisdom of completely banning incandescent light bulbs to promote the use of compact fluorescent lights and LEDs, particularly in the kind of colder climates we see in Canada and northern parts of the United States. Nobody disputes the superior efficiency of CFLs and LEDs, but what we often forget is that the heat lost from older incandescent bulbs actually contributes to the heating requirements of homes during the winter. The question then becomes: Are we releasing more greenhouse gas emissions by using more fossil-fuelled heating to make up for the heat that we’re not getting from CFLs and LEDs? The answer, as you’ll read, isn’t so clear cut. If you’re in a state or province that relies heavily on fossil fuels for electricity generation, then it may make more sense to use more efficient lighting year round. But if you’re in a state or province that uses more emission-free hydroelectric power and nuclear power, then it might make sense to keep on using that Edison-style bulb during the winter.
It may be that in certain regions of North America we need to treat lighting like we treat car tires. Just as we switch to snow tires during the winter, we might want to consider switching to incandescent bulbs in the winter and back to CFLs or LEDs during the warmer months when we don’t want the heat loss from old bulbs contributing to our air conditioning needs.
Based on this perspective, it might be wise to question whether an all-out ban on Edison-style bulbs makes sense.
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
March 17th, 2008 at 9:24 am
A few comments:
- Starting with a ban on outdoor incadenscents would be good.
- If houses are heated by geothermal or even air-source heat pumps that operate at high COP, then the point becomes moot.
- Concentrating on passing laws to improve the energy efficiency requirements of houses would be more effective.
-I have had issues with various brands of globe type CFLs for washrooms. They cost 5 times more and tend to fail within a year. After 2 years, I am back with my original incandescents, which were still operational. An outright ban on incandescents won’t be good for ligthing types where CFLs are only starting to emerge (dimmable CFLs would be another example).
March 17th, 2008 at 9:32 am
It seems to me like the real issue is electric vs. fossil fuel heating and debating which lightbulbs are better for heating is kind of missing the point. Shouldn’t we try and use the most efficient lightbulbs to produce light and the most efficient heaters to produce heat?
March 17th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
I Disagree.
1)
Take a look where your heating sources are place inside your house… Next to windows and doors. This is no coincidence. By placing heating sources next to “cold sources” this make sure you get the most uniform temperature across the room. Otherwise you could be freezing next to your windows, and by the way, increase your energy consumption to get comfortable.
Now check were most of your light bulbs are: On your ceiling. This isn’t exactly the best place to heat your house. Since hot air tends to go up, that leaves a layer of hot air over you. You end up spending energy to heat your ceiling and energy to heat the place that matter, the first six feet below…
2)
This argument is base on what I’ve read somewhere I can’t remember, but if anyone could confirm this it would be very useful to know:
Here, (where I live), Quebec, Canada, we produce almost only hydro-electricity. We sell all our production excess to the US in summer, but we need to import electricity in winter! Yes we are short of energy in winter mainly because a lot of houses over here use electric system for heating, because electricity was once abundant. This is not true anymore.
So, if theses facts are true, and applied to most regions of the continent, we need to see the entire North American grid as a whole… And, hopefully, we generally use our “clean” sources for our first kilowatts, then use fossil fuels sources for the remaining kilowatts.
So even if I live in Quebec:
- In winter, some part of my consumption provided by coal.
- In summer, every hydro-kilowatts I don’t use will be sold to Americans, and, indirectly prevent one coal-kilowatt to be produced.
Global warming is a global problem…
March 17th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Many buildings that I have done audits on (hotels) have huge numbers of lights in the hallways (that are on 7/24) and they are often on the wall – and on the ceiling. I recently examined the consumption pattern for one of these – and found that the GHG footprint did indeed increase after the change was made – I agree with Tyler – use them like winter tires…
The real issue – lighting uses about 7% of the energy in a home – heating and domestic hot water use about 75%. Most of the programs that we see fron the hydro companies focus on lights -where the savings are very questionable at best. In BC, if one builds a home that is to be heated with gas – the building code still allows the use of 2×4 studs – and less insulation..!! This ought to be changed immediately.
There are a lot more savings and reductions in GHG that can be achieved by working where most of the energy is used – not putting a focus on the 7% solution…
March 17th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Exactly. This is like trying to save water by telling households to cut back. We only use 11% of the water. The only 89% is used by industry (power plants especially). So even if people cut their water consumption in half in their everyday lives it won’t do much. Whereas if industry cut their water consumption in half it would make a huge difference.
