Dr Matt Prescott discusses EU light bulb ban

BBC Radio 4 : Today Programme : Lights go out on 100 watt bulbs

After 120 years, 100 watt bulbs are being phased out in favour of energy-saving ones. Matt Prescott, director of campaign group Ban the Bulb, examines new rules which means all traditional bulbs will be disappear by 2012.


BBC World Service : Newshour (Europe) : Old Style light bulbs banned in EU

The traditional incandescent light bulb, first put on the market by Thomas Edison in 1879, could be on its way out.

From today, the manufacture and import of 100 watt bulbs and all frosted bulbs will be banned in the European Union.

The new rules mean that consumers will be able to buy only the more efficient long life fluorescent or halogen lamps.

However, there has been something of a backlash against the ban.

In Britain, supermarkets reported a massive run on the traditional type, while one newspaper gave away 25,000 incandescent light bulbs in "outrage at further European intervention in British affairs".

The European Commission claims the ban on inefficient bulbs will save about 40 terawatt hours of energy a year, enough to power a small country.

Matt Prescott is the founder of the Ban the Bulb campaign.

Labels: BBC, EU light bulb ban, Justin Webb, Newshour, Radio 4, Today Programme, World Service

EurActiv : Updates on lead up to EU 100W light bulb ban

In October 2008, EU energy ministers invited the European Commission to draft a regulation to phase out the sale of all incandescent and poorly-performing light bulbs by 2010. This is to be done within the framework of the Eco-design Directive (see EurActiv LinksDossier), which provides performance requirements for energy-using products.

The European Parliament gave its green light to a phase-out of incandescent light bulbs on 17 February after an attempt by a group of MEPs to block the regulation was rejected (EurActiv 18/02/09).

The Commission officially adopted a regulation to improve the energy efficiency on non-directional household lamps on 19 March 2009 (EurActiv 19/03/09). The measure will gradually phase out all incandescent light bulbs and inefficient halogens by 2012 in favour of compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) or efficient halogens.

In March, the European Commission adopted a new regulation to gradually phase out all incandescent light bulbs and inefficient halogens between 1 September and 2012. The ban was intended to help in the EU’' fight against climate change as the EU executive estimates that a move to efficient halogens and compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) could slash the EU's CO2 emissions by about 15 million tons every year.

The beneficiary, so the Commission believes, will be the consumer as a household will "save easily" €50 (£40) a year due to lower electricity consumption and the longer lifetime of the new lamps that will compensate for the higher purchase price.

In anticipation of the new rules, the sales of traditional light bulbs fell by as much as 35% in many European countries in the first quarter of 2009, according to the market research company Gfk. At the same time, energy-saving light bulbs have steadily increased their market share. In the UK, for example, 12.3 million were sold in the last quarter of 2008 compared with 8.9 million in the same period a year earlier.

Osram, a leading lighting manufacturer, reported that green products now account for 65% of its sales and it hopes for a boost to 80% in the coming years.

"The big trend is energy efficiency" said Martin Goetzeler, CEO of Osram, adding that the EU decision would give a further boost to technological change.

Consumers argue that CFL bulbs cannot match the light quality of incandescent bulbs, saying that they are two dim and distort colours. Moreover, concerns have been raised that the flickering fluorescent light could trigger migraines or epilepsy seizures.

Some also question the greenness of CFLs, which contain mercury and require proper recycling facilities. However, as coal-fired stations emit mercury, incandescent light bulbs indirectly emit more mercury by using up larger amounts of electricity, experts noticed.

The economic and environmental argument against incandescent lights is nevertheless convincing as they convert only around 5% of the energy they use to light, wasting the rest as heat. Fluorescent lights use up to 75% less energy than incandescent lamps, while efficient halogens that match the light quality of conventional bulbs save somewhere between 25-50% of energy.

On 17 February MEPs backed European Commission proposals to extend the scope of the Eco-design Directive and the Ecolabel, but rejected proposals to include food products in the plans.

The European Parliament's environment committee voted on a report to cover all products with an impact on energy use, such as windows, insulation materials and water-using devices, in the EU's Eco-design Directive (EurActiv 24/10/08). Currently, only devices that directly use energy are part of the scheme.

MEPs, however, rejected a proposal from the rapporteur, Romanian MEP Magor Imre Csibi (ALDE), to go as far as including all products except means of transport. This would have effectively mandated the Commission to set minimum energy requirements for food and clothes, for example.

The committee consequently requested the Commission to come up with a proposal by 2012, extending the scope only to "non-energy-related products" with "significant potential for reducing their environmental impacts throughout their whole life-cycle".

