By MARK FARMER IS A PROFESSOR OF CELLULAR BIOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA. – Athens Banner-Herald
In 1878, Thomas Edison had a really bright idea.
With U.S. Patent No. 214636, Edison described an improved means of controlling electricity to a metal filament which kept it from melting. Thus was born the commercialization of the incandescent light bulb.
For more than a century, Edison-style light bulbs have allowed us to vanquish the dark and greatly expand the range of human activities. Perhaps no other invention has so transformed our society. But it has come at a cost. The fact that cities never sleep has added stress to our lives; light pollution swamps out our view of the heavens, and lighting accounts for a very large portion of U.S. energy use.
Homes and buildings account for more than 40 percent of the energy consumed. Approximately half of that goes into keeping the lights on. A single 100-watt bulb, used only six hours a day, can cost more than $25 during the course of a year.
As versatile and hardy as they are — one bulb in Livermore, Calif., has been burning nonstop since 1910 — the problem with incandescent lights is evident in their name. In addition to giving off light, they give off a lot of heat. And they do both of these things very inefficiently.
When electricity was cheap and plentiful, the wastefulness of incandescent lights mattered little. Even though more efficient lighting sources, such as fluorescent lamps, have been available since the 1940s, the Edison-style bulb has reigned supreme.
Today we are more aware of the environmental and human costs associated with energy production. As we struggle to develop alternative forms of electricity and wean ourselves from foreign oil, we no longer can afford to produce light the way we have since the Wright brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk. We need something new.
One such innovation is the compact fluorescent lamp. In the 1970s, American engineer Edward Hammer designed the now-familiar spiral fluorescent lamp, which produced the same amount of light as a regular bulb with only a fifth of the energy.
In the 1980s, the Dutch electronics firm Philips came up with a way of making CFLs compatible with standard screw-in sockets, and the first real replacement for incandescent lamps was born.
Hammer’s employer, General Electric, chose not to invest in the technology in the 1970s, so spiral CFLs were not commercially available until the 1990s, when they were manufactured in China.
In 2007, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act, which detailed how general household lighting must become 30 percent more efficient than conventional incandescent lamps by 2014.
Most specialty lamps are exempt from these restrictions, and nearly all halogen bulbs and CFLs already meet this energy standard.
The act was supported by American lighting manufacturers.
With the first phase of the act set for implementation in 2012, some have been lobbying for its repeal. Minnesota congresswoman and Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has said, “The government has no business telling an individual what kind of light bulb to buy” and talk-radio hosts have been brought to tears over the idea of these mercury-containing devices coming in contact with their grandchildren. Earlier this year, Georgia state Sen. Barry Loudermilk, R-Cassville, went so far as to sponsor Senate Bill 61, which would defend Georgia’s right to keep manufacturing incandescent bulbs.
The truth is there never was a light-bulb ban, just a requirement to make lighting more efficient. We all have reaped the benefits of similar laws that have brought us higher-mileage vehicles, new homes with insulation, toilets that help us deal with droughts and appliances that use a fraction of the energy of those of my childhood. All of these things have saved money and resources. Even if not a single CFL is recycled, over a lifetime of use CFLs release less mercury into the environment than do incandescent bulbs.
And CFLs are not the end of the story. Light-emitting diodes have the potential to do even more. LEDs consume roughly 10 percent of the energy of an equivalent incandescent bulb and therefore have only 10 percent of the environmental impact. LEDs contain no mercury and don’t suffer from the problems of cycling on and off that can shorten the life of a CFL.
We’ve been using LEDs for years in our TVs and traffic signals. Only their cost keeps them from being a viable alternative for household lighting.
Rather than trying to preserve a century-old technology, leaders like Bachmann and Loudermilk should put their efforts behind promoting the development and manufacturing of sound alternatives such as LEDs.
Now that would be a bright idea.
