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Using CFLs will Increase your Carbon Footprint, not Decrease it |
What is the real energy cost of a CFL? What does it cost to Mine, Manufacture, Package, Ship, Sell, Operate, Dispose and Remediate the Environment? Moreover how do you put a cost on destroyed lives and human health?
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Reducing your carbon footprint is the CFL’s raison d’etre. But before you decide to switch over to compact fluorescent lights it would be wise to first review an overall– from cradle to grave—analysis of the carbon footprint of a CFL, compared to an incandescent bulb, to be sure you are doing the right thing. One study conducted in Denmark,examined some carbon footprint factors, but not all, showed it took 1.8 Kwh of electricity to assemble a CFL compared to .11 Kwh to assemble an incandescent bulb. That means it took 16 times more energy to produce a CFL. See these tests: Link1>> Link2>> This study did not include the fact a CFL is much heavier and is more dangerous to handle will thus cost more to package, to ship, and to sell. This research also did not calculate the energy required to safely dispose of a CFL. If they had, common sense tell us s it would take hundreds of times more energy than an incandescent bulb. Also, to be fair, we must factor in the costs of removing the mercury from our landfills and the cost in destroyed lives, illnesses, and lost human potential. If such a study could be done that took in all the above factors, it would show a CFL has a massive carbon footprint, one that would dwarf a regular incandescent light bulb and that would also show CFLs leaving a wake of environmental destruction to boot. CFLs: Hundreds of millions are spent trying to save a fraction of our energy consumption. Lighting is a fraction of all our overall energy consumption and has a limited potential for energy savings. Nevertheless, we should be conserving wherever we can. At the same time we should not forget that switching our incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent lights poses a whole range of negative environmental and health impacts with very little, if any, real energy savings. Residential lighting takes up .8% of energy consumption in Canada CFLs have energy losses during operation which you are not told about; losses that eliminate any energy savings over an incandescent light. Vancouver Sun, Feb 17, 2009. BC Hydro; “Energy efficient bulbs increase greenhouse gases. Because they burn cooler, they cause home heating to rise,” utility reports. Hydro also states that “lighting regulations (banning incandescent lights) will increase GHG emissions in Hydro’s service territory by 45,000 tons due to cross effects of a switch to cool-burning bulbs.” The ‘cross effect’ BC Hydro is referring to is the loss of heat from hotter incandescent bulbs when we switch over to cooler burning CFLs. To make up for the lost heat we now have to turn up our electric heat, or worse, our oil or gas furnace which will leave us consuming more energy sometimes creating more green house gases than before we made the switch. In the summertime because of our longer days both lighting and heating are used much less so the general rule still applies. For the moment let us just consider a CFL’s carbon footprint during its operation. When you take in losses due to the lower power factor as well as the heating energy losses in colder climates, using compact fluorescent lights will not reduce your carbon footprint when compared to a regular light bulb. In fact there is good evidence that shows that using CFLs will increase your carbon footprint. Continued>> |
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