Same thing with lighting verses heating. Also, as mentioned above, CFLs almost NEVER have even close to there laboratory specified 10000 hour lifetime. Even the 15 dollar bulbs burn out very quickly in most areas of most people’s homes due to our weird usage patterns. Flipping on and off bathroom lights every time you go to wash your hands is a good example. Closet lights and pantry lights are the same way. This causes those bulbs to burn out really fast compared to standard incandescent bulbs. There are also other things, like external temperature changes (unless the temperature is constant the CFLs burn out faster), orientation (CFLs need to be placed socket down for optimal lifetime), and a host of other minor things (voltage variations aren’t good for CFLs).
Unfortunately none of these real world problems are taken into consideration with the ban on incandescents. You know what I’d do? Ban CFLs then replace most of the incandescents with LEDs in 5 years.
March 17th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
ugg, lots of grammar and spelling errors in my last post. Anyway, I forgot to say something:
Incandescents have all of the same problems as CFLs when it comes to burning out quickly under those circumstances. The problem comes because CFLs take a considerable amount of energy to manufacture (and they contain mercury), while incandescents can be pushed off factory lines at low energy and emission cost. So if a CFL burns out quickly it is a big deal, whereas with an incandescent, *shrug*, no biggy. Easy, cheap, and fairly clean to manufacture. It’s the *running* of incandescents that is bad, whereas it is the *manufacture* (and disposal) of CFLs that is bad.
So when a CFL burns out before its time it really hurts the case for continued use of this ****tacular technology.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Of course, if your hotel is heated with fosil fuels, switching to CFL’s will, increase your “local” GHG footprint.
But did you consider the GHG emitted by your power plant to feed you electricity for your incandescents ?
Consider that burning-oil-to-produce-heat in your local heating system is far more efficient than burning-oil-to-produce-heat-to-produce-electricity for your incandescents that convert your electricity back to heat….
March 18th, 2008 at 4:34 am
You bet we took that into account. Electricity here (BC) is almost all hydro and the published GHG component includes even the gas used in the utilities trucks and cars. The hotel footprint went up.
We are putting a huge focus on the wrong thing. An incandescent light is 100% efficient – the problem is that most of the energy that it delivers is not light – it is heat! Even the light that is produced ultimately turns itself into heat.
When conserving, one needs to look at total energy – not just 1 fuel. Replacing lights reduces electricity during winter – but adds gas. One needs to look at a bigger picture. For some strange reason, our politicians have a fixation on electricity.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Can I ask how you managed to separate out the effect of the lighting change compared with other, much larger effects such as hotel occupancy and outside air temperature?
I agree that in the case of zero carbon supplies Tyler’s argument makes a lot of sense, but for the bulk of the world who don’t have access to green electricity, CFLs and LEDs are definitely the way forwards.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:49 am
I can’t challenge the fact that if 100% the electricity is made of pure carbon free sources, it will always be a bad idea to burn oil to produce heat. I agree on that.
But, if you consider my point #2 above (witch is probably true, could be good to prove) the “globality” of your emission cross the boarder of BC. Every clean-kilowatt energy saved, save us (by saying “us”, i mean “globaly” us, the entire continent (usa+canada)) from producing one carbon-kilowatt.
So until the entire continent production of electricity is near 100% carbon free, we can only look at the total energy consumption, not the GHG emissions, whatever the source is. Oil, hyrdo, wind, whatever.
On the other side, like steve said, if the energy consumption for production and disposal of each CFL is significant (need to be proved…), we must take that into the account of the bulb consumption.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:59 am
I’m happy to see a good discussion going on here. The argument about seeing electricity on a continental, not state or provincial basis, is a good one and I didn’t factor this into my analysis (or the study on which it was based). Joseph Romm also pointed out this issue for me. Also, the point about energy input for manufacturing CFLs versus incandescents is also a good one. These are the kinds of issues that need to be raised, in advance of talk about completely banning the bulbs. There’s also the issue of quality: Many of the promises of CFL life are simply false, or not consistent with the many letters I’ve received from readers. The lack of dimming, and the fact that incandescents are valuable in situations where lights are rarely turned on, leads me to believe that we’re better off providing incentives to encourage the use of CFLs where they make the most sense.
As demand for incandescents go down the price will begin to rise. Meanwhile, CFLs are get better and the price will fall. The market will take care of the phaseout, and hopefully we’ll soon see affordable LEDs come onstream.