Backing on traditional light bulb ban

At the same time, MEPs also voted on whether to block the Commission's implementing measure to phase out incandescent and inefficient halogen light bulbs by 2012. The EU executive proposed the measure under the Eco-design Directive in December 2008 (EurActiv 09/12/08).

German MEPs Holger Krahmer (ALDE) and Anja Weisgerber (EPP-ED) had drafted a resolution arguing that the regulatory committee's procedure, which excludes the Parliament from decision-making, was not justified for the banning of a product like light bulbs. An overwhelming majority of MEPs nevertheless voted against it, effectively endorsing the Commission's proposal.

Energy Saving Day (E-Day) 2009 : Isles of Scilly

E-Day 2009 : Isles of Scilly (Tues 6 Oct, 2009)

Energy Saving Day (E-Day) 2009 will be staged on the Isles of Scilly, approximately 30 miles out to sea from the tip of Land's End, on Tuesday 6th October, 2009.

This island community achieved the biggest reduction in electricity demand measured anywhere in the UK during last year's E-Day (http://www.e-day.org.uk).

With the help of the local school, radio station, council, wildlife trust, transition town group and many others, E-Day 2009 aims to build on the success of last year's grassroots effort.


Isles of Scilly Earth Summit (Sat 3 - Sun 4 Oct, 2009)

During the build up to E-Day, the Isles of Scilly Earth Summit will be staged in the Town Hall of the Isles of Scilly's main island, St Mary's, between Saturday 3 October and Sunday 4 October.

At this event, international, UK and local islanders will describe how their islands are already feeling the impacts of climate change, as well as their hopes and fears for the future.

World class speakers have been confirmed from Papua New Guinea, Samoa, The Galapagos, Madagascar and others have been invited to speak about a variety of other fascinating, yet overlooked, islands.


Educational and Creative Resources (Online)

A wide range of educational and creative activities are being specially developed for this year's E-Day and should be of particular use to schools and families.

Please join the Twitter feed (see below) if you would like to follow E-Day's progress, to support E-Day in any way or to join in nearer the time.

The new E-Day website (http://www.e-day.org.uk) will be launched in early September 2009.

The new E-Day website will be launched in approximately one week's time...

See Jon Plowman's (the former Head of BBC Comedy) Review of Energy Saving Displays for E-Day here:

Part 1 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u8MiIeIZhU

Part 2 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_10fai33rlY

Many thanks

Matt

http://www.twitter.com/energysavingday

http://www.youtube.com/energysavingday

Labels: E-Day 2009 Energy Saving Day

Ceravision : Using microwaves to produce light

BAN THE BULB : WORLD EXCLUSIVE!

Earlier this week Ban The Bulb visited an innovation centre at Bletchley Park to meet the team behind a company called Ceravision that has developed a revolutionary lighting technology, which could replace traditional incandescents light bulbs, halogens, fluorescents, high intensity discharge lamps and LEDs over the years ahead.

Their ingenious electrodeless, plasma lamp technology uses carefully contained and focused microwaves to heat special blends of gas in a way that efficiently produces a full spectrum of bright and controllable light (equivalent to 70W - 5000 W incandescents) without producing excess heat or using mercury.

Ceravision's technology consists of the following components:

a magnetron which emits microwave energy,

a transparent quartz resonator which concentrates the microwave energy in a small volume,

a plasma space (molded within the one-piece resonator) which contains a mixture of gas and metal halides.

an antenna which delivers the microwave energy into the resonator, causing an electric field to ionise the gas plasma, which vaporises and combines with the metal halides to produce light.


In the past, people have tried using microwaves to heat gases in large glass bulbs. However, this technology is different, and represents a major step forward, because it uses a solid block, known as resonator, to shorten the wavelengths of the radio frequencies and heat gases within a far smaller volume.

Initially, Ceravision used opaque discs of ceramic to focus microwaves on a small glass bulb containing gas embedded within the ceramic disc. This approach succeeded in providing a bright point source of light, but the opaque block of ceramic prevented most of the light produced by the glass bulb, embedded within the resonator, from being emitted.

Ceravision have therefore changed their original design by patenting the use of a transparent quartz resonator, which allows more of the light produced by the glass bulb to be emitted.

Fortunately, the microwaves needed to make this device work are safely trapped within the resonator by a simple metal mesh, which acts as a Faraday Cage.

As a result of this well understood containment process, the microwaves are radiated into the bulb via the antenna, which lies next to the glass bulb at the centre of the resonator, and can be used to create an illuminating gas plasma inside the glass bulb.

