Thursday, March 15, 2007
More praise for energy saving light bulbs....
Here's an interesting one, an Early Day Motion by Labour MP, Sharon Hodgson, all about how wonderful energy saving light bulbs are for the carbon emissions but no mention of the danger to our rivers and the water table from the mercury that they contain. It really ought to have a bit tagged on which calls on the Government to urgently review recycling and disposal facilities for the mercury time bomb being created.
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Energy saving light bulbs may save some money for the individual householder, but won't do anything much for the country's total CO2 emissions.
Why? Well, think about what happens with the energy "wasted" by incandescent bulbs. It is dissipated as heat, which warms your house. If you didn't have that heat then, assuming that you like your house to be kept at a certain temperature, you would have to add it from some other energy source, i.e. your boiler. So either you use a small amount of gas or oil or coal or whatever to heat your house directly with, or you get the power company to burn some to generate the electricity that indirectly warms your house. Same watts, same CO2 output.
Some caveats: if the outside temp is higher than the inside (not very often in the UK), and you are using aircon to cool your house, then obviously extra heat from a lightbulb is a bad thing. On the other hand, some electricity is generated by non-CO2-producing means, e.g. nuclear, whereas practically all house-heating in this country does produce CO2.
All in all: yet another yawn-inspiring initiative trying to catch the easily duped green vote, but with zilch practical effect.
When they're hell-bent on an idea, there's no shifting that idea.
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