More Mercury Madness

 

From Send Your Light Bulbs To Washington blog post, reporting on a January 12 Investor’s Business Daily article, with added highlighting.

 

Light Bulb Phaseout Worse Than Reported

 

Environmentalism: As the light bulb phaseout goes into effect, you may be surprised to know the law also requires their already-costly replacements to be phased out too.

That's right, new light bulb efficiency standards set by Washington also mandate light bulbs become 70% more efficient than classic bulbs by 2020. The only bulbs that meet that higher standard are light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. And they are even more expensive than compact fluorescent lamps.

CFLs will replace incandescent bulbs to meet the first level of efficiency that's been widely reported in the media. By 2014, household bulbs using between 40 and 100 watts will need to consume at least 28% less energy under a stupid law passed by Congress in 2007.

But a little-noticed provision of the law, known as the Energy Independence and Security Act, also sets a second efficiency goal of 70% that must be met nationwide by 2020.

LEDs already exceed that goal. But an LED replacement for a 50-cent, 60-watt incandescent bulb costs as much as $60. No doubt costs will drop by 2020.

But it's yet another unnecessary federal mandate looming on the horizon for consumers — many of whom are perfectly happy with their old bulbs.

The federal regulation effectively bans those bulbs by halting their manufacture. Major bulb makers have already made the plant investments to follow the law.

As of Jan. 1, traditional 100-watt bulbs no longer meet standards, and are no longer stocked in stores. Starting next January, the 75-watt incandescent bulb also will be phased out, followed by the 60-watt version in 2014.

The Energy Dept. claims each household can save $50 a year in electricity by replacing 15 traditional bulbs. But the costs of the new CFLs exceed those savings. And they'll only get worse with LEDs.


Here's what's really crazy: Two years before it banned classic bulbs in favor of mercury vapor CFLs, Congress passed a law banning mercury vapor streetlights. Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, manufacturers cannot make or import ballasts for mercury vapor lights after Jan. 1, 2008.

According to the act, mercury vapor security lights are being phased out to "protect the environment" and to "promote energy efficiency" in lighting.

Utility companies across the country have been replacing mercury street lamps with high-pressure sodium fixtures or metal halide fixtures, which are twice as efficient as mercury vapor and possibly safer.

The government warns that the amount of mercury in one CFL bulb is enough to contaminate up to 6,000 gallons of water beyond safe drinking levels. The same agency that's pitching them as a green alternative requires households perform a small hazmat operation to dispose of them upon breakage.

The Energy Dept. recommends numerous steps to "reduce exposure to mercury vapor from a broken bulb," including shutting off the air conditioning for "several hours" and even removing pets from the contaminated room. It advises picking up debris with duct tape, enclosing it in a glass jar and taking it to a special recycling center for proper disposal.

So the geniuses in Washington are removing mercury from outside the home, while adding it inside. And making us all pay for it. Yet another bright idea from Congress.

Comment

Philips have also for some time been calling for a big European switch away from mercury street lighting, citing environmental advantages - though not their potential sales ;-)

Of course, as the above article also says, there are certainly inherent merits in switching street lighting in terms of energy savings - but then, as with domestic lighting, energy saving is not everything, light quality, brightness, and other usage issues should also be considered.

Note the comparative irony,
not merely of allowing CFL mercury bulbs, as in recent UN and EU mandates that seek to reduce mercury use while excepting the CFLs,
but also of directly promoting CFL mercury bulbs, in local North American programs, and in the Philips/Osram worldwide en.lighten switchover initiative with UN backing and public funds.
Whatever the dangers or not of mercury, wherever it comes from, it speaks of rather odd environmental standards...

For a more complete discussion on CFL mercury:
The CFL Mercury Issue
Breakage -- Recycling -- Dumping -- Mining -- Manufacturing -- Transport -- Power Plants

Also, look out for Howard Brandston's upcoming Mondo Arc Magazine article, February, maybe March, on CFL and thermometer (etc) mercury, no doubt highlighting more contradictions!
  image credits, above  RTCC    below  Dr Bulldog    

 

Light Bulb Testimonial

 
 

 

Having done one review of a book that welcomes the demise of Edison's simple bulb, a blog like this might balance it with something that does not...
also in these holiday times when a good read might be welcome!