Using this technology it is already possible to replace High Intensity Discharge (HID) lamps and new small source lamps (such as car headlights and projector lamps), UV lamps and domestic lamps are under development - with new designs that are 2+ x more energy efficient, 2x - 25x longer lived and affordable.

Ceravision's electrodeless microwave driven lamp system is extremely exciting because it offers better colour rendering and dimming than both compact flourescent lamps and high intensity discharge lamps, and has fewer problems with excess heat production than incandescents and LEDs.

It simply remains to be seen how well the energy performance and purchase price of domestic versions of Ceravision's technology will compare to the competing technologies, but it is definitely a very positive development that the EU's ban of traditional incandescents has allowed radically new lighting technologies, such as this, to come to market.

Microwave energy at a frequency of 2.4 GHz is focused into a small transparent glass ampoule (called a Burner) containing a noble gas at low pressure and microgramme quantities of selected metal halide salts. The microwave energy focused into the waveguide containing the burner forms an electric field ionizing the noble gas molecules to rapidly form a gas plasma within the glass ampoule, the plasma begins to vaporize the metal halide salts present. The plasma and metal halide salts combine to emit light, this technique provides the ability to produce a broad spectral emission using simple chemical compounds. This molecular excitation is a unique feature of the technology and allows Ceravision to deliver the world's first mercury-free High Intensity Discharge lamp that can deliver white light of exceptional purity (a Colour Rendering Index (CRI) measurement of 97 being achievable), and which also meets all current and projected regulations for control of radio frequency emission from any part of the system.



The burner is made of low hydroxyl quartz glass and contains no metal wires or metal electrodes. This allows the light formation from the plasma process to continue without contamination of the burner contents by metal wires or electrodes modifying the internal chemistry. This simplicity of construction maintains an unprecedented purity of materials within the burner during its continuing operation and allows the lighting platform to offer designers excellent colour constancy and lumen maintenance over an extended operating lifetime.

Labels: 2.4Ghz, antenna, Ceravision, Faraday Cage, HID, magnetron, microwave, resonator

The Guardian : Article on A-G Energy Labels

This article by Ban The Bulb's founder Dr Matt Prescott was published in The Guardian on Friday 27 February 2009.

Imagine living in a world where every single in the top 40 made it to number one and every child was awarded straight As in their exams?

Although superficially attractive, it's pretty obvious that making everyone a winner would discourage hard work and stifle competition. It would also make it more difficult for music fans to find the best songs and for employers to recruit the best staff, producing many losers.

Sadly, in the world of household products and their multi-coloured A-G energy labels you do not need to imagine almost every refrigerator, freezer, washing machine, tumble drier and dishwasher being given an A-rating for its energy performance. This is the reality. Roughly 95% of dishwashers and 98% of washing machines.

The existing A-G scale for energy labels was set up 12 years ago and designed to include products developed over 30 years ago.

Today, an A-rated fridge currently uses 100 kWh/y of electricity per 100 litres of volume. This sounds good when you know that a fridge made in 1980 would have used 386 kWh/y to chill the same volume, but much less impressive when you know the best designs are now capable of using three times less electricity than an A-rated fridge.

Rather than recalibrate the A-G scale at regular intervals, every improvement in technology has been accommodated, on an ad hoc basis, by the addition of A+ and A++ categories to the top of the scale.

And because it is not unusual for 90% of a product's lifetime costs to be associated with running costs, rather than the purchase price, allowing mediocre products to sound better than is really merited invisibly costs Europe's 500 million consumers many billions of pounds in higher energy bills each year.

Depressingly, lobbying by the manufacturers seems likely to succeed in replacing the temporary A+ and A++ system with even more ambiguous A1, A2 and A3 categories above A. This insidious and confusing grade inflation appeals to manufacturers, as it allows even fourth division products to be called A-rated, rather than D-rated.

Now that there are so few products in the B, C, D, E, F and G categories, my preferred solution would be to recalibrate the clear and simple A-G scale based on the best and worst products on sale right now.

Thailand has recently rescaled its A-G categories for fridges and air conditioners and I feel that this approach makes a lot more sense than allowing manufacturers to continue comparing today's products with those they were making 10-30 years ago.

I would also like to see no more than 10%–20% of the products in each class of goods being A-rated and the best commercial products being used to define the new A-rating.

A tough A-rating standard would also mean that the remaining 80%–90% of products had to work for their market share and that every manufacturer had an incentive to adopt the most energy efficient technologies.

The trend for massive plasma screen TVs throws up another important issue.

Plasma screens use 2–3 times more energy than the traditional televisions they have replaced, yet are still being given A-ratings.

Sure, they use less energy per unit area, but this overlooks the crucial fact that their sheer size is pushing up each device's total energy use.