Again, I’m not arguing that most lighting needs need to transition to CFLs. I’m arguing that an all-out ban doesn’t take into account the various situations in which an incandescent may make more sense — both economically and from a greenhouse gas perspective.
March 18th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Jeeze, first you get suckered by a perpetual motion device and now this. Please learn what entropy is.
Ben Kenney recently posted on the dust-to-dust of CFL versus tungsten:
http://www.thewatt.com/node/175
March 18th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Thanks for the link — informative.
Now, I’m not so thankful for the cheap shot.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
I’m always greatful for a cheap shot. Or, preferably, an entirely free one. Those things can be expensive.
March 18th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
At a large international retailer, I watched the electricians sorting boxes of dead cfl’s. Each one had a date written in magic marker on the base. He told me that they had arranged with the supplier that any that burnt before their advertised life were replaced free of charge. Each new bulb they socketed also carried its fresh date with it up the ladder.
We have to change how we do things too, it cannot be solely a techno fix, and we must engage actively with the world around us. Reduce waste, then conserve what we don’t need to use, then use but do so efficiently, then source renewables. If we work all these at once we possibly can heat our homes with the old tube radio, filament bulb (radiation) and 286 computer, but not without first applying the same criteria hierarchy against the house itself, while standing up to suppliers as this retailer does.
March 19th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
While it may be true that industry uses 89% of the water used in Canada, individuals can dramatically reduce that percentage by reducing their consumption! While there would still be a lot of room for improvement left for industry, individuals can still have a significant effect.
March 20th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Ah nice to have an LCA from a European perspective. There’s another one from an Australian perspective here:
http://www.eeca.govt.nz/eeca-library/products/lighting/fact-sheet/environmental-impact-of-cfls-07.pdf
I’d greatly appreciate it if anyone is aware of other LCAs for CFLs or indeed any energy saving device. They appear to be few and far between (at least in the public domain anyway).
March 24th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Expanding on EMartin’s point back at Tue 18 Mar 2008 10:49 AM EDT:
In Seattle we have wonderful hydroelectric power sources, making 80% of our power carbon-free. However, hydroelectric power is very valuable for it’s quick availability and every bit we don’t use is sent down to California. What California can’t buy from us comes from coal plants back east. What this means is that when I switch on a 100W light bulb, then sure I’m getting much of this 100W carbon free. However, California now has to pull 100W it was getting from Washington from a coal plant somewhere east.
Because hydroelectric is more or less built out, and since nobody in the US has built a nuclear plant in over 30 years, and because all renewable energy sources are run full-out as often as possible, every bit of saved energy is saved from a fossil fuel power plant somewhere on the continent.
This leads back to the light bulb question. Your 100% efficient light bulb is using about 140% of the energy that makes it to you via a coal plant somewhere on the continent. It’s then leaking quite a bit of energy out your windows in the form of light, and much of its heat is leaking into your ceiling plenum and out your roof. Yes, you’re saving some heat energy, but natural gas has far less of a carbon impact and even heating oil beats coal. If you’re convinced electric is the way to go (which I agree with you in the long term, if we change our source energy), then invest in a heat pump. You’ll use about a third of the electric energy as resistance heat.
-Matt the Engineer
September 21st, 2008 at 9:32 pm
“Are we releasing more greenhouse gas emissions by using more fossil-fuelled heating to make up for the heat that we’re not getting from CFLs and LEDs?” – NO we are not – atleast for LED’s.
I’ve personally spoken to Energy Efficiency engineers here in Southern California – and there IS a way to calculate the BTU’s reduced by switching from incandescent to LED – and thus the amount of heat reduction – but it’s a complicated calculation – taking into account the many systems in place and the volume of air in the room etc. They said a general rule of thumb is that for every kWh saved, you can add about 20% to this, to account for the reduction in cooling costs. In hotter places like Hawaii – this maybe closer to 30-35%. So for example:
Incandescent bulb: 85W
LED Bulb: 12W
Over 50,000 hours – 85W-12W = 73W saved per hour.
73W x 50,000 hours = 3,650,000 Watt Hours
Divide by 1000 = 3650 kWh SAVED
20% of 3650 = 730 kWh saved in Air Conditioning
Total kWh = 4380
1.55 pounds of CO2/kWh x 4380 = 6789 lbs of CO2 reduced by switching 1 bulb to an LED.
In general – if you figure that replacing 1 bulb will save about 73W per bulb. Replace 20 bulbs and you’re saving 1460W per hour. This is typically how much energy a normal size air conditioner uses.
Here’s a link to the said bulb: 12W LED Light Bulb
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