If energy needs to be saved, there are good ways to do it.
                                                               Government product regulation is not one of them

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Legal EU Incandescent Bulbs use more Energy than Illegal Incandescents!




image thanks moritz gieselmann


From previous posts regarding rough service availability to ordinary consumers, it was seen that this would be hard to stop anyway for the reasons given:

So effectively the EU are contributing to what they say they are against, since legal EU bulbs use more energy than their banned equivalents!

Regular readers will note that this is similar to the American situation.
The rough service bulbs last longer but are dimmer (the trade off).
Bell as mentioned in the last post seemingly don't give lumen (brightness) rating for their products, but as previously seen from the US discussion it is typically 100W rough service being equivalent to 60-75W regular bulbs in brightness.

So for a bulb of certain brightness, which is after all what you want, legal EU bulbs waste more energy than banned EU bulbs!
They also thereby cost a lot more in use of course, despite longer lifespans.

The predictable EU retort "Let them use energy saving bulbs!" (aka "Let them eat cake!") obviously does not apply for the light quality, appearance etc reasons one might choose such incandescents, also given that Halogen replacement types will also be "phased out" in the EU by 2016.
 

3 comments:

Francesca said...

It could be very good for EU Commission too!
Many hear about ban and think about to buy "energy saving".
And many big shops follow minister advice not to have those lightbulbs
And unhappy people can still buy ordinary (incandescent), so not protest

If EU smart, they will do nothing.
But EU not smart, so they will keep annoying people with clumsy unnecessary supervision.

Francesca

Lighthouse said...

Thanks Francesca
Agree with the sense of that, as you may have seen in earlier postings.

There is an overall logic and irony, that if people sufficiently buy the "energy saving" bulbs no ban is needed
- and if they don't, that's removing the incandescent bulbs they obviously feel the need to buy, and despite all the campaigns and official information against such bulbs!

Regulation proponents always like to say they are just setting energy usage limits "promoting progress", but that does not hold either as commented on the "How Bans are Wrongly Justified" page.

ecoswitch said...

I can't believe it would cost more to run the more "energy efficient" ones. Sometimes I feel governments don't fully look into things before implementing.

http://www.ecoswitch.com.au/