# Is there any good way to shift people from incandescent bulbs to fluorescents?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [February 11, 2007, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679 "2007-02-11T00:17:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/81 "2007-02-21T13:53:20Z")
[QUOTE=athelas]
Huh. Screw free trade and the people (including me) who are bothered by even the supposedly “true-white” light bulbs, eh? Color me unimpressed.
Big Gummint is watching you.
[/QUOTE]
Ever hear of the concept of making small sacrifices for the greater good. I guess if you were an Aussie you could stock up on incandescents ahead of time, they are really cheap items. That could buy you the 2-3 years it will probably take under this accelerated program to improve the “Light Quality” of CFL to closer to your standards.
How do you feel about Nuclear plants? This is the same scenario, building them is for the greater good. It is a hard lessons that most of my fellow greens are not ready for either. Sierra Club and Green Peace\* are still dead set against the increases in Nuclear power plants that would greatly help reduce CO[sub]2[/sub].
Jim
- I am a member of both groups.
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### Author:  [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/82 "2007-02-21T14:58:20Z")
[QUOTE=Squink]
[Australian Light bulbs get the flick](http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21258888-662,00.html) Not a single word on what measures they’ll put in place to deal with the resultant mercury problem.
[/QUOTE]
Australia’s plan is idiotic. I’m a big fan of CFL bulbs, but they simply don’t work in all situations. Trying to mandate the complete elimination of incandescent bulbs is the worst kind of government intervention. A better plan would be to encourage the use of the bulbs through tax breaks and credits to make them a better marginal choice in areas where they work well.
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### Author:  [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/83 "2007-02-21T15:18:15Z")
[QUOTE=What Exit?]
Ever hear of the concept of making small sacrifices for the greater good.
[/QUOTE]
Yes - and it’s fine and noble when somebody decides to make sacrifices own their own. It’s something else when somebody decides to force others to make sacrifices. So you’re convinced that CFLs are a Good Thing. Buy them. Tell other people they should buy them. Put up a blog, using your own time and money, convincing people that switching to CFLs contributes to the greater good. Contribute to the CFL awareness foundation. But don’t think so highly of your own opinion that you expect the government to put a gun to people’s head just to get them to buy certain lightbulbs (for somebody’s getting a gun if they refuse to pay the incandescent bulb tax - manufacturer, retailer, consumer; _somebody_).
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### Author:  [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/84 "2007-02-21T15:29:19Z")
[QUOTE=pizzabrat]
Yes - and it’s fine and noble when somebody decides to make sacrifices own their own. It’s something else when somebody decides to force others to make sacrifices. So you’re convinced that CFLs are a Good Thing. Buy them. Tell other people they should buy them. Put up a blog, using your own time and money, convincing people that switching to CFLs contributes to the greater good. Contribute to the CFL awareness foundation. But don’t think so highly of your own opinion that you expect the government to put a gun to people’s head just to get them to buy certain lightbulbs (for somebody’s getting a gun if they refuse to pay the incandescent bulb tax - manufacturer, retailer, consumer; _somebody_).
[/QUOTE]
I applauded the Australian Governments decision.
Your theory is interesting and if more cleaved to it the US would not have been successful in WWII. I guess the difference here is I consider the Global Warming threat to be as important as WWII and I do not think we need to make as large a sacrifices as our Parents or Grandparents made. I am sorry if CFL cause you so much mental anguish.
How do you ever survive at work or school under those harsh and horrible florescent tubes all day?
Jim
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### Author:  [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/85 "2007-02-21T16:15:39Z")
Say I replace seven 60 watt incandescents with 13 watt fluorescents, that’s a savings of about 330 watts.
Burning those for 12 hours a day over the course of a year, that’ll save me about 1445 kWh of electricity. At 15 cents a kWh that’d be a savings of $217.
But what’s that in Gasoline?
