Light Bulbs and Oil Wells

There have been a couple of energy related happenings in the last few days.

EU legislation banning the sale of 100 watt incandescent light bulbs for domestic use came into force and BP announced a huge oil find in the Gulf of Mexico.

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the light bulb ban in the UK.  The complaints are over different aspects of the alternative energy saving bulbs - known as compact fluorescent lamps or CFL's.  These use about a quarter of the amount of energy for the same level of light output - in other words they are more efficient.  There are a few issues with them.  They put out a different spectrum of light compared to tungsten filament incandescent bulbs - which many people complain is colder than the light they're used to.  They also contain small amounts of mercury meaning that the disposal of the bulbs needs to be managed more carefully.  Finally they take time to warm up - perhaps as much as a minute before they're up to full intensity.

There are other complaints about the new bulbs - their life is severely reduced by short on-off cycles - it's recommended that they be left on for at least 15 minutes to overcome this effect.  Some people complain that they trigger health issues such as migraines.  Without doing proper trials - which would be very difficult to do in a true blind (sic) sense - it's impossible to verify such issues, so we are subject to anecdotal reporting.

How much energy can be saved by using these bulbs?  According to the article in the above link the European Commission estimate up to 40 Terawatt hours per year.  That sounds like a big number - we should do some sums to verify this.  Other estimates say up to 7% of domestic electricity.  It's important to get a like for like comparison - including the amount of energy used in the manufacture, use and disposal (recycling) of both types of bulb.  I haven't managed to find those numbers yet.  For the end consumer, if the bulbs last as long as they are advertised then there will be a net saving of a few pounds per light bulb.

As one respondent to the BBC pointed out, in terms of CO2 savings they can catch a jumbo jet to fly to the other side of the world (a return trip to the US in a fully loaded plane will generate about 2 tons of CO2 per person) but they can no longer buy an incandescent light bulb.  That doesn't make switching to low energy bulbs wrong - it simply isn't enough to address our current energy addiction.

The BP oil find is I think mixed news.  On the one hand, great - we can go on living our current lifestyle for longer.  On the other not so great - we will go on living our current lifestyle for longer.  This will do little to discourage our continuing consumption of a limited resource.

I hadn't appreciated that typically only 30% of the available oil in a well is extracted - I'd like to learn more about that. This is a deep well and I'd also be curious to know how the cost of extraction will compare with oil elsewhere in the world.

Our political ambivalence towards energy usage needs to be addressed.  If we are going to move away from fossil fuels before it's too late to avoid a major energy crisis I personally believe that legislation will be required.  For that legislation to be successful and supported by the populace we need to start addressing the problem in a considered manner.  That's a hard thing to do when large numbers of people from different walks of life around the world are involved.  The human race doesn't have a great record for widespread considered and sensible debate.  Self interest and emotion tend to dominate and facts get rapidly lost in the melee.