James5

1. MissKrin

   Hi James,

   I’ve been doing some research on incandescent bulbs in my professional capacity, and I am in agreement with you on the mercury issue. It will be interesting to see if that is pulled out to argue against this idea by uninformed people, or those with a difrferent agenda.

   However, I do have an issue with the way you have represented the SMH’s article. If you read it closely the article says that: “The federal Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is expected today to announce a commitment” and “hopes to convince state and territory governments to introduce energy performance standards”. So here we have an example of wedge politics and an attempt to come across as a good environmental party in an election year.

   The power to change these standards rests with the states, not the Federal government. The Australian Greenhouse Office (AGO) is responsible for the program to address efficiency standards, but the states have the powers to create the regulations which would put these powers into effect. See http://www.energyrating.gov.au/lamps1.html

   It just seems to me that you may be putting the cart before the horse in stating that new government standards are being introduced. Instead my cynical political mind thinks that this is another attempt by the Liberals, and Malcolm Turnbull as the new environment Minister, to create an image of a green-concious party with practical solutions, which they have rightly realised is something that they electorate want. However, when the standards don’t go through in a timely fashion (i.e before the election), The Libs can point to the Labor state governments and claim that Labor is full of rhetoric and without practical action on climate change. win-win for Turnbull either way. It’s a little like the Murray-Darling scheme he pulled out a few weeks ago. In addition to this the AGO has been negotiating light bulb standards since 2001. It’s simply the re-branding of ongoing work, with a slight twist as Turnbull is possibly going to announce a policy to ban the incandescent globes. A step further from labelling and energy standards, the normal work of the AGO.

   Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this is a bad idea, as CFLs are a better product from an environmental perspective. However there are a number of policy issues to be addressed before it could be brought into force, including ensuring that there are CFLs for every type of light fitting in Australia, or some scheme to compensate home-owners when they have to convert their fittings. The states and the Federal government will also have to negotiate on the actual shape of the standards and the regulations, which can take a long time to settle. We are not going to see any action on this for about 2 years, which is getting close to Turnbull’s 2009-2010 timeline, and is well after the next Federal election.

   Feb 20th, 2007

2. devonwhittle

   Thanks for your input MissKrin, I wasn’t aware of all the potential roadblocks faced. In the SMH article I linked to there aren’t any of the quotes you mentioned above - sorry if I have misrepresented what is happening I just heard the news on the radio this morning and found that article in the SMH, both which seemed to indicate (along with ABC and The Age) that by 2009-10 CFLs will be the only light bulbs for sale in Australia.

   It’d be great to see some links from your research, let me know if you blog anything about it soon. While I can see there are some policy issues to be worked through, I wouldn’t want to overstate problems such as light bulb fittings (the two most popular ones in Australia, bayonet and edison screw are both available in CFL) as this is a phase in - I’m sure in three years time some people will still be using the old style lights (people will probably start hoarding the globes), there may be additional exemptions, etc.

   This isn’t turning into an automatic win for the Government, as these NEWS.com.au comments show, people can tell dodgy politics without action when they see it.

   Feb 20th, 2007

3. MissKrin

   How very odd, the SMH has written two articles on this in the one day. The article I was referring to is Light Bulb Plans to Slash Emissions

   As I assumed there would only be one article,I hadn’t seen the one you linked to, which gives the impression that this is already in train. I am assuming you saw the satirical take on this at The Daily Truth?

   Thanks for the links to the news.com.au comments, very enlightening and heartening. Although my cynical mind has kicked in again, and wonders what percentage of the population is informed and engaged enough to comment on this issue and will they affect the general population’s perception of this announcement? Of course an equally valid question is what percentage of the population will even notice that there has been an announcement?

   The research I did was some background work for a meeting for my employer, so it won’t be published. In broad terms I was looking at policy initiatives in various international jurisdictions to encourage or mandate the recycling of fluorescent tubes. This of course meant that I came across a number of articles stating that the energy savings from CFLs outweighed the effect of the mercury content, and that in most cases more mercury was emitted by the energy suppliers producing the electricity needed to power incandescent bulbs.

   The light bulb fittings comment relates to the size of covers and lamps rather than the interface between the bulb and the power supply. There are at least two fittings in my home that I can’t put a CFL into as the cover is too shallow for the standard CFLs that are available at the moment. Not a huge hurdle, but from an equitable policy perspective still something that needs to be taken into account. Off the top of my head: in order to change these fittings it would cost me at least $50 per fitting, and there’s the electrician or builder’s costs on top of that. Also I live in a rental property, so technically I can’t change these fittings myself. There would need to be some aspect of the policy which directed real estate agents or landlords to do assessments on all their properties to ensure that light fittings were able to take CFLs. Similar to NSW’s legislation on smoke alarms. What I am trying to demonstrate is that from a policy perspective it is never as straight forward as Ministers would like us to believe.

   I blog at http://misskrin.blogspot.com where I just posted on this issue, using some of what I posted into the first comment. My apologies for not putting this information in there.

   Feb 20th, 2007

4. devonwhittle

   perhaps I am being a bit too optimistic but I like to think that all these small sorts of changes do mean something. I know it’s no excuse for skipping Kyoto or ignoring the problem for all these years, but that’s not to say it’s useless. Around the world NGOs have been running campaigns trying to achieve this outcome.

   I hadn’t seen that Daily Truth post, thanks for pointing it out, good for a laugh.

   Feb 20th, 2007

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