1445 kWh is equivalent to 4,930,000 BTU, and burning Gasoline produces about [114,100 BTU per gallon](http://www.nafa.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Resource_Center/Alternative_Fuels/Energy_Equivalents/Energy_Equivalents.htm). So I’ll save the equivalent of 43.2 gallons of gas a year.
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### Author:  [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/86 "2007-02-21T16:27:01Z")
[QUOTE=Squink]
Say I replace seven 60 watt incandescents with 13 watt fluorescents, that’s a savings of about 330 watts.
Burning those for 12 hours a day over the course of a year, that’ll save me about 1445 kWh of electricity. At 15 cents a kWh that’d be a savings of $217.
But what’s that in Gasoline?
1445 kWh is equivalent to 4,930,000 BTU, and burning Gasoline produces about [114,100 BTU per gallon](http://www.nafa.org/Content/NavigationMenu/Resource_Center/Alternative_Fuels/Energy_Equivalents/Energy_Equivalents.htm). So I’ll save the equivalent of 43.2 gallons of gas a year.
[/QUOTE]
As very little Electricity is generator from gas, please put it in terms of coal.
Keeping with your gas value, multiply that times 100,000,000 households in the US & Canada alone. That is actually a pretty good savings but only a small part of the overall solution to Global Warming.
Otherwise a very good point, that in the end, CFL are only a small part of the puzzle for solving global warming. Please [see this thread for more details](http://208.100.26.199/sdmb/showthread.php?t=409352) on a full solution.
Jim
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### Author:  [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/87 "2007-02-21T16:42:29Z")
[QUOTE=What Exit?]
As very little Electricity is generator from gas, please put it in terms of coal.
[/QUOTE]
I was interested in ‘SUV units’, so gas was appropriate.
Coal runs about [12,000 BTU per pound](http://www.uwsp.edu/CNR/wcee/keep/Mod1/Whatis/energyresourcetables.htm). So that’d be a savings of about 410 Lbs of coal a year.
> [@](#):
>
> That is actually a pretty good savings but only a small part…
-Yeah, the number was bigger than I thought, but still not huge. I could drive about a thousand miles on the savings, which is a lot of trips to the kwik-e-mart, but not much in terms of heading cross country.
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### Author:  [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/88 "2007-02-21T16:48:09Z")
[QUOTE=Squink]
I was interested in ‘SUV units’, so gas was appropriate.
Coal runs about [12,000 BTU per pound](http://www.uwsp.edu/CNR/wcee/keep/Mod1/Whatis/energyresourcetables.htm). So that’d be a savings of about 410 Lbs of coal a year.
-Yeah, the number was bigger than I thought, but still not huge. I could drive about a thousand miles on the savings, which is a lot of trips to the kwik-e-mart, but not much in terms of heading cross country.
[/QUOTE]
But are there people with only seven lightbulbs? We have over 20, in our three bedroom apartment. Not lifechanging money, still, but a heck of a lot. Times six identical units in our building alone, times 20 buildings on our block, times how many blocks in Chicago…
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### Author:  [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/89 "2007-02-21T16:55:32Z")
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
But are there people with only seven lightbulbs?
[/QUOTE]
I choose seven as an average of the number of lightbulbs a typical family might leave on all the time, and by all the time, I mean 12 hours a day. If people really are leaving all 20 of their bulbs lit all the time, they need to learn to turn them off when they’re not using them.
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### Author:  [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/90 "2007-02-21T16:59:00Z")
[QUOTE=Squink]
I choose seven as an average of the number of lightbulbs a typical family might leave on all the time, and by all the time, I mean 12 hours a day. If people really are leaving all 20 of their bulbs lit all the time, they need to learn to turn them off when they’re not using them.
[/QUOTE]
I have to agree, \*\*Squink’s \*\* estimates look fairly good without exhaustive studies in average usuage.
BTW: The next step will be LED lighting that will save far more electric. It has roughly a 10 to 1 efficiency over incandescent. Potentially these could also reduce the very high usage in business around the world.
