Guy Berger Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 BUSINESS AND CLIMATE CHANGE Irrational incandescence May 31st 2007 From The Economist print edition People can't be bothered to make easy energy savings SOME ways of cutting carbon are cheaper than others. So, at different carbon prices, different sorts of methods of abatement become worthwhile. Vattenfall, a Swedish power utility, has tried to quantify which ones would be worth undertaking at what price (see chart 3). The result is a testament to economic irrationality. The measures below the horizontal line have a negative abatement cost—in other words, by carrying them out, people and companies could both cut emissions and save money. At a macroeconomic level they would boost, rather than reduce, economic growth. Lighting, for instance, accounts for some 19% of the world's electricity use. A standard incandescent light bulb costs around €1, says Theo van Deursen, chief executive of Philips Lighting, and uses €15-worth of electricity a year. A low-energy one costs €5-6 and uses €3-worth. The payback on investing in a compact fluorescent bulb, therefore, is less than a year. Yet low-energy lighting makes up only 30% of Philips's sales. Mr van Deursen admits to being disappointed. Sales are rising faster in the developing world: there, people pay more attention to electricity bills than they do in the rich world. Economists trying to explain this apparent irrationality suggest that the savings are too small and the effort involved in change too large. People find their electricity bills too boring to think about; within companies, those responsible for keeping bills down may not have the authority to spend the necessary capital. Another explanation is the agency problem: that the developer who would have to pay higher capital costs up front will not be forking out for the electricity bills. Besides, people buy houses not because they have good insulation but because they have pretty views. Compared with pursuing greater energy efficiency, the abatement measures into which so much money is now being poured look rather expensive. Carbon capture and storage and wind and solar power, for instance, all have positive, and relatively high, abatement costs. But the cheapest sources of abatement are difficult for policymakers to get at. Billions of different actors are involved. They cannot be targeted in the way that a few hundred factories can. What is more, a moderate carbon price is not likely to be effective, since people clearly do not care enough about cost. One policy option is to decouple the utilities' revenues from the amount of electricity they sell. That gives them an incentive to increase the efficiency of power usage rather than to produce and sell extra power. California is already doing this, which is presumably why electricity prices there are among the highest in America, while consumption is relatively low. Energy-efficiency standards, such as building regulations, are another option. Economists generally prefer to avoid rules that specify what companies can produce and how, because they require governments, rather than markets, to allocate resources, and markets tend to do a better job. But if, as in this case, a public as well as a private good is involved, and the market does not seem to be doing its job properly, there is an argument for governments giving it a nudge. There are lots of energy-efficiency regulations in place already, and they are being tightened. Incandescent light bulbs are the top target at the moment. Both the European Union and Australia said earlier this year that they are planning to ban them. But the man in the vanguard of this green revolution is Fidel Castro, who started phasing them out two years ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Alfredson Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 I'm in the process of changing all my light bulbs over to the new high efficiency ones, as the old ones burn out. I like them a lot. The equivalent of a 60W bulb only draws 15W of power. That's incredible! Well worth the extra money they cost, imo. And they are guaranteed to last 5 years (some 7 years). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GA Russell Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 I had a CFL in the hall that blew out shortly after I got it. Maybe I turned it on and off too much. I think that most people who have tried CFLs find that they are not bright enough to read by. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BERIGAN Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 http://www.nema.org/lamprecycle/epafactsheet-cfl.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jazzmoose Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 We tried to switch to the newer lightbulbs, honest. They burned out so fast we just gave up. Maybe we were just unlucky, but I was decidedly unimpressed with my "savings". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Magnificent Goldberg Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 Building regulations here require all new houses to be fitted with at least 3 low energy bulbs, so people can compare them with the normal type. As Guy mentioned, they're not good to read by, so, as our bulbs burn out, we're replacing them with the old type in rooms where we do read. Our house is only two years old and one has gone already. So much for progress! MG Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Magnificent Goldberg Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 While there is obviously SOME price at which energy demand will be reduced - at a million pounds a kilowat/hour, no one would buy energy - energy demand seems to be very price-inelastic. So much so, that no one really has any idea of what prices energy (in its different forms) have to be in order to change our patterns of living. So that graphs like the one produced in the Economist are completely meaningless. All the economists I know agree that economics is a very poor means of handling cultural matters. MG Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J Larsen Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 LED lights are much nicer than any variation on fluorescent bulbs that I've ever seen, and also very low power. The downside is that they are still pretty expensive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J Larsen Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 While there is obviously SOME price at which energy demand will be reduced - at a million pounds a kilowat/hour, no one would buy energy - energy demand seems to be very price-inelastic. So much so, that no one really has any idea of what prices energy (in its different forms) have to be in order to change our patterns of living. So that graphs like the one produced in the Economist are completely meaningless. All the economists I know agree that economics is a very poor means of handling cultural matters. MG I don't think that is the point of the graph at all. The point of the graph is "if I (as a society) am going to try to reduce carbon emissions, where do I get the biggest bang for my buck?" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Alfredson Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 As Guy mentioned, they're not good to read by... My laptop is backlit... don't need no lightbulb! Oh wait... you're talking about reading books!?! People still do that?!? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rostasi Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 I'm amazed at how bright these new bulbs are. Too bright in some situations. I found that my eyes would twitch and sometimes burn while reading in the front room. But, I have to say, they have lasted many years now. I especially like the lasting quality of the ones that go in hard-to-get places or areas that can be a pain to get at - those were the places to change the bulbs first. There was a time when the new blueish bulbs were tried, but those were pretty weak on lumens. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Claude Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 (edited) I'm amazed at how bright these new bulbs are. Too bright in some situations. I found that my eyes would twitch and sometimes burn while reading in the front room. Did you choose the right ones? IIRC, a 7W energy-saving bulb corresponds to a regular 40W bulb. If you get a 12W bulb, it will be too bright (like a regular 60W bulb). I like those new bulbs, although it does not make sense to use them everywhere. They take some time to reach normal brightness, so they are no good for lights that are only used occasionally and for a short time, like in a corridor. But all these savings are nothing compared to the electricity consumption due to air conditioning. Edited June 20, 2007 by Claude Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J Larsen Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 Actually, you'd reduce world electricity consumption by about 15% if you replaced every incadescent bulb with a fluorescent bulb. It is not trivial. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RDK Posted June 20, 2007 Report Share Posted June 20, 2007 I like those new bulbs, although it does not make sense to use them everywhere. They take some time to reach normal brightness, so they are no good for lights that are only used occasionally and for a short time, like in a corridor. Exactly. That, and you can't use them in dimmers. Still, we've replaced whatever bulbs we can with flourescents. They're much improved from only a few years ago. Haven'y had them in place long enough to comment on their longeviy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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