Significantly, a recent report by McKinsey has highlighted energy efficiency as the single most cost-effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, yet we continue to find endless excuses for doing the very opposite or nothing.

A small think tank called Europe, Planet Earth has been trying to propose sensible legislative reform in Brussels, before some important votes take place in March, but they need far more support from the big consumer organisations and environmental groups if they are to be heard in the corridors of power.

If we cannot make energy labels simple and effective without tying ourselves up in knots, how are we going to do all of the more complicated and expensive things we love to talk about?

Just as Eurovision contestants are not entitled to chart success, the manufacturers of our household products are not entitled to have their products given top marks.

We need to stop asking manufacturers what they want to do and to start telling them what we want achieved.

Dr Matt Prescott is director of Ban the Bulb

Labels: energy labels, The Guardian

EU-wide light bulb ban passed : 44 votes v 14 votes

Ban The Bulb is pleased to be able to inform you that the European Union's Environment Committee has officially voted (with 44 votes for and 14 votes against) to phase out domestic incandescent light bulbs.

This officially means that, across the EU's 27 member nations, 100W light bulbs will now be phased out as of September 2009.

In December 2008, The European Commission's Regulatory Committee voted to recommend a ban, but this latest vote, by the EU's Environment Committee consisting of MEPs, means that the ban will definitely become law.

As far as Ban The Bulb knows, this is the first law to phase out domestic incandescent light bulbs to be passed anywhere in the world...

The Ban The Bulb campaign was set up 4 years ago, and spent a long time campaigning on this issue alone, so is obviously delighted to see this turn of events.

Ban The Bulb would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the significant help that it, and the goal of a highly energy efficient Europe, have recently received from Germana Canzi, Edouard Toulouse and Stephan Scheuer; who have all played an important part in ensuring that during the EU's consultation process was more thorough and transparent than might otherwise have been the case.

Update : EurActive.Com : Parliament paves way for wider eco-design product list

Labels: EU light bulb ban

Eco-St : Light Bulb Library : Review

Ban The Bulb has borrowed a low energy "light bulb library" from Matt Lane of Eco-St and been trying out some of the 40 different designs of high-quality energy saving light bulb that have been gathered together for this loanable library.



Visually impaired

The most suitable energy saving light bulb, for those that are visually impaired, has proven to be the 25W Pro-Lite Daylite.

This lamp quickly produces a very bright light which covers a full "daylight" spectrum and is equivalent to a 125W incandescent light bulb.

It costs about £9 to buy, lasts for 8000 hours (approx. 8 years) and uses 6 times less electricity to produce the same amount of light as the traditional alternative.

It has been calculated that this energy saving lamp uses £12 less electricity each year or £96 over its lifetime.





100W equivalent : 20W Soft tone

Many people find the light produced by the stick and spiral designs of energy saving light bulb too harsh.

As a result, several of the manufacturers have started to encapsulate the familiar energy saving spirals or sticks inside glass globes which are tinted to produce a warmer or softer tone of light.

Ban The Bulb would recommend that you used these encapsulated designs in living space and the stick designs for areas such as stairs and hallways where the tone of light matters less.

The Philips 20W Softone energy saving light bulb produces a good brightness within 1-2 seconds and full brightness within about a minute.

It costs £4.99 to buy one of these lamps and saves roughly £10 per year on electricity bills. With an 8000 hour (approx 8 year) lifetime this amounts to an £80 saving on bills.

75W equivalent : 16W Softone

The Philips 16W Softone is an encapsulated design of energy saving light bulb, which produces a mellow light and reaches a good brightness within 3 seconds and full brightness within 30 seconds - 1 minute.

It costs £4.99 and saves roughly £9 per year (£72 over life time) on electricity bills when compared to a 75W incandescent equivalent.


General Advice

Use the higher wattages of energy saving bulb

In general, BTB recommends that you avoid the lower wattages of energy saving light bulb as there do seem to be issues with the conversion of watts (the unit of electricity) and lumens (the unit of light) and it seems best to err on the side of caution; by buying a slightly higher wattage of energy saver that you might expect.

You can also check the lumen levels on the box and this is a good idea if you have time.

You get what you pay for

Millions of energy saving light bulbs have been given away free but these tend to be relatively poorly made and to be produced by little known brands or obscure Chinese companies.

BTB therefore recommends that you buy energy savers that have been produced by well-known brands. Even if the cost a bit more to purchase, they will almost certainly do a better job and help you to avoid disappointment.

As with other household goods, you tend to get what you pay for, and both the quality of light and lifetimes seem to be more satisfactory from the bigger brands.