Jim
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### Author:  [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/91 "2007-02-21T17:09:16Z")
[QUOTE=Squink]
I choose seven as an average of the number of lightbulbs a typical family might leave on all the time, and by all the time, I mean 12 hours a day. If people really are leaving all 20 of their bulbs lit all the time, they need to learn to turn them off when they’re not using them.
[/QUOTE]
Ah, good point. And no, ours are not all on all day, although sometimes it feels like it when I’m walking through the house shutting off light switches in empty rooms! Grrrr…
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### Author:  [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/92 "2007-02-21T17:23:32Z")
[QUOTE=WhyNot]
Ah, good point. And no, ours are not all on all day, although sometimes it feels like it when I’m walking through the house shutting off light switches in empty rooms! Grrrr…
[/QUOTE]
Me too: 😉
I have trained my daughter to mostly shut off lights. My son is still a loss cause. My wife is actually getting better. I almost never come home anymore to find an empty house with lights blazing in 3 rooms and a door left unlocked.
Jim
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### Author:  [@Raygun99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raygun99)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/93 "2007-02-21T17:31:17Z")
[QUOTE=iamthewalrus(:3=]
They certainly can be… if the size constraints are loose enough. I’ve seen CFL floods that have the little spiral hidden away inside a normal shaped flood bulb. But there seems to be a reason that they can’t make them fit inside the standard size of an incandescent bulb. I’m assuming this based on the fact that no one has actually sold such a thing. Adding an additional layer around it would just make them bigger and less efficient, which seems to go against what most people need from a CFL.
[/QUOTE]
IKEA sells CFLs that are the same size as an incandescent, with a bulb shape around them. I have a few in my house.
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### Author:  [@amarone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarone)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/94 "2007-02-21T19:05:20Z")
[QUOTE=Squink]
I choose seven as an average of the number of lightbulbs a typical family might leave on all the time, and by all the time, I mean 12 hours a day. If people really are leaving all 20 of their bulbs lit all the time, they need to learn to turn them off when they’re not using them.
[/QUOTE]
12 hours a day sounds huge. I do not have any bulbs that are on that long. Even in winter, the longest I could imagine would be in the kitchen where bulbs might be on 6 - 8 hours a day.
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### Author:  [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/95 "2007-02-21T21:44:57Z")
[QUOTE=amarone]
12 hours a day sounds huge. I do not have any bulbs that are on that long.
[/QUOTE]
So multiply my numbers by any factor you think appropriate to make them apply to your situation.
You might even add a correction for the extra time your furnace will have to be on in winter to make up for the missing 60 watters, and another for the decrease in your air conditioning requirements in summeer.
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### Author:  [@Sunrazor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunrazor)
#### Post date: [February 21, 2007, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/96 "2007-02-21T22:14:16Z")
The bottom line is still the bottom line. Make a product attractive enough – and the pocketbook is the most efficient way to do that – and people will use it. You can preach about how green something is until you’re blue in the face, and nobody will give you a second listen. But show 'em that something will save them money, and they’ll buy it. I think \*\*Bosda \*\* underestimates the intelligence of the buying public. I live in rural Colorado, and I see the things all over the place, especially in outdoor applications where the light, of necessity, has to stay on 24/7. Farms gobble huge amounts of electricity these days, and anything a farm family can do to reduce power consumption, they’ll do. That includes replacing their porch, garage and shop lights with fluorescents; using more efficient yard lights, more efficient water pumps, low-wattage stock tank heaters and so on.
I also see the screw-in fluorescents in the businesses downtown. The radio station where I work replaced the incandescent bulbs in the studio track lights, the bathroom and the entry lights with screw-in fluorescents – eleven bulbs altogether. And that’s just our business – up and down Main Street, the same thing is happening.
If you pay a big electricity bill, you’ll do whatever you can to reduce it. If that means a little more up-front cost for long-term savings, well, that’s just a good business decision.
