Edison’s incandescent light bulb is facing extinction, that too for a very good reason.
Incandescent bulbs, which generate light by heating up a tungsten filament until it glows almost white hot, have long been recognised as being highly inefficient, losing a major proportion of their energy to heat. In comparison, fluorescent lamps, which generate light through using electricity to excite gas, generate relatively little heat and are about four times as efficient as incandescent bulbs.
There are reports from Japan that the government plans to put an end to domestic production and sales of energy consuming incandescent bulbs to support a shift to energy-saving fluorescent bulbs to cut electricity consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. Earlier last year, Australia announced that the incandescent bulbs will be phased out by 2010, which will help cut Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by four million metric tonnes a year by 2015. European Union too announced they will phase out the old bulbs by 2010. The recent energy bill, signed by US President George Bush, ensures that all 100 watts incandescent bulbs will be phased out in the US by 2012 and all 40 watts by 2014.
Energy giants, GE, the company founded by Thomas Edison, are looking at light emitting diode chips, or better known as LEDs. Though more expensive than other types of light, LEDs use very little electricity and, unlike bulbs, last up to 20 years. The North Indian state of Haryana took one step further by deciding to ban the use of power guzzler incandescent bulbs in all low tension (LT) and high tension (HT) industries and factories and their residential colonies, hospitals, street lighting, staff quarters.
In the meanwhile, President Hugo Chavez of energy-rich Venezuela said that his Cuba-inspired light bulb give away program, which aims to improve energy efficiency, will mean big energy savings for his oil-rich nation. In a televised address, he said, “They’ll say Chavez has gone crazy — that he’s going around giving out light bulbs.”
Chavez has said that the government plans to distribute 52 million energy saving light bulbs to Venezuelans under its “Mission Energy Revolution” — part of a new energy conservation policy under way in one of the world’s top oil producers. Cuban leader Fidel Castro, a close friend and mentor of Chavez, earlier began distributing energy saving light bulbs in order to reduce electricity consumption on the communists land. Cuba’s electricity grid has faced problems in recent years and blackouts have been common.
There is a good lesson in all this for countries in the Middle East, which haven’t done much about phasing out the incandescent bulbs. As the old adage goes, charity begins at home; energy saving too.