Published last summer 2011,
the latest December Congress developments may have halted things at "Death Row" level, but of course the ban has not gone away...

To begin with,
it should be clear that this cheap e-book, only around US $2 dollars (say on Amazon) is really about 2 lengthy essays or articles, than a book as such.
But for the price of a Cappucino, you certainly get good value, by 2 knowledgeable authors.


I can't better the overall review of the Broadside Book Publisher site:

I, Light Bulb: A Death Row Testimonial demonstrates how the American economy has gone from free markets to politically correct, government controlled crony capitalism in the half century since Leonard E. Read wrote the classic essay, “I, Pencil.”

Author Michael Patrick Leahy tells the story of the ban on the current generation of incandescents from the perspective of a condemned 100 watt light bulb. In the voice of the light bulb, Leahy points out the need for political activism to reverse this ban, arguing that it not only prevents an innocent incandescent light bulb from continuing a useful economic life, it also deprives every American of their own economic liberty and freedom of choice.


Readers who buy I, Lightbulb will also receive the bonus companion e-book The Disastrous Lightbulb Ban by Howard Brandston, at no additional cost.

Brandston, the internationally recognized expert on lighting most well known for lighting the Statue of Liberty, explains why the federal government’s ban on the current generation of incandescent light bulbs is such a bad idea.
He explains how in 2007 a Democrat controlled Congress, the lamp manufacturers, the Department of Energy, and George W. Bush combined to force us to replace inexpensive and safe incandescent light bulbs with expensive, unsafe Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs that contain mercury. In this companion book to I, Light Bulb, Brandston concludes by encouraging citizen political activism to repeal this ridiculous ban.

The August 2011 Weekly Standard article by editor Joseph Bottum,
puts the issues raised in a wider perspective. Extracts:


It's Green and Blue, But Not Bright

The two essays in a new pamphlet in the "Voices of the Tea Party" series from Broadside Books — I, Light Bulb: A Death Row Testimonial by the editor Michael Patrick Leahy and The Disastrous Light Bulb Ban by Howard M. Brandston — both identify the primary cause as an activist and out-of-control government, manipulated by crony-capitalist corporations:
"If you want to find the ultimate roots of the movement... it all began when Herbert Hoover was named the Secretary of Commerce under Warren Harding, when he set about organizing manufacturers into cooperative industry organizations."

In this telling,
the otherwise forgotten 1924 "Phoebus Cartel" of light-bulb manufacturers looms large, but the story only really gets rolling with the oil crisis of the 1970s, when Congress decided energy policy lay squarely within its remit and began to pass laws mandating all kinds of usage standards for cars and factories.

In those days, of course, the announced purpose was American "energy independence" rather than our currently declared goal of reducing greenhouse gases.
But the real motives, say the Tea Party authors, were always the same: a mistrust of ordinary people and an insatiable hunger for increased government. All of which culminated when the 2007 Democrat-dominated Congress (led by Nancy Pelosi, Nanny of the House) set out to do something, anything, that expanded government power, changed the nation's lifestyle, and rewarded the large manufacturers such as General Electric that had supported the Democrats' election. An inattentive or uninterested President Bush signed the bill, and here we are.

But if it hadn't been incandescent bulbs, it would have been something else.
The truisms of the nannies, the trite expressions of public morality spraying from the religious weight of environmentalism, will not be denied. One way or another, they force themselves out into the public air.

Among Republicans, Fred Upton, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is under some attack for having sponsored the amendment that kept the light-bulb ban alive in the 2007 energy bill. George W. Bush is tarred with the same indictment for having failed to veto the bizarre legislation. But, really, those poor men were just trying to do the right thing. They accepted the faux-science of CFLs and the pseudo-economics because they wanted to believe. They wanted to share in the great public morality of environmentalism, and everyone seemed to be telling them that light bulbs were the way to do it.


In the event, light bulbs weren't the way to do it,
but that's really beside the point.

