Europe goes lighting efficient

As I continue to catch up on news I missed while on vacation last week, I found a story on Europe's plan to effectively phase out incandescent light bulbs by 2009. By using an energy efficiency requirement for bulbs, the new laws will not a priori ban the incandescent, but it will quickly go the way of the Dodo without substantial energy improvements. The writer notes that the de facto replacement - the compact fluorescent - contains traces of mercury, a toxic metal.

Two thoughts:

1. It's great that the law focuses on energy efficiency instead of a particular bulb technology. The problem of "government picking winners" is thus avoided.
2. Compact fluorescents are a major improvement over the incandescent, but I think it's a little naive to dismiss the mercury problem. Over its lifetime, a CFL will displace more mercury than it contains, assuming that a significant portion of its electricity comes from coal. However, with a strong push toward renewable and environmentally-friendlier energy coming along, it's silly to assume that's always going to be true. Conclusion: don't hesitate to buy a CFL rather than an incandescent, but don't stop looking for something better.

CFLs: higher efficiency, but a little Hg

Compact fluorescents are the new sliced bread of energy efficiency, with Wal-Mart committed to selling 100 million in the next year. But as I mentioned in that post on Wal-Mart, the Wall Street Journal Energy Roundup discusses the one drawback in mass producing CFLs - they contain mercury.

Mercury is toxic, which means that CFLs should not be discarded and landfilled (or incinerated) but should be recycled. But that's a big change for a population used to discarding burnt out bulbs.

The good news is that the CFL tends to reduce overall mercury emissions into the environment because reducing electricity use tends to reduce coal burning, which also releases mercury. But we still shouldn't be trading one mercury emission for another.

Update 10:23: For Anagram, who likes his solutions on a silver platter, some possible ways to deal with the mercury in CFLs:
1) Make a CFL without mercury (although one manufacturer says that's not possible)
2) Create an aggressive CFL recycling campaign
3) Your idea here, smarty pants
4) Pay for (1) - (3) with a small tax on light bulbs based on the quantity of toxic material

Is big boxing CFLs the future of green?

I've posted recently about Wal-Mart's newfound interest in environmentalism, but some of the news stories are starting to lose that veneer of skepticism about the company's motives. A recent clip from the New York Times notes that Wal-Mart wants to sell 100 million compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) by 2008. While that's still fewer than the 350 million regular incandescent bulbs sold in 2005, if Wal-Mart reaches their goal they'll have increased total sales of CFLs by 50% and save a bunch of energy to boot. Wal-Mart is pushing the bulbs by using them in in-store lighting fixtures, posting educational information near the bulbs, and even giving them prime eye-height real estate on the shelves. (no doubt that they're also applying their famous price pressure on suppliers to drive costs down and drive production to China).

While I sincerely applaud Wal-Mart's effort to make CFLs the primary lighting source for Americans, CFLs still contain some mercury, which makes them hazardous waste. And while Americans might be quick to embrace a cost-saving bulb, they may be less focused when it comes time to dispose of "burnt out" bulbs. 10 years from now, assuming that about half of bulbs are disposed of properly (which may be optimistic), we'll be dumping about 200kg of mercury into landfills.

This EPA fact sheet (pdf) points out that the relative level of mercury is small compared to other household sources. Furthermore, by reducing electricity use (which typically comes from coal power in the U.S.), overall mercury exposure is actually less using a CFL than an incandescent bulb because we burn less coal. But as CFL use increases - as no doubt it will - I hope Wal-Mart tells its suppliers to cut the mercury as well as the costs.