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### Author:  [@Carol\_Stream](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Carol_Stream)
#### Post date: [February 22, 2007, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/97 "2007-02-22T00:47:24Z")
[QUOTE=Sunrazor]
I also see the screw-in fluorescents in the businesses downtown. The radio station where I work replaced the incandescent bulbs in the studio track lights, the bathroom and the entry lights with screw-in fluorescents – eleven bulbs altogether. And that’s just our business – up and down Main Street, the same thing is happening.
If you pay a big electricity bill, you’ll do whatever you can to reduce it. If that means a little more up-front cost for long-term savings, well, that’s just a good business decision.
[/QUOTE]
I agree. I recently saw CFLs in use in the hallways of a Las Vegas hotel. Hallway lights are on 24/7, and a large hotel probably has thousands of them.
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### Author:  [@According\_to\_Pliny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/According_to_Pliny)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2007, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/98 "2007-02-23T21:24:31Z")
[QUOTE=Sunrazor]
The bottom line is still the bottom line. Make a product attractive enough – and the pocketbook is the most efficient way to do that – and people will use it. You can preach about how green something is until you’re blue in the face, and nobody will give you a second listen.
[/QUOTE]
Or the third alternative, the one in the OP, and one just enacted in Australia - remove wasteful items from the market.
It’s always a flaw to assume that the marketplace is efficient and that enlightened decisions will be made on facts and comparisons and smart shopping. Most bulb purchasing decisions involve none of those.
People simply replace the burned out one with an identical one. The most consideration they give is “Do I pay more for GE brand or assume the generics give a better value?” Comparing the regular bulb to the green one on the other side of the aisle isn’t done at point of sale.
Because the information needed for the decision is not available right there.
Over the endless foot dragging of the industry we now at least have package markings for total lumens and average bulb life.
What we actually need is to have the key information large and up front, the same size and position as the wattage. And add that final number that fluorescents put on that the incandescents don’t: Total cost to run the bulb.
What if that were required? Where fluorescents have listed how much longer it lasts, incandescents should have to say “Burns out 5 times faster than fluorescents, and uses 4 times the energy in the process”
So when the government gives up fighting for better labeling, and simply acts our behalf to remove wasteful bulbs, it does so at our benefit. In the same way they prevent the sale of unsafe meat that in free market days would kill people every year.
Maybe some day free markets will be better at revealing long term options.
Just as you can now get a bunch of data and graphs before buying a stock online, maybe one day your phone/PDA/shopping helper will give you on-line recommendations as you put things into your cart. A window will pop up saying “Are you sure? Those waste a lot of money in the long run”.
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### Author:  [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)
#### Post date: [February 23, 2007, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/99 "2007-02-23T21:51:26Z")
[QUOTE=Sunrazor]
The bottom line is still the bottom line. Make a product attractive enough – and the pocketbook is the most efficient way to do that
[/QUOTE]
This is not always the case. Sometimes one person buys the bulbs (contractors, landlords) and another person uses it and pays for the power (home buyer or renter). In this case the contractor, or person who wants to rent out the space will usually install what’s cheapest for them, the person buying or renting will have the old inefficient bulbs and won’t have really motivation to change over - esp. true of a renter, as they assume they will move out, while a homeowner is more likely to convert over time.
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### Author:  [@Kevbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kevbo)
#### Post date: [February 24, 2007, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-any-good-way-to-shift-people-from-incandescent-bulbs-to-fluorescents/391679/100 "2007-02-24T00:40:19Z")
[QUOTE=kanicbird]
This is not always the case. Sometimes one person buys the bulbs (contractors, landlords) and another person uses it and pays for the power (home buyer or renter).
[/QUOTE]
Another similar example is in corporate or industrial settings. The bulbs come out of Janitor Joe’s Facility Maintainance budget, but the electric bill is paid out of an operations budget by Amy the Accountant…not Joe’s worry how much power they use.
I worked on a job for a fellow that had a pretty good sized company. On the one hand it seemed a little anal that he knew what model and brand the high-bay light fixtures were, and that they were the most efficient available. OTOH, he was one of the few in the company (his wife was the other) that really saw the big picture financially.
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