Australia's Incandescent Light Bulb Phase Out - 12/17/07

Australia will begin a total phase out of the incandescent light bulb hoping to be using only compact florescent light bulbs.  This will be a world’s first for a national government to take the lead this way.They hope to have accomplished this by the year 2009 maybe into 2010 at the latest.  Compact fluorescent light bulbs are more expensive yet changing to one 15-watt CFL (compact fluorescent light bulb) instead of using a 75-watt standard bulb would save approximately $10 dollars per year.  In the United States alone that would be a savings of $20,000,000,000.00 per year.   That is a lot of zeros.  Consumers who are worried about the cost difference need to hesitate.  The higher cost is offset by the fact that the CFL’s tend to last 6 times longer than a standard bulb.  These costs are being cut every year due to the fact that the demand is getting higher.  Australia is not alone in their journey.  California has an act in place that wants to phase out standard bulbs by 2012.  Greenhouse gases could be cut by 800,000 tons a year if Australia’s calculations are correct.  The total for the year of 2004 totaled a large 564.7 million tons.  Throughout their country 12% of greenhouse emissions are from households, approximately 25% are commercial sector emissions, and a quarter of the emissions are associated with public and street lighting.  There will be no ban on halogen lighting only the standard incandescent light bulb.  These light bulbs were developed almost 125 years ago.  Only five percent of a 2 billion light bulb market is compact fluorescent light bulbs in the US.  Wal-Mart wants to sell at least 100 million CFL’s by the end of this year.  That is what was sold in the entire US last year.  By changing one 15-watt compact fluorescent bulb instead of a 75-watt standard bulb you may save around $10 on your utility bill a year.   

To think something so little could save so much.  The savings are innumerable.  If everyone switched now we could give our earth a little more years to its life span. 

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