You want to know where the light-bulb ban began?
It wasn't Nancy Pelosi, and it wasn't Herbert Hoover, and it wasn't even the shadowy Phoebus Cartel, though all who do evil love the darkness.
The light-bulb ban was carried forward by the placards about towels in motel rooms. It was nursed at the local coffee shop, where we are lectured in high moral language about how only sustainable coffee beans — gathered, if the illustrations are accurate, on the misty slopes of Ytaiao Mountain by Rima the jungle girl — can redeem us. Saving the planet, one Starbucks at a time.

The demand for CFLs was inculcated at "Earth Day" plays,
in which grade-school children got to act out the roles of bunnies and butterflies who've come to warn us that we must be nice to the Earth
(As James Lileks once noted, those school plays typically end with "a hymn to nature that makes the Romantic poets look like strip-mining company CEOs.")
The desire to eradicate incandescent bulbs grew up with myths of the Cuyahoga River catching fire and the smog of Los Angeles rolling through the Hollywood Hills like malevolent mud.

The truth or falsity of such things is a trifle, a quibble, a bagatelle.
What matters is that they form our national mythology and our cultural worldview. They form our public religion — the one moral vocabulary that can be spoken in this country anywhere and anytime.

Of course, the result is the kind of general feeling that something must be done about it all, and if that something is rather pointless — the peculiar rush to legislate 1.6-gallon toilets is a good example — nonetheless we have shown a righteous will by trying. We have the guilt-release of a noble attempt. We have the warm feeling of being on the side of good.
We have asserted our standing as children of light, even if rather ineffectual ones. We have followed the sayings of nanny.

I also refer to some interesting passages of the e-book on the Ceolas.net site
in relation to the famous (infamous) Phoebus cartel.

To quote, from Michael Patrick Leahy's I, Lightbulb:

During World War I, the War Industries Board was a government-authorized, industry-staffed effort engaged in industrial planning. General Electric executives such as Gerard Swope participated:
By so doing, and by watching Hoover in action in the sister agency, the Food Administration, they got the idea that by participating in such government authorized planning efforts, they could keep out competitors, control the market, and maximize their profits.

When Swope was named president of General Electric in 1922, he immediately set about applying those principles to the electrical lighting market.
Swope knew that the tungsten patent [vital to well-working light bulbs] would expire in 1927.
How was he going to maintain his monopoly?


The Phoebus Cartel
In 1924, General Electric, along with several major European corporations,
and with the implicit blessing of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, formed a cartel - a cooperative group of competing firms who agreed to fix prices, share technology, establish production standards, and use common marketing practices.

By sharing incandescent light bulb patents that kept competitors out, and by agreeing on exclusive geographic spheres of influence, the member companies could maintain high market shares and high profits.
Called "The Phoebus Cartel" after the Swiss company Phoebus, they set out to keep track of all their activities around the world.

Under the agreement,
General Electric got the United States,
Associated Electrical Industries got the United Kingdom,
Osram got Germany,
Philips got Holland,
and Tungsram got Eastern Europe.
The European companies got to share the British overseas territories, and they all could compete in the rest of the world. General Electric was guaranteed that none of the other major manufacturers of incandescent light bulbs would enter the American market.
When the agreement began, General Electric had a 90 percent market share.
When it ended fifteen years later, General Electric still had a 90 percent market share.

Only a few dozen small, scrappy Japanese manufacturing companies dared to enter the American market and take on General Electric:
They ignored General Electric and related Phoebus Cartel patents, copied what they could, and shipped their less expensive, shorter-lasting incandescent bulbs into the United States. When they began to show some increase in sales, General Electric got friends in Congress to slap a tariff on imported incandescent bulbs, and the price advantage disappeared. Japanese inroads were stopped.

When the cartel was first organized, the life span of the average bulb was 1,000 hours. Fifteen years later, when the cartel came to an end due to World War II, it remained the same.
This is not the kind of progress you would expect if the full engineering and research capabilities of General Electric had been tasked with expanding the life span. Word in our family has always been that this was intentional:
Every 1,000 hours, you had to buy a new incandescent light bulb. Why expand the life span to 2,000 hours? You would just cut your sales in half...

Howard Brandston's contribution The Disastrous Light Bulb Ban is again illuminating, if such words may be used, especially in my view his direct personal involvement in light bulb legislation, having been consulted not only in the proposals leading to the 2007 legislation but also more recently in the Senate hearing this year that looked into reasons or not to proceed with the ban ("phase out").

He clarifies how light bulb manufacturers actively sought the ban
(slightly edited and highlighted extracts):

The NEMA (National Electrical Manufacturers Association) Lamp Subcommittee was composed of General Electric, Osram Sylvania, and Philips, the same industrial giants who formed the old Phoebus Cartel back in 1924 and was conducting its own research and internal hearings that culminated in a recommendation to ban the incandescent light bulb.
When I asked NEMA for help in fighting the incandescent light ban, I was politely told that they could not be involved in any research program like that...
In April 2007, ahead of Congress hearings, NEMA announced its support for the Government's energy efficient lighting policy.

He also runs through reasons why the ban is wrong,
as I reference to on the website, and is unnecessary to repeat here.




Footnotes:

Michael Patrick Leahy
biography, website, blog
As seen, an extensive background in business management and conservative politics.
Michael is currently the Series Editor for Broadside Books' "Voices of the Tea Party" series of e-books.
Also not idle on the light bulb front - helping to put out a rough service bulb that "beats the ban"!



Howard Brandston
biography, commentary, business
As seen well known lighting designer with numerous projects, also a guest lecturer, visiting professor, and as noted the Congress choice of expert opinion on lighting issues.

Has written a book Learning to See, A Matter of Light,
full description here...

As one reviewer puts it,
“This is a gem of a book. For the design beginner it sets the approach to discovery. For the lighting professional it gives insights that can inspire creativity. The teacher will find useful methods for involving students in lighting concepts. The interested person will gain a higher understanding of how light affects the quality of our lives.”

Comparing North America and EU bans

 

As seen from the recent overview of USA regulations, they are comparable to Canada, but not at all as strict as the EU regulations (regulations for different countries with official links http://ceolas.net/#li01inx).

The EU, then, has not only had an earlier ban, but included most varieties of incandescents, also banning all frosted types (Halogen or not) with immediate effect, on the justification that consumers "can buy the CFLs" if they want opaque bulbs.


There are 2 main reasons for the differences between North America and the EU.

Firstly,
the attitude to climate change a.k.a. global warming:
It should be remembered that reducing CO2 emissions was the original worldwide impetus to ban the bulbs, via Greenpeace and other vociferous campaigns around the turn of the century.
The emphasis on saving energy for society or money for consumers later gained ground to make the proposal more concretely attractive, also in view of a growing scepsis or fatigue regarding the climate change message.
That said, the EU Commission and Parliament - and European politicians in general - have remained strong backers of energy efficiency solutions to reduce CO2 emissions.


Secondly,
the comparably greater cooperation with manufacturers.
Even before the ban, imported CFLs were being tariff-reduced in special deals, and the EU Commission Ecodesign Committee (behind the ban proposals) had an extensive involvement with manufacturers, as covered on the website, from http://ceolas.net/#li12ax onwards, including http://ceolas.net/#euban.

In this regard, the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the EU compared to the USA should be remembered, the EU's own auditors have for the past decade refused to sign off on the accounts, and while for example the USA has open Congress hearings on this and other issues, the EU won't even say who is on the legislation proposing EcoDesign Committee, let alone inform about their meeting activities (I have consistently been refused information about the committee composition etc, one reason seemingly being so that the Committee is not "unduly influenced"... which is ironic of course, since they do liaise closely with manufacturers, as has emerged more and more)


A reason for taking this up here, is also because of interesting documentation that I have come across in the past couple of days, relating to EU manufacturer lobbying, more of which can be seen at http://ceolas.net/#postEUban

For example,

The Unholy Alliance between Philips and the Greens
Guest post by Dutch researchers Joost van Kasteren and Professor Henk Tennekes, on American Climate Scientist Roger Pielke's blog


Some extracts. my emphases:

An unholy alliance (discovered by Elsevier journalist Syp Wynia – see footnote) between a large multinational company and a multinational environmental organization succeeded in their lobby to phase out, and ultimately by 2012 forbid, the sale of incandescent bulbs, because of their low watt-to-lumen efficiency – not only in the Netherlands but in the whole of the European Union.