All energy saving light bulbs are not equal

Although I haven't had time to undertake a thorough review of all of the light bulbs in the library, you might like to know that:

Osram / GE seem to make some of the best compact "stick" designs,

Pro-Lite seen to make the brightest energy savers with the widest light spectrum,

Philips seem to make the best soft tone and "encapsulated" globe designs and,

Pro-Lite and Megaman seem to make the best candle shaped compacts.

BTB hasn't found any dimmable CFLs that it is happy to endorse and would recommend that you waited for LEDs, such as those made by Sharp / EcoLED to get cheaper and more widely available.

Visit a specialist lighting shop + try before you buy

Please have a look at the numerous light bulb suppliers in the links on the left if you want to compare prices and look at a wider range of light bulbs.

It is also a good idea to visit specialist lighting shops such as Ryness and Eco-St, so that you can ask them to demonstrate different light bulbs before you buy.

Thanks to Matt Lane for allowing me borrow his excellent light bulb library.

Labels: light bulb library, Philips, pro-lite, visually impaired

A video comparison on LEDs, CFLs + incandescents

Hank Green, The Editor of EcoGeek, has produced a useful video which shows off some of the latest domestic LEDs and compares them with traditional incandescents.

In Ban The Bulb's opinion LEDs are definitely an important part of the future and should provide the new minimum energy performance standard for 100W and 60W light bulbs within 3-5 years.



Last week, Ban The Bulb demonstrated the comparable performance of the 4W EcoLED to a 40W domestic incandescent on BBC Breakfast TV.

Thanks to Greenpeace UK for finding Hank's demonstration.

Useful links:

4W EcoLED

8W EcoLED : with cooling metal plates

7W Earth LED : ZetaLux : with cooling metal plates

13 W Earth LED : EvoLux : with cooling fan!

Last week's media interest in light bulbs, triggered by the Daily Mail (see: a, b, c, d, e, f, g) has generated some interesting correspondence from a lighting company that uses ceramics (excited by radio frequencies) to produce light, which should be able to beat the energy performance and illumination of domestic LEDs within 2 years!

I'll let you know more once I've visited their factory at the end of the month.

Labels: Ceramic lights, EcoGeek, Hank Green, LEDs

Phase out of 100W light bulbs begins in the UK

Yesterday, 1 Jan 2009, a voluntary agreement between the UK government and the country's retailers came into force, which will see 100W (<60W) domestic incandescent light bulbs being phased out by many of the UK's biggest shops, as suppliers cease to replace their stock of inefficient light bulbs.

Once the existing stock has been used up incandescent light bulbs will be replaced by halogen lamps (which use 25% less electricity) and compact fluorescent lamps (which use 65-80% less electricity to produce an equivalent amount of light).

Although the making of this agreement was little noticed it has already resulted in 150W (<100W) light bulbs being phased out and will be extended to include 60W (<40W) light bulbs next year...

In addition, a legally binding EU-wide ban on 100W light bulbs will also come into force in September 2009 and a similar ban is due to come into force in Australia in Nov 2009 (although BTB has been unable to find any of the relevant legislation from Australia online yet).

In a recent review of the performance of compact fluorescent lamps, which the Ban The Bulb campaign conducted for The Guardian newspaper, Tesco (81p), GE (£4 each) and Philips (£4 each) were found to offer the best energy saving alternatives to 100W incandescents.

Following recent improvements in LEDs, Ban The Bulb campaign believes that before long incandescents, halogen lamps and CFLs will all be replaced by domestic LEDs, which offer 90% energy savings and 25x -50x longer lifetimes are the future.

This campaign is certainly very pleased with the performance of the domestic table lamp 4W LED substitute for 40W incandescents made by ECOLED.

Apart from offering massive energy savings and much longer lifetimes, LEDs offer instant full brightness, dimmability and zero mercury content.

LEDs are still rather expensive to buy, so Ban The Bulb would like to see governments taking rapid and firm measures to ensure that this functional and available technology is brought to the mass market as quickly as possible, so that it can benefit from the economies of scale.

Making full use of LEDs would help consumers to save money on their energy bills, help energy companies to build fewer power stations and enable the environment to benefit from significantly fewer lighting associated carbon emissions than is currently the case (if the whole of the EU used CFLs instead of incandescents this would save 23 - 53 Million tonnes of CO2 per annum across Europe or put another way 10 power station's worth of electricity).

Anyway, the Ban The Bulb campaign is glad with the progress that has been made since it was set up in Feb 2005, and invited to write an article for BBC News Online in Feb 2006, so let's see whether LEDs can be made the new target within 2009!

Labels: Australia, EU, LEDs, UK, voluntary agreement