The multinational company wanted to develop a new market for products with a high profit margin, and the environmental multinational wanted to impress the citizens of Europe with the imminent catastrophe caused by anthropogenic climate change. That would also be of benefit to its battered public image.

Philips, the company involved, started in 1891 with the mass production of Edison lamps, at its home base, Eindhoven, Netherlands. There existed no international court of justice at the time, so they could infringe on US patent law with impunity. In the past 120 years it has expanded continuously, to become the multinational electronics giant it is today. Because nostalgia seldom agrees with the aims of private enterprise, Philips started lobbying to phase out the very product on which its original success is based. They started this campaign around the turn of the century, ten years ago.

Their line of thought is clear: banning incandescent bulbs creates an interesting market for new kinds of home lighting, such as “energy savers” (CFL’s, compact fluorescent lamps) and LED’s (light emitting diodes). The mark-up on these new products is substantially higher than that on old-fashioned incandescent bulbs. The rapid expansion of the lighting industry in China makes the profit margin on ordinary bulbs from factories in Europe smaller yet.

The spectre of catastrophic climate change offered a new opportunity for the strategists and marketing specialists at Philips headquarters.
They changed their marketing concept and jumped on the Global Warming band wagon. From that moment on, energy-saving bulbs could be put on the market as icons of responsibility toward climate change. This would give Philips a head start in the CFL end LED business. The competition would be left far behind by aggressive use of European patent law. That strategy fitted like a glove with that of the environmental movement. For them, ordinary light bulbs had become the ultimate symbol of energy waste and excessive CO2 emissions.

Seeing the opportunity, Greenpeace immediately made a forward pass with the ball thrown by Philips’ pitchers. The incandescent bulb would serve as an ideal vehicle for ramming Global Warming down people’s throats.
No abstract discussions about CO2-emissions any more: a ban on bulbs would suffice.
Not unlike the misguided banning of DDT in the name of environmentalism, which leads to the loss of countless lives due to malaria.

In 2006, Dutch legislators caved in under the combined lobbying pressure by Philips and Greenpeace.
A parliamentary majority in The Hague embraced the idea of banning incandescent bulbs and ordered the Dutch Environment Minister, Jacqueline Cramer, to lobby for an extension of the ban to all states in the European Union. That task proved simple enough. Top politicians in Europe, Germany’s Angela Merkel up front, deeply impressed by Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, were only too eager to project an image of strength and will power concerning imagined threats to the planet. ”Save the Earth, ban the bulb” was an effective campaign strategy.

To make a long story short, it took less than one year to issue a binding European Union Edict ordering the phasing out of incandescent bulbs, starting with a ban on bulbs of 100 watts and more effective March 1, 2009, and leading to a complete ban of all incandescent lighting on September 1, 2012.

The spin doctors at Philips headquarters have got it made.
And if this scam backfires on them in consumer protests all over Europe, they can cover their backsides by claiming that politicians and the green movement are responsible, not they.
Backfire it will. There exist no decent alternatives to incandescent light. None.

Footnote, again quoting the blog post:

Elsevier, the Dutch weekly, is the local equivalent of TIME magazine. On August 8, 2009 it ran a revealing cover story by Syp Wynia, entitled “How war was declared against the incandescent bulb.” Other sources of information include an article by James Kanter in the New York Times of August 31, 2009 and many others, easily found by googling “incandescent bulbs” and “banned.”

Henk Tennekes is an aeronautical engineer. From 1965 to 1977 he was a professor of Aerospace Engineering at Penn State. He is co-author of A First Course in Turbulence (MIT Press, 1972 – still in print) and author of The Simple Science of Flight, recently (2009) released in a revised and expanded edition.
Joost van Kasteren is a senior writer on technology and science in Holland. He covers energy, housing, water management, agriculture, food technology, innovation, science policy